« The Backstory: How to Breed Sheep, Geese and English Eccentrics by Valerie Poore »
I first met Val in 2005, when a small group of writers and artists developed into an online creative community after following Pete Townshend’s blog novella, ‘The Boy Who Heard Music.’ She went on to publish two memoirs: African Ways, based on her time in South Africa in the 1980s, and Watery Ways, which chronicled her move to the Netherlands and life on a barge in a historic harbour. She has also published The Skipper’s Child, a novel which appeals to both young and old. Her latest project is How to Breed Sheep, Geese and English Eccentrics, which is her second novel. Like all her work, it is based on her real-life experiences. Let’s have Val tell you how this quirky and amusing work of fiction came to be.
Val: How to Breed Sheep, Geese and English Eccentrics. What on earth is this book? Well it’s fiction for one thing and it isn’t about to teach anyone anything really. Some time ago I read a wonderful book that suggested it was about maintaining Ukrainian tractors. I forget what it was called now, but when I read it I was delighted to find it was a novel about a family and the only connection to tractors was through the rather individual elderly father who was writing a book on tractor maintenance (I think). Anyhow, it really inspired me to give my book a ‘How to’ title, so there it is. I think it’s quite catching, but then I would, wouldn’t I?
The book itself is intended to be humorous, as I’m sure the cover will suggest. I hope it’s funny, anyway! In simple terms it’s what the blurb says it is, a story about a girl trying to help her mother hang on to her large and impractical country house by doing the self-sufficiency thing, but behind the fictional story is a lot of factual experience.
I grew up in both London and Dorset in England, and I did try my hand at self-sufficiency for a couple of years. It was a lot of fun and I just loved the animals, but I wasn’t very good at it. My sheep kept escaping and I really did have to go off and fetch them in my old VW Beetle. I looked after people’s horses, kept geese and chickens as well as a calf called Blathers because he mooed so much, and a couple of pigs that I was terrified of. The last two don’t come into the book. I don’t know why. I suppose I just didn’t get round to them. We also grew vegetables and generally did the sort of going back to nature lifestyle. Then I went off to South Africa for twenty years and learnt to be even more self-sufficient on a farm there.
That said, I will never forget all the experiences I had on the smallholding in Dorset. Some of them were so hilarious that when I started writing seriously, I knew that one day I would weave these experiences into a novel. My characters are completely fictional as is the plot, but the setting is largely real and the events concerning the animals are all based on truth. The opening incident that begins the book is also true. I really did come home one day and find my car cut in half, but I won’t say any more about it here or that might just spoil the story.
It’s the kind of life I would love to have again. If I could no longer live on the water, it would be the next choice. Writing and reading my book has helped bring it all back to me, so who knows? If I can make enough from writing, I’ll give it all up (my day job that is) to buy a small farm on the banks of a river so I can moor my boat there as well. Nothing like having your cake and eating it too, is there?
How to Breed Sheep, Geese and English Eccentrics: Amazon | iBooks | Lulu
For information on all my books, including my memoirs about living in Africa and on a barge in Rotterdam, have a look at my author pages on Amazon.com and Lulu.com:
Visit Val’s blog for more information in her own words. Follow her on Twitter or Facebook. You can find out about all of her books, including her memoirs about living in Africa and on a barge in Rotterdam on her Amazon author page and her Lulu spotlight.
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Reader Comments (4)
Thank you so much for inviting me to tell my backstory here, Anne Marie. It's a lovely opportunity to tell people what inspired the story.
Lovely to hear the back story to your book.I'm reading it at the moment and as you know I really wondered if a lot of it was true and I know the animal stories were and that makes the story more appealing to me. You really are a hoot Val!
Anne, thanks so much for coming by here! It's been great fun to do this as I think there are a few people who've wondered how much of the story was true.I only wish even more of it was! I'd love to have had a Ma like Ma :-)
You're very welcome, Val! I love hearing the backstories to people's work.