At last, I have traction on my Puffball Project. Weeks, even months, have passed, not so much stalled, more a series of false starts. Whether it is best the tale is told in the first person or third person, as a dialogue rich narrative, or as a journal? Many questions to answer.

Yes. I am now embarked on a journal, a two part journal, wrapped around with a prologue and epilogue to deliver this Puffball tale.

After personal difficulties in his seemingly settled London life, Franklyn Thomalin is tasked with looking after a dilapidated Exmoor cottage, an unexpected inheritance of a brother and sister from an elderly aunt. The dog, Angus, comes with the cottage. After a hesitant start, Franklyn revels in his new life as a West Somerset woodsman, building an understanding with Angus as they explore the woodlands, the moors and the vestiges of Exmoor’s industrial past, the Victorian iron mine remains, that lie near the cottage. And who was the previous cottage owner who lived her eight decades in the cottage where she was born?

Then Franklyn discovers the puffball, not any old puffball; it spooks Angus and displays disturbing characteristics that lead Franklyn to Kyoto in Japan and in to nightmare.

Watch this space, sometime in 2017, for THE EXMOOR PUFFBALL JOURNAL.