World Naked Gardening Day: Is the setting for Warning! Deep Water secretly another character in the book?

Today is release day today for Warning! Deep Water, my World Naked Gardening Day story! The World Naked Gardening Day authors are Holly Day, Nell Iris, K. L. Noone, Amy Spector and I. We have all written gay romance novella’s based around World Naked Gardening Day, which happens on the first Saturday in May. Which is today! They are all releasing today with JMS Books and you can read about each of them here.

Warning! Deep Water is a 16,300 word gay romance set in the UK in 1947. George and Peter are two shy, quiet men I really enjoyed writing. They have a supporting cast of characters I would have liked to have had more space to flesh out; but sixteen thousand words is sixteen thousand words, so I was only able to give glimpses of them.

What I was also able to give glimpses of was the story setting.

My story is set on a horticultural nursery inspired very strongly by the place I grew up. I think will come as no surprise to anyone who actually reads the story that I do think of it as a character in its own right.

I think that’s less to do with my writing craft than a huge glob of self-insertion. Is it self-insertion if you put a place in? It feels like it might be, in this case anyway!

Growing up, the nursery always felt like a living being, with its own heartbeat. It needed taking care of—our days were structured around its needs. Literally the same as a person…it needed warming or cooling, water and food.

We had stoke-holes and boilers that blew warm air into the greenhouses to heat them. In the summer we had to open and shut the roof-vents and the doors for optimal air-flow to stop plants dying of heat. We’d have to remember to put newspaper over the buckets of flowers waiting to be bunched and sold in the WW2-era Nissen Hut we used as a packing shed if it was particularly cold at night to avoid them being frosted. The big bore-hole pumped water up from deep underground through hundreds of feet of pipe. Sometimes that was applied directly to the plants with the big hosepipes. Sometimes it first went in to the tank, where plant food could be added before the little pump moved it on out to where it needed to be. We got regular donations of manure from local farmers that were spread on the fallow ground between crops and then rotovated or trodden in.

We could never go and do anything as a family without taking in to account what the nursery would need whilst we were away. Our family holidays were in the autumn because in the high summer everything in the three acres under glass needed watering every other day. If we went out on a day-trip, we’d have to be home at dusk to shut up the hens.

Did I resent the hell out of it as a child?

Yeah. I did. I really, really did.

But looking back as an adult, it really was a semi-idyllic childhood; and I hope that comes across in this story. I know we often look back at where and how we grew up and we forget things—either the bad things or the good things, I guess, depending on how we feel overall about our experience. I’ve pretty much let the resentment go (really, despite the preceding paragraphs!). I feel I was able to take the good things I remember; the smell of the fine red soil in the dry greenhouses; the rich, deep greens the water tank; the sense of nurturing and growth and seasonal renewal that were always there in the background and make them a part of who I am and how I approach my life.

So…yes. In this story, the setting is definitely another character. Perhaps the most important one. Certainly the one I feel closest to, however much I love Peter and George.

Read an Excerpt

“You didn’t say you liked music,” Peter said, as they were sitting across the table from each other over a cup of tea, once he’d finally pulled himself away from the instrument and reverentially closed the keyboard. 
“Well,” said Peter. “It didn’t come up, did it?” He paused. “Mother used to play a bit,” he said, eventually. “Not like that, though. Hymns, mostly. She was big on chapel.”
There was clearly a story there. 
“It’s nice to hear it played,” George went on. “Instruments should be used, not just sat there as part of the furniture. And…,” he paused again and blushed, “And you play very well.”
“Well,” said Peter shuffling with embarrassment. “I learned as a nipper and just carried on with it. Dad wanted me to go and study somewhere, but I wanted to get out and earn. It would have taken the joy out of it if I’d had to pass exams and such.”
George nodded. “I can see that. And you’re good with your hands.” He blushed again and became very absorbed with mashing the tiny amount of butter left from the ration into his baked potato. 
Peter coughed. “Well yes,” he said. He couldn’t help smiling a little at George, although he didn’t let him see. He forged on. He really didn’t want him to be uncomfortable. “I think mathematics and music sort of go together, you know? And I was always good with numbers as well…it’s a good trait in a joiner.”
George nodded, clearly feeling they were on less dangerous territory. “Yes,” he said. “There’s all sorts of things you can use maths for; but music is pretty rarefied, isn’t it?”
Peter nodded. “This way I get to keep the music and earn a living. There’s always work for a carpenter, like you said the other day.”
He gradually became less self-conscious about playing when George and Mrs Leland were in the house over the next few weeks. It made him feel like another piece of what made him a person was coming back to life. 
****
What it didn’t do was make him any less confused about what was happening between him and George. Half the time he thought George was completely uninterested. But then something would happen that would make him reconsider. The comment about being good with his hands was a case in point. It was a perfectly commonplace thing to say and George shouldn’t have been embarrassed. But he had been. Which meant he’d thought of it in a context that might cause embarrassment. 
Peter spent several very enjoyable hours spread over several evenings working through different variations of what the other man might have been thinking.
George was nobody’s Bogart. But he was decent-looking. Nice face, especially when he smiled. A bit soft round the middle, but otherwise hard muscled from the physical work he did day in, day out. Clever…did his own accounts. Liked music. Made Peter laugh with his dry commentary on things in the paper or local gossip and the social pickles the girls reported on in the break room. 
Peter liked him a lot. And fancied him. After the third night of considering at length how he could demonstrate how good with his hands he actually was, he gave up pretending. He fancied George a lot.