After becoming fascinated by Alexander Reid, the Glasgow art dealer friendly with and painted by Vincent van Gogh, I researched Reid, winkling out information on those around him with whom he had connections, and writing a biography, as yet unpublished. Drawing on my research I produced a booklet (Alexander Reid and the Japanese Influence: Arts, ships and plants, ISBN 978-0-9553312-3-7) that accompanied an exhibition I curated as part of Cowalfest 2009. Cowalfest was an annual walking and arts festival in Argyll, co-founded by myself and my husband, of which I was vice chair for eight years prior to moving back to the Borders. That led to two and a half novels which still twitch on my computer, then to joining Borders Writers’ Forum and writing short stories. In 2011 I was shortlisted for a Meridian competition and for the Scottish Wave of Change competition. I contributed to the last Borders Writers’ Form anthology and have a piece in their third anthology being published later this year. I was co-editor of both of these publications. (Border Voices on Border Ruins ISBN 978-0-9567128-0-6, and Scottish Borders and Beyond). I also have responsibility for the BWF website – www.borderswritersforum.org.
I contribute occasional pieces to online news sites, such as For Argyll, on a range of subjects, and recently added a piece to the Scottish Book Trust website’s section on My Favourite Place.
Persuaded to attend a workshop with Muriel Romanes, actor and prize-winning director of Stellar Quines Theatre Company, organised by Treading the Borders, I produced the first few pages of a play which was commented on enthusiastically and which I was urged to complete. The completed play, See them rats, was recently workshopped by Treading the Borders and is part of a double bill being produced by Kath Mansfield’s Odd Productions. Performances have been arranged around the Borders in late November/early December. See them rats is about three homeless guys, a sculptor and… tanks.
With the self-publishing of my novel In the Wake of the Coup I have joined the Alliance of Independent Authors.
I am me. For more click image.
jingsandthings 
Hi Dorothy
I’ve nominated your lovely blog for the Liebster Award. Please check out http://mamacormier.wordpress.com/2013/01/21/im-honoured/ for more details.
Really sorry not to have replied sooner, but have been up against deadlines and life has been somewhat hectic. Thank you so much for your nomination. What fun. Hope I’m not too late to get to grips with what I need to do. Will get onto it over the weekend. Thank you.
Hello, I think your website might be having browser compatibility issues. When I look at your blog in Firefox, it looks fine but when opening in Internet Explorer, it has some overlapping. I just wanted to give you a quick heads up! Other then that, great blog!
What a pity. Perhaps you should mention this to WordPress as all that technical stuff is done by them, leaving us bloggers free to enjoy writing and posting photos.
Thanks for visiting my blog today and choosing to follow! I love your images of Scotland and am going to have fun reading more of your posts.
Thank you. It’s so interesting to see what other people do and to enjoy their photos of places I’ve never been.
Hi Dorothy,
I love receiving your comments on my blog. Yesterday my friend asked me to remove the pictures of her family and any mention of the birthday or anniversary because she was afraid of a friend, who hadn’t been invited, seeing the post and feeling hurt. Out of respect for my friend I changed the post so I was surprised when you mentioned the birthday and the anniversary. I removed your comment, only because you mentioned the birthday and the anniversary. I take the blame for all of this; I should have asked permission to post the original pictures. I hope this won’t deter you from commenting on any future posts of mine. Carol
Wow, superb blog layout! How long have you been blogging for? you make blogging look easy. The overall look of your website is great, let alone the content!. Thanks For Your article about About Dorothy | jingsandthings .
Glad you liked it.
Dorothy, I’ve nominated you again but this time for a Bouquet of Awards at
http://mamacormier.wordpress.com/2013/05/08/more-awards-thank-you/. If you choose to accept, feel free to cut and paste whatever you need from the post to make the process easier! If not, know that your blog is well appreciated and a source of inspiration to me. Carol
Hi Carol, Gosh, triple thanks. I just love reading about your life. You have such a great friendly, chatty style. So glad you enjoy my pieces. I really want to say yes to these three awards but am up to my eyes at present so it may take me some time to put all the info needed together.
Weather here remains disappointing, it’s becoming quite depressing really. The tress are coming out…about a month late. And I’m desperate to ditch winter clothes and get into something different. Thanks again.
Hi there, I have nominated you for a Pirate’s Admiration Award! Click the link and see:
http://thevintagepostcard.wordpress.com/2013/05/13/pirates-admiration-award/
Thank you so much. I’ve been awarded some others too so it’s going to take me some time to work through them, especially as I’m somewhat busy at present revising a book I want to publish as an ebook. It is so great reading about the places others stay, the places they have been and the things they do. Will get onto this as soon as I can. Thanks again.
