There was only ever going to be one choice of book for this place, wasn't there? It had to be a Robin of Sherwood audiobook from the team at Spiteful Puppet. I spent quite a long time studying the various books on offer, trying to decide on the specific one I wanted to listen to. However, I happened to go onto my account page and realised I'd bought one that I'd not downloaded yet, so The Waterford Boy by Jenny Kane became my book of choice for this stretch of my walk. The audio isn't very long, which made quite a nice change, as usually the books I've listened to have been immense (I think Hamnet was the shortest at just over 10 hours). Needless to say, I thoroughly enjoyed it, although the honking geese did make me jump and have me looking around as I was convinced they were actually somewhere nearby as opposed to on the audio!
However, sometimes, things have a habit of timing themselves quite nicely. I've just started researching Robin Hood again for the series of children's books I'm writing, which is the next thing I want to tackle on my 'to write' list. Consequently, I've been digging around on my shelves for my Robin Hood books, trying to find this one by John Matthews, which I'd started reading a couple of years ago, but had to abandon when I realised that writing about Robin Hood wouldn't count as Creative Nonfiction for the purposes of the MA. In the course of looking for this however, I also stumbled across what looked like a DVD case. I thought at first it was my copy of The Knights of the Apocalypse (also available from Spiteful Puppet), but it didn't look like it was quite the right colour. When I got it off the shelf, I realised it was in fact
a box of CDs - four Robin of Sherwood audiobooks I'd completely forgotten I'd bought. This was one occasion where I was really pleased that I don't usually have time to listen to audiobooks as it meant I had four new RoS stories to enjoy, including two that I'd been debating whether to use as my Nottingham books. So last Saturday, as we drove down to Cornwall and back (yes - all in one day, no - we're not mad, we're house hunting and didn't want to stay overnight because... well - COVID) I happily listened to: King of Sherwood, The Trial of John Little, What Was Lost and The Meeting Place. Even with a 3am start they were exciting enough to keep me awake! The best part of it all is that I could even argue that it was all research and therefore there could be no argument from the other occupants of the car!
On returning home, I discovered another Robin Hood book on the shelf, so this has been added to the pile of books to read for research and although the pile never seems to get any smaller, it's paying off because the reworking of the novel is coming along slowly and the trilogy is beginning to take shape in my head.
The best news for me though, is that I now have the perfect excuse to not wait to read Jenny's latest addition to the Folville series when that comes out in a few days. When each of the last two books came out I was up to my ears in university assignment reading and had to postpone reading them until after I'd submitted my work. This year, I can legitimately claim it will help my own writing! Happy Ruth!
Jenny writes as Jennifer Ash for historical fiction and the books are available here.
If you are interested in buying any of the other books, just click on the pictures and the link should take you to the relevant websites.