My most recent project was a work of fiction called Figure in the Landscape. I was working on a series of paintings with this name, and in conjunction with that I used the form of Plato’s dialogues to explore ideas of landscape and identity. It’s meant to be funny too. The written work is complete, and I printed copies to distribute at the exhibition. Guess what my family got for Christmas that year.
I enjoy writing and used do it commercially as well. I still sometimes write articles and reviews for magazines.
I guess I had to write a novel. Don’t we all?
It’s not long. In a way it’s a fictocritical treatment of Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited, but with Charles and Sebastian both as chicks. I’m a big fan of Waugh, but always thought that Charles’s love of Julia was the least convincing part of the story. In real life too, reading his diaries I think Waugh was much more fond of Alistair Graham than he ever was of his wife Laura. See what you think.
I used the nom de plume Frances Blake to avoid confusion with the famous Scottish philosopher David Hume, and because the narrator is a woman. If I’d used my (our) real name I may well have gotten more sales.
I’ve made the iBooks version free. If you prefer you can download the file free from this link on my server.
This is an .epub file – the type of file iBooks uses. Once you’ve downloaded it, you can drop it in to your iTunes books library. The simplest way of opening it on your iPad is to email the file to yourself, click the file from within the mail app and then use the option “open in iBooks”. It will add it to your library for you.
If that sounds too hard, or if you only use a Kindle, you might need to buy it. I couldn’t make the Amazon version free, but what the hell, it’s only $1.