Bapton Books, Publishers

A Very Small Imprint for Sound, Solid Works.

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From MSP:

By God’s grace, am alive, though battered. Was hit yesterday PM by truck in crosswalk, where I had right of way by walk-signal AND as pedestrian. One wrist broken, nose ditto, knee buggered, &c. Shall be AFK for a bit. To see ortho this week.

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Christus Resurrexit, Alleluia!

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Compliments of the season:

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... and Happy Holidays.

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Not Dead Yet....

Happy Christmas.

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One last thing...

I noted, in publishing the latest Village Tale earlier this year,

and The Dead and the Quick,

that I proposed to defer further fiction publications until the 1914 book should be done and dusted.

Owing to Mr Pyle’s health, this is subject to change. There may be intervening drops of the next Village Tale, and of a new and rather different, fantasy, series.

All of this however depends upon my having my editor and business partner alive and well. That, in part, is up to you.

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Further to this year’s appeal...

Some of you shall recall that Mr Pyle had a heart attack and treble bypass in 2014. An appeal was launched shortly thereafter, through GFM; and in time petered out. It has since been discovered that that appeal was one of several which had become inactive because it was inadvertently not included when GoFundMe migrated to new servers. There is no way of knowing how many intended contributions were lost by this negligence, which was not MSP’s.

Within the past fortnight, one of Mr P’s grafts collapsed; he had another infarct, a swift angioplasty and a stent. It was in this context that GFM’s cock-up was discovered, and eventually corrected. Of course, the appeal in his behalf is now more urgent even than it had been; and so I implore you to send even a fiver his way now that he can receive such.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/wt8un-keep-msp-afloat

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The 2020 Christmas Appeal

Atheist; Jedi; Pagan … or like me a member, not of any organised religious denomination, but, rather, of the Church of England: no matter. This is the season of giving.

There are of course those charities which are always in our minds: The Samaritans, say. But if you are at all moved in this season to charitable alms, allow me to suggest some other worthy recipients, many with links to the scenes of the Village Tales.

Childhood cancer is a terrible thing, and I have supported Alexander’s Journey for some time. So is heart trouble terrible, and what befalls even Democrats such as my business partner under the US health system: for whom I urgently beg a few pence.

The West Midlands:

In Staffs, many want your aid: Home-Start Staffordshire Moorlands; the Pat Woods Home for Strays in Leek; the Beatrice Charity, which, when this cruel plague is over, shall again take special needs children and adults out upon the canals for a day; and the Leek & District Foodbank.

In Wolvo, I implore that you consider St George’s House; Include Me Too for the disabled young; The Way Youth Zone; and, in the West Midlands and everywhere, Age UK. Our OAPs are starved too often of human contact and of support in the best of times; lockdown is literally killing them by inches.

The local Spurgeons is there wherever children and families are in need. Farming and rural charities, too often overlooked, are essential, and specially so now: that notably includes RABI.

South West Wilts:

This pandemic mustn’t be allowed to cost us a generation of young musicians: the Cherubim Trust intend that it not do. There are many important charities in the duke’s West Wilts: Serve On, the rescuers; the responders of RE:ACT; the Burnbake Trust; the Gurkha Welfare Trust; and many more.

Westmorland:

In Mallerstang and Eden, and everywhere there’s need, there is Barnardo’s. Aid a child today. And save persons in danger: support the Kirkby Stephen Mountain Rescue Team and the North West Air Ambulance.

Honour the aged.

Someday, things shall be normal again: if we preserve them now. The Settle & Carlisle comes to mind. Meanwhile, we must aid and shelter the suffering, as Manna House does.

The West Riding:

If you wish to aid in Bradford & District, there is need and choice in profusion: Emmaus transforming the lives of the formerly homeless; the Bradford Soup Run feeding them; Bradford Night Stop aiding homeless and vulnerable youth....

The Marches:

And in Oswestry and Melverley and the Marches, with agriculture disjointed, heavy weather threatening, and floods ever likely, I beg that you aid the foodbank, and the Trussell Trust nationally.

When you have done your duty – even a fiver helps immensely – you shall, I hope, have a happy Christmas.

