Books in 2021

[12th March 2021.. stop press... we're going to make two books this year, one described here, one inspired by the Scottish Highlands and Islands... more news on this soon!]

Little Peak is more of a micro than a small independent press. After last year’s successes with two new publications – Traceless by Geoff Cox and Heather Dawe and 22,000 Miles by Rich Siepp - we wanted to follow up in 2021 with another two books, one by an author new to Little Peak.

This was all set until January and the current lockdown. The combination of another slow down in book sales (all the wonderful independent bookshops that are so supportive having to close their doors) and the uncertainty of launching and promoting books during the pandemic and we’ve come to the conclusion it’s better to hunker down, develop a few projects further and wait a little while longer before turning them into books.

So instead of two books we are going to make one. Another two will hopefully follow in early 2022. This year's book will reflect the ways we have all been living very locally for most of the past twelve months. It’s also been brewing in my head for much of the last decade.

I live in Otley-in-Wharfedale, technically mid-Wharfedale, close to where the valley opens up more widely, twenty miles or so before the Wharfe meets its end and the River Ouse in the flatlands of the Vale of York. I’ve been here for just over twenty years now. During all this time, while I have often travelled the Lakes, the Scottish Highlands, the Peak District, North Wales and beyond, my main stomping grounds have been three places - Ilkley Moor, the Washburn Valley and, last but by no means least, the Otley Chevin.

I walk, run, cycle and climb in these places, lucky to have this playground on my doorstep. I see them in all kinds of weather, all year round and in many different types of light. These changing conditions affect what I notice around me, something that becomes more palpable when I stop and think about it, as well as paint some of the things I see.

The landscape of these three places differ between moorland, forest, reservoir and river. All close together and connected, their collective geology is gritstone, the rough sandstone that lies exposed as escarpments, old quarries, boulders, dry-stone-walls and weather-moulded formations in and around the South Pennines and West Yorkshire.

Altogether I have in mind three books - one for each of the Moor, the Washburn and the Chevin. Not really guidebooks, although you could likely use them as such. More memory-books, books of maps, paintings, and sketches of things I’ve seen when out and about, alongside my writing of them, their place, a little of their back-stories, how seeing them makes me feel and think.

The first book in this series and the one Little Peak will publish this year will be about the Chevin. I live at the foot of this forest park above Otley. The place that’s been my bolt-hole for longer than the last strange twelve months, more like the last twenty-five years. You can get so used to somewhere you take it for granted and I’ve been guilty of this over the years. Each day the time I spend on the Chevin fills me with a calm that carries me through, it’s the place where many of my creative ideas begin. A place full of nature and wildlife, with a terrain that varies from ancient woodland to heath and open moorland.

The book will be a collection of about 30 of my paintings and sketches, a few of which are shown here. Those I have done so far already show the ways the colours of the Chevin and its nature changes through the year.

Enforced or otherwise, I am really enjoying this focus on my local ground.