Sandy Hyatt-James's Blog

Here are some reviews of my latest novel
'The Birchman'

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars Class Distinctions - An Old Story Made New April 2, 2013
By Rarebird1
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While the story is one that is as old as time, Sandy Hyatt-James has found a way to make this story not only new and fresh but extremely relevant. She takes us on a journey into a future that is very possible if things in Britain continue on the path it has chosen.

A classic case of the "haves" the Larchmen feeling entitled and that they are just in their assessment of the world, and the "have-nots" the Birchpeople rising up to improve their lot.

Enter one, Maxine Dowling", she feels strongly in class separation, so much so that she has written papers expounding its virtues. Naturally when she is asked to go amongst the Birch's as a spy she leaps at the chance. This is where everything that she believes, her foundation, gets shaken to its core.

The Birchman is mesmerizing, you get sucked in and become so involved with the characters that you cheer with them, get outraged for them and cry when they hurt. This is a must read for everyone no matter their station in life. A story of Faith, Hope and Love
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5.0 out of 5 stars Classy - a book I won't forget March 30, 2013
By Jan Heart
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Where does one start with this book? There is so much to say about it. I started reading it because it was given to me, but within a few chapters I was mesmerized by it and in the following days there wasn't much else I could think of apart from this book. I found myself half of the time reading the book, and the other half thinking about it. It's a book that simply grabs your imagination. With such vivid descriptions of class division, you get so caught up in the plot that you almost become the characters.

It's about a society that is lead by the Larch people who feel they are superior to the Birch people. Maxine Dowling is a young woman who has been asked to spy on Marcus Langan, a birch who is planning rebellion. Despite her original intentions, Maxine begins to realize how unfair the world against the birch people is and at the same time how powerful her friendship towards Marcus is growing. They develop their relationship into love, but can they win when they have the world against them? What sacrifices must be made, and will they ultimately win or loose?

If I had to read another book again, it would Birchman. I whole-heartedly recommend anybody with a passion to read this book!
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5.0 out of 5 stars Revolution!!! March 27, 2013
By bertiejf
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Maxine Dowling has plans for her life. She has studied hard and written papers about the importance of class distinction and the necessity for the intelligent Larchmen to continue to be separated from the lower working class Birchmen. Someday, she hopes to go into politics.

Instead of politics, she is called to be a spy. Marcus Langan, known as The Birchman, is planning a revolution. The Birch people live in squalor, work in the warehouses, raise all of the food, and every job that the Larch People do not want to do. For very little pay, low education, poor clothing, and poor living conditions.

Maxine is determined to do her job well, knowing that the Birchman and his followers are wrong. Until she meets Marcus, Ruth, Glynis and the other Birch people that work on the farm she is assigned to. She begins to see the difference between the way the Birch people actually live, and the way that she has always been told that they live.

This is a story of class warfare, of love, of betrayal, and of courage. The Birchman is set in a time 150 years from now, and yet deals with issues that we find ourselves facing today in an entertaining and well thought out fashion. You find yourself commiserating with the characters, with their thoughts and feelings. You understand their decisions, and to some extent, can even empathize with the Larch people.

I enjoyed this book from the very first page.

I read recently that most women still love to read romance. However, the genre today has become much broader. Gone are the days when women devoured the Barbara Cartland model: virgins meeting alpha males, conflict and then uniting with a vow of marriage. Now it's more like sexually experienced woman meets man, they have sex quite early on and then go at it like rabbits for the rest of the novel.

Nobody wants to return to the pastel pink days of Ms Cartland and her counterparts because these stories had unrealistic plots and, usually, the characters were about as human as something from Madame Tussauds.

However, I don't like today's model either. First, there's nothing more boring to me than to have to plough through scene after scene of explicit sex. I'm an intelligent woman and intelligent women just want to get on with the bloody story, dammit! Second, knowing what the characters are doing behind closed doors takes away the reader's right to use her imagination. Had we women been exposed to what Rhett did to Scarlett, we would have forfeited the use of that delicious inner widget, (which we all have) and not figured out for ourselves how good it was.