Hi Dorothy,
Thanks so much for visiting my blog. I’ve been out of the blogging world for a bit, so it’s nice to see people like you still ready to read mine when I finally do make a post. By the way, I tried to visit the Borders Writers Forum, but the link gets a 404.
I always enjoyed discovering about a part of the world I know little of and missed your posts, so good to see you back. Borders Writers’ Forum website is down (yet again!) at present. As a community organisation the website is hosted by the local health service server. I keep thinking I should move it to WordPress, but can’t face the work involved. Am working on getting two books to the stage I can publish as ebooks, so have lots to keep me busy.
Maybe you could do the work in stages. Just keep the new site private while you work on it. However, with two books in the works, I can see why you’re short of time. I’ve been struggling with mine for a long time now. What stage are you at with yours?
Both books were started years ago. I keep going back and editing them without any real hope of getting them published. However I’ve been persuaded by an epublishing event I attended to publish them as ebooks. So more re-reading and further editing, formatting, spell-checking. One is I think ready but want to print out again for a final read through, the other I hope will be ready in a couple of months. Until I get shot of them I feel I can’t concentrate on another book, and keeping writing (and reading) is the best way I know of improving. Not that anyone is going to be interested in my efforts – they lack graphic violence and all the other things that people seem to want these days, but if I publish I’ll feel I’ve achieved something and that’s what matters most to me. How about you?
Good idea to print it out again; I always find sneaky typos that way. I “see” the writing so much more clearly when it’s in hard copy. I’m sure people will be interested…there is more than enough graphic violence etc for those who want it. I like writing that, like the old movies, makes the reader/audience think.
Me? I’m working away at a cnf collection that I’m hoping will see the light of day as a print book. Several of the essays have been published, which I suppose could be a good thing. I had felt it was ready to go, then realized it wasn’t and went back to work on it. It keeps morphing under my little typing fingers.
I think I could revise forever. Every time I read over a piece of writing I make changes, sometimes only the odd word, at other times sentences. But at some point you just need to call a halt and go for it. So good luck with yours.
Hey there, this is for you! Hope you enjoy it:
http://cametofind.wordpress.com/2013/08/16/eng-shine-on-award/
Thank you so much for this nomination. I am thrilled. Because of the hair-tearing and all-consuming work involved in self-publishing my first novel I have a number of these to respond to. Looks bad, I know, but as soon as I can get my head into the air again I’ll look to see what I need to do. Hopefully just about there, but have spent a frustrating afternoon trying to upload files to Amazon. Fingers crossed, I think the problem, whatever it was, is now solved.
A magical scroll arrived by messenger to inform me of the wonderful news: Dorothy, you are following my blog ramblings.
I sincerely wish to take this opportunity to thank you. I know you’re probably busy, and there are so many amazing blogs in the blogsphere to spend your time reading, so I’m honoured you wish to spend time reading my posts.
With my blog I hope to inform, teach and bring smiles to those who read. The main purpose of Diane Tibert’s Dreamer blog is to share my experience in writing and publishing, including operating my own company Quarter Castle Publishing. Since January 2011 I have created more than 300 posts to share my writing obsession. If you are on a publishing journey I hope these posts have made it easier.
When I’m not talking about the writing and publishing world, I’m talking about my art, my animals (donkey, goats, chickens and ducks), the weather and living in Nova Scotia.
Thank you for your support.
Thank you Diane. I look forward to sharing your experiences.Though I don’t have any animals, Scots are always obsessed by the weather (rain, rain and yet more rain here) and my writing is coloured by the landscape and people around me. Leaning about Nova Scotia will be an added bonus.
At present I’m playing around with iBooks Author and hoping to upload my book as an ibook complete with photographs. We’ll see how it goes.
I am really looking forward to your iBook!!!
Thanks. It’s just about there. Great fun doing it, combining my photos with my text.
Hey, I’ve just nominated you for One Lovely Blog Award! More in my blog!
Hi, Kristina, thank you so much for this. Wonderful of you to think of me. As I don’t have much time for blogging, I haven’t been accepting nominations for awards. I’m also just back from being away and have a backlog to tackle and much to do before Christmas. So I’m grateful for your nomination, but afraid I must decline. Many thanks for the nomination, though, and I hope you have a great Christmas.