I am delighted to have Kit with a guest post today ~ thanks toRachel’s Random Resources for organizing.
Follow my fellow bloggers on the tour ⤵
Genre: Crime / Romance / Community
Publication Date: September 30, 2025
Publisher: Inkspot Publishing
Estimated Page Count: 319
Standalone Novel
Amazon link: https://amzn.to/4bujp7M
How does place and employment – or in my case self-employment – influence what you write? Regarding employment, whether it’s paid or voluntary, past or present, it may help provide a touchstone to the creating of character and narrative. Charles Dickens produced great works from his profession as a crusading journalist; George Orwell from living amongst the poor and deprived. Their work-places and their employment – journalism initially – went hand in hand; observation and involvement. Today we sometimes talk about the ‘lived experience’ and they were, especially Orwell, actually living it.
I’m sitting at the kitchen table nursing a mug of coffee and musing about this writing business, thinking about how place and occupation colour what I produce.
It’s six o’clock in the morning and I’m very comfortable in an Aga-warmed kitchen (not mine). The dogs, (not mine) two expectant but patient labradors are wondering if their walk is going to start a little earlier today. Outside of this house, the fields are sodden, the ditches are full of a night’s – and more – rain. Thirty feet away from me the canal waters are black and mysterious. Darkly secretive. There’s a tethering of moored barges lining the bank and the towpath is muddy and treacherous. It’s this scene that initially made me curious of who these water dwellers are, how they live and survive? What and why they have chosen this lifestyle? This is where the idea for Under Vixens Mere took root and, as I’m sure as you fellow writers will know, it wasn’t long before I started to place my characters in their barges. On the water. Had them talking to each other. Discovered their shared and unshared secrets: their hidden affairs: their covering up of the worst of crimes. I wanted my readers to empathise, but not necessarily agree with my characters behaviour, or their reactions, within the narrative of the novel. I hope that my wording provides that understanding of a community that dwells on the periphery of conventional lifestyle.
So that’s the place, the setting, of my book but within the story the occupations that affect the storyline are just as important for realism. My personal experience of farmwork helped to form Dinah – bullocks, cow-dung, wellies, and dogs. I’ve known what it’s like to hitch a donkey between the shafts of a cart and take the head of the stubborn beast. My building work helped in the creation of Big Ed – bricks, mortar, and slating roofs and the like. Army connections gave me an insight into a soldier’s mind. Other connections brought home the reality of street violence and the dangers of drug association. I didn’t need to know everything about my characters immediately but I could grow them from the seeds of authenticity. Sometimes it’s from a pint in a pub, or a memory of a person’s premonitions. Or the aroma of drifting woodsmoke on a frosted morning.
And now I’m a writer writing about writing in a borrowed house and outside this building a thick mist is shrouding the wet fields. It’s time to take the dogs out and clear my head because there’s an unfinished novel demanding attention as soon as I get back.
Book blurb:
If poor Harry Jones hadn’t lowered himself into the water one freezing winter’s night, a long-buried secret would never have come to the surface.
If …
Big Ed and Milly had been able to have children,
Karen hadn’t longed for love and romance,
Lorrie hadn’t finally ditched Petra,
Dinah hadn’t found out the truth about Barry,
Jed hadn’t dealt drugs and got Anna pregnant,
Carl Thomson hadn’t come looking for him,
and Moses hadn’t heard the commotion …
then there would be no story of Vixens Mere to tell.
Purchase Link – https://amzn.to/4hMNDDR
Author Bio – Kit Fielding plans and writes his novels in a motorhome at various locations around the country.
The feeling of impermanence is natural to him due to his mother’s traveller roots and a childhood succession of tied-cottages accommodation in different parts of England.
Kit Fielding says that there was always a curiosity about what was waiting, or was lurking, just around the corner. This legacy has stayed with him to the present day and it feeds into his work.
Social Media Links – Insta: @inkspotpub FB: Inkspotpublishing
Giveaway to Win 3 x Stacks of 5 Inkspot Publishing books (UK Only)
*Terms and Conditions –UK entries welcome. Please enter using the Gleam box below. The winner will be selected at random via Gleam from all valid entries and will be notified by Twitter and/or email. If no response is received within 7 days then Rachel’s Random Resources reserves the right to select an alternative winner. Open to all entrants aged 18 or over. Any personal data given as part of the competition entry is used for this purpose only and will not be shared with third parties, with the exception of the winners’ information. This will passed to the giveaway organiser and used only for fulfilment of the prize, after which time Rachel’s Random Resources will delete the data. I am not responsible for despatch or delivery of the prize.
Win 3 x Stacks of 5 Inkspot Publishing books (UK Only)