In literature, the pen is the mighty medium of words, so it follows that the imagination has to be the medium of sexual pleasure. That is, of course, unless you're getting it for real!

So, The British Prime Minister has come out and said that multi-culturalism isn't working. From what I understand, his assertion is that in encouraging this, all we have done is polarize minority groups: calvanised their sense of separateness from the British identity, and encouraged rather than prevented, extremism.
As the title suggests, this is something which most of us have watched for the past thirty or so years, hardly daring to say anything, though, lest we be called - horror of horrors - racist.
Now, I respect other cultures and therefore, am not suggesting that those who worship differently, dress differently and speak differently should be made to give up their cultures. What I do hope happens, though, is that everybody in Britain adopts a sense on oneness, bourne out of a love for their country and respect for each other.

I finished my third novel, 'The Birchman' in October and have only just finished editing. After writing at least one hundred letters to agents, I'm hoping to get one to help me get it published. However, I'm not hopeful because agents these days rarely take a chance on an unknown writer.

While all this is going one, I felt bereft at having nothing to write and let my creative juices out onto. I always said I would change genre after writing three books in the Romance/Sci-Fi category, so I've started a detective novel. Thinking this would be much easier: a vehicle for filling in my time between putting Birchman out there and then editing it again at the behest of some publisher, or other, I'm shocked to discover how difficult it is to write in this way. It's easy to get the plot tangled up, for one thing, and then I have to be sure that the characters don't come over as cliches of every villan and goodguy in a 'whodunit'.

So, it's keeping me on my toes and I'm enjoying every moment of it. If this keeps up, I might even write another. We'll see.

I've chosen the above title because it was the first thing I thought of the other day, after receiving an e-mail from a firm who call themselves literary agents.
Let me explain. My third novel, 'The Birchman' is complete and I'm in the throes of trying to find and agent for it. After sending out around eighty e-mail inquiries, I got a reply, dripping with flattery, about the sample of the novel, which I'd sent. Being suspicious, because most agents don't give flattery, I checked my list again, and discovered that this firm wanted a fee up front, from their potential clients. I wrote a polite note back to say that I'd submitted my work to them in error, which I had.
In my opinion, agents who prey on unknown authors' desperation to get published, are unscrupulous and shoddy. It's bad enough that they take advantage of people but also, they're actually telling some pretty bad writers that they are publishable, just to get their fees. The hopeful writer then goes on a deluded high for the next few months, until realising that their friendly agent hasn't and never intended to place their book with a mainstream publisher. If they do go as far as submitting the manuscript, the publisher, knowing them to be a rip-off firm, won't entertain them, since they know they handle some badly-written work.
No wonder agents like this have been likened to sharks swimming in a pool of unsuspecting people.

What is it about some human beings, that sees them without a shred of self-awareness? The social work professions doesn't usually attract such people. However, there is always the exception. This lady, let's call her Pauline, was a middle-aged, experienced social worker. You would have thought, therefore, that she would be someone to whom an inexperienced professional, such as myself, could go to to receive advice. Not a bit of it.
I hadn't been in my new job long before I realised that Pauline had zilch people skills and a propensity to talk several decibels above everyone else. Her actions ranged from demanding you speak to her, even when on the phone, butting in on conversations and hijacking meetings with her considerable, but no less annoying, verbal skills.
A memo came round one day stating that people weren't switching off the overhead lights above their desks, before leaving the office. For some reason, which defeated me and everyone else in the team, Pauline decided she should be the self-appointed, Light Monitor in our office.
Now, being a busy person, as I was, the last thing I used to think about before flying off here and there was my desk light. Pauline reminded me several times to switch it off. When I remembered, I complied. When I didn't, however, she got more and more prickly.
Her prickliness grew and grew until one morning, I got to my desk and reached up to pull my light-string, (to engage the light) only to find that Pauline had tied it in a bow too far to me to reach. I had to stand on my desk to unravel it.
"Let that be a lesson, to you," Pauline said, with a self-satisfied expression.
This carried on and on until I got fed-up and decided to take action.
The following morning, I got in early; much earlier than Pauline. I took out the scissors from my desk, stood on Pauline's and cut her light string off as far as I could reach. When she came in, and saw what had happened, I could feel her eyes, like flick-knives, sticking into my back. Without proof, however, she knew she could do nothing.
I can't begin to tell you how satisfied I felt, when hearing her get on the phone to the caretaker, and tell him she had no way of putting her desk light on!

