Girl From Kritsa

For members of the Facebook group "A Good Greek Read" that I'm quite proud to have started a few years ago, I'd hazard a well-educated guess that the name Yvonne Payne is not going to be new. Yvonne is, of course, one of the four 'Admins" currently ensuring the smooth running of the page. Yvonne wrote her first novel, the epic and true tale of Kritsotopoula, a young girl whose heroics resulted in her going down in history as a heroine of the island of Crete, back in 2018, and its reception among readers has been very warm indeed, with 96% of its reviewers giving it four or five stars on its Amazon UK page.

Yvonne has since gone on to write a second novel, Rodanthe's Gift, plus a very good guide to Kritsa, her adopted home village on the island of Crete, which includes much more than simply information on what to find where. As its Amazon page says, "Explore Kritsa" is a book in which, "in an informal and lively style, Yvonne shares her month by month insights into Kritsa life and the local customs, food, history and culture. Yvonne also shares 15 of her favourite walks around the area, ranging from a gentle stroll to steep, uphill hