Time Off

Time Off  (1982 Post 296)

Time Off is one of a series which began with Down River (Post 53) and continued with Winter-Spring Garden, Another Good Friend and All the Sea Between, and then had an offshoot with Peri. It was also related to The Magician's Box.No one can accuse me of not mining a good seam when I find one. Time Off took Rosemary Candy, the pen friend whose visit was the innocent cause of friction between sisters Amber and Kerry Dale in Down River, as the main character. As with many characters met outside their usual milieu, there wasn't much about Rosemary's home life in Down River, so I had a fairly blank canvas. Rosemary has lived with her widowed mother for most of her life, and Time Off deals with her discomfort when her mother marries a man with three children of his own, one of whom has managed to avoid meeting Rosemary right up until the wedding day. Unfortunately for Rosemary, her mother and new stepfather decide the best way of blending the children into one family is to send them to stay at the beach with the step-grandparents while they go off on honeymoon. Poor Rosemary finds herself pitchforked into an environment as uncongenial as it is stranger to her. These people play beach cricket, cards, and eat sandwiches with sand in them. Added to this, Rosemary doesn't like the beach in winter, finding it cold, uncomfortable and full of unwanted "go out and play" directives. She makes her escape, and goes to visit her friends from Down River. This, needless to say, doesn't go down well at all. There are bits and pieces in this book relating to personal experience. The youngest stepchild's voice is garnered from small children I met around that time, and Rosemary's discombobulation when faced with unfamiliar games and family rituals parallels mine. Fortunately, mine didn't come with a long-term commitment!

This book is very much of its time, as fiction was emerging from its comfortable holiday adventure mode into the socially-aware zone. Since I've always much preferred the former, this was an interesting exercise...

ABOUT THE BLOG

Sally is Sally Odgers; author, manuscript assessor, editor, anthologist and reader. She runs http://www.affordablemanuscriptassessments.com and Prints Charming Books. (Sally is me, by the way, and I am lots of other things too, but these are the relevant ones for now.)

The goal for 2017 is to write a post a day profiling the background behind one of my books; how it came to be written, what it's about, and any things of note that happened along the way. If you're an author, an aspiring author, a reader or just someone who enjoys windows into worlds, you might find this fun. The books are not in any special order, but will be assigned approximate dates, and pictures, where they exist. If you enjoyed a post, or want to ask about any of my books or my manuscript assessment service.