I must have a streak of masochism in me because I'm trying to find and agent. I tried getting one for my previous two novels, but nobody was interested. (For those who don't know, getting an agent is as difficult as discovering oil in your back garden). Still, I thought I'd have to go through the rounds of rejection all over again, otherwise I just wouldn't forgive myself for not trying.
After cutting my teeth on my last two novels, I know that novel three, called 'The Birchman', is pretty damned good enough to be published by one of the big publishing houses. For that, though, I will need an agent.
As if endorsing my positive slant on 'The Birchman' a London agent got back to me this week to say, and I quote, "This isn't for us. However, we found the storyline intriguing. It's also clear that you are a competent writer." Okay, so it was still a rejection, but at least it wasn't a stock letter of refusal - wow, an agent actually took the time to write a personal - no. Strangely, I found that encouraging.

When I was a total greenhorn social worker, I was allocated the case of a fourteen year-old boy who was in foster care. His mother had got herself into some strange company which she refused to give up; paedophiles among them, so there had been no other recourse than putting him care. Simon was quiet-natured and not the usual steet-wise young man that frequented the streets.
Before I go any further, I should inform you that foster carers in England are in short supply. Good foster carers are even rarer. Simon, unfortunately was saddled with one of the jaded sort. Let's call her Marion. Marion had been a foster carer since the invention of electricity and didn't really care about anything other than the money she got from giving the children a home. She also had health problems, and didn't have the energy to manage any child, let alone a teenage boy.
On our second meeting, Simon told me in confidence, that he didn't like living with Marion, because she was always niggling at him. "Do this, do that," he said, "And, she doesn't give me any privacy."
"In what way?" I asked.
"She goes through all my things when I'm at school. I know because I always find them messed up and not where I put them."
Being worried about the lack of privacy, I did the unforgivable, (as I found out later), and spoke directly to the foster carer about it. Marion didn't display her anger to my face, but by the time I'd got back to the office, I was met with her Link Worker (a Family Placement social worker working as an advocate for a foster carer), who told me that Marion had been on the phone, incandescent with rage at my having the gall to challenge her. The Link Worker, let's call her Sophie, another jaded person, told me in a haughty way that it wasn't my place to take up a problem with a foster carer, it was hers.
I apologised and asked whether she was have a word with Marion, and could she remind her that a certain amount of privacy is a fundamental right for anybody, especially a teenager in a maelstrom of hormones. The underlying message from Sophie's response was that we must tread warily around foster carers, lest we upset them. My efforts to get her to see the matter from Simon's perspective, came to naught.
The upshot was that Sophie reported me to my line manger, for being so argumentative and I had to explain the whole thing to him, ad nauseum. He, as many social work managers did then, sat on the fence.
When I next visited Simon, I told him he should try not to leave anything around in his bedroom that was deeply personal to him. He said he would carry his photos of his mother and other family members around in his school bag, since Marion always went through his things when he was at school. I also suggested he should try and make things up with Marion, because it was horrible for him to have to live there and not get on with her. "If you don't want to face her, why don't you leave a little note behind," I said, "before you go to school tomorrow." He said he would.
The following day, Sophie burst into my office to tell me she'd just had phone-call from Marion. "Why What's happened?"
"Simon left her a note before going to school this morning."
Feeling pleased that he'd taken my advice, I said, "What's wrong with that?"
"The note read - 'Nosey Cow'"
Now, I'm not the best person at holding back laughter and my gaffaws, I was told later, echoed out of the door and right down the corridor. When finally composed, I asked where the note was placed.
"She said she found it under his matress."
"I rest my case," was my reply.