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The Dead and the Quick

Witches. Werewolves. Ghosts. Stories plus critical essays & writing tips for the genre, from George Knight, .@GMWWemyss, & .@Markham Shaw Pyle. Out now.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08M2B6P7Q

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08LZJXZXZ

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08M2B6P7Q

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08LZJXZXZ

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Hullo / Howdy. Remember us? We’ve announcements. [Listen up, y’all, there’s a right smart of news.]

Mr Pyle has spent more of the last two-three years in [US: in the] hospital than out of it, or recovering. That’s part of why this gazetting is a Belated Entry in parts. [Pro-tip from MSP: Saddlepals, try to have your gallbladder out before you have your triple bypass; doing it t’ other way ’round makes it all messier’n it has to be.]

He does, however, have a new individual blog. (A side-gig.) You might look at his review of Peter Maughan’s Batch Magna series: which, the partners are agreed, you ought to be reading. If you have anything you might like to see reviewed, let him know.

He also has (and shall soon have more) videos on writing you’d do well to watch. And Advice for the Quarantined Bored or Despairing, too.

In quite as happy news, George Knight has agreed to see what other ghost stories he can give us, for a much expanded edition of The Wreck of the Lodewijk.

And in further happy news, the newest instalment of the Village Tales series, Ordinary Time, is at last out:

at Amazon and on Kindle, now; at bookshops, soon; and at other online retailers shortly. Owing to length, it is divided into two volumes in print; the e-book is an omnibus edition.

Mr Wemyss notes, ‘The response to the publication announcement has already been kinder than I deserve. Then again, so was the brilliant Peter Maughan’s advance blurbage.’

The Omnibus Edition may be found here (Oz), here (the UK), here (the US), and so on.

Part One in print is here, and here, and so on. Part Two, here and here and All That.

Ordinary Time returns us to the Woolfonts & District, the Vale, the Downs, Beechbourne, and Chickmarsh … in the perplexities of 2017, with Brexit, the General Election, terror attacks, governmental idiocy, and all the deep continuities of the present to the past.

But of course, in the Woolfonts and their District, it is the permanent things which endure: births and baptisms, marriages, funerals, fêtes and the Feasts of the Church. Politics and parties pass; pigs and parishes, life and lambing, go on forever.

The duke is made tolerable when he marries Professor Lady Lacy. A murder, in Wolverhampton far, touches Canon Paddick. The great Dig goes on (and there’s a Most Unlikely Viking buried in the Rectory garden, too). ‘Everything is much older than we think.’

Archaeology, history, toponomastics, prosopography; the Village Concert; some quiet ducal intelligence work; the Wadhay Pig Show; sheep sales; comedies of manners; the Church Kalendar: ordinary times in the deep rhythm of England, in Wildest Wilts.... All our old friends are here: the Trulocks, Rose James, Betty Snook, Sir Tom Douty, Teddy-and-Edmond, Sher, the Hon. Gwen and The Breener, the Towers and the Burtts: and new arrivals, imminent.

And from shop to steam railway, Wolfdown House to (perhaps) the site of Venta Volibanorum, the ancient patterns, recognisable to the Durotriges, to Æðelstan, and to Victoria, persist; and, too, justice and peace prevail in the end, as they ever do. The calendar of the land and the Kalendar of the Church dance ceremoniously: all is older than it appears, and the Permanent Things persist.

For, as always in the villages and the countryside ’round, all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well: all things begin and end in Albion’s ancient Druid rocky shore, under the I AM of the oaks of Albion.

So: do come home to the Woolfonts.

Mr Wemyss notes. ‘In any event, I’m really quite pleased, to levels of near-chuffness (a village in Sutherland on the far side of the R Chuff: Far Chufness is on the near side from a non-Viking perspective), by everyone’s kindnesses, and hope all who read the book are equally pleased in turn.’

Finally, we are glad to say we’ll be finishing the 1914 book at last: and that we;ve cracked the problems, not to say, conundra, of Tisza, Hartwig / Strandman, and others. This shall intervene in the schedule; it shan’t put paid to more Village Tales, so long as Mr Wemyss is spared.

We trust all of you are doing well, and continue to do so.

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Grievous news

Good long innings or not.

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We’re not dead yet.

Happy Christmas.

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Resurrexit sicut dixit! Alleluia!

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As your Tenebrae:

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The Feast of Patrick

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Dydd Gŵyl Dewi Hapus.

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AmYisra'el Ḥai.