I've been whittling away to myself all week about a glitch in my new novel. The writers among us will know how annoying it is when we've put something in the plot that stiches ourselves up well and truly. I though I might have to delete loads of text and re-write, until I had a 'eureka' moment this morning. Oh how sweet is to know now what I'm going to do! My new novel, by the way, is a Futuristic Romance.

Now, for something entirely different. (This is a Mish-Mash blog after all), I thought I'd talk about one of my most embarrassing moments. It was when I was a social worker and had to visit Peterborough court for Care proceedings.
I got to the court harried and hot, because I couldn't find the place, and threw my stuff down in the Advocate's lounge.
My case had been delayed, as luck would have it, so I sat down to relax. Next to me was a smallish man, with greying hair. Thinking he was a solicitor on another case, I struck up a conversation about how I'd never been to Peterborough before and that I'd heard the judge on my case wasn't very good, because he never read the papers. In a disgruntled tone I said he couldn't possibly give an informed opinion as to the rights or wrongs, without doing something as basic as that. The man seemed pleasant but strangely, non-committal. Thinking that he was bored with the conversation, I ended it but not befofe calling the judge a total plonker.
An hour later, we were called into the courtroom, asked to stand to greet the judge and - who should walk in but the man the little grey-haired man. He was the judge.

If anybody else has some embarrassing moments to share, I'd love to read them.

So cholera has broken out in Haiti. Why, because ten months after the deadly earthquake, people are still living in squalid refugee camps in the Arbonite Valley, forced to drink, wash and irrigate crops from one river.
I'm not going to run on about rich countries turning a blind eye to this, knowing full well that Cholera, a water-based bacterial infection, is a swift, vicious killer. I'm not even going to write that corruption being at the core of the country's leadership is why Haitians, even before the earthquake, lived like rats. However, I am going to write that, as a race of people, we have markedly poor judgement, when seeing fit to give a footballer a six figure salary per week, while people in a far off land are living in a makeshift hell. What are we thinking of: that we can do that when dehydrated children are rolling their eyes into the backs of their heads and dying from the pain of this horrible disease!
Why, I wonder, does humanity value some so highly, while being ready to neglect those who need - only basic resources. Some might argue that we did our bit. Rich countries went into Haiti after the quake and threw a few million into helping put things right, that's true. However, if we put our honest hats on, we know this action was superficial - implemented only to satisfy others that we wanted to help. If not that, then I ask: why did we pack up and light out, knowing the most essential element necessary for human survival, clean water, was in jeopardy because of overcrowding.
Arguing that such action was an oversight on our part won't do either. Aid and health workers, must have warned that a cholera outbreak would happen. Indeed, anybody with a brain could predict that a few thousand people, clogged into one place with nowhere to place their waste, was as threatening as an activated incendiary device.
Now trucks are driving through the camps' miserable thoroughfares, intermittently throwing water at the crowd and watching them fight for it. Pitiful for the people it is, but it's lamentable to the power of ten for those who could have prevented this par-boiled damage limitation.
Ironically, in the same week, we gave a disgusting amount of money to one man, who just happens to be good at kicking a ball into a net.
Cholera in Haiti needn't have happened - we know that. We could have built more camps, and ensured that these had proper waste disposal facilities. Then refugees could have lived to a manageable level. As for the cost, to those countries who cared only about their money being poured into the place, I say that foresight and good planning costs very little.
As a member of the human race, I'm ashamed that this has happened, and I hope those in power take a look at themselves as well. Right now, they should, at the very least, be balking with embarrassment at their, continuously turned on, fountain of power and plenty, while imagining the unimaginable suffering elsewhere.
As always, I'd love to have the opinions of other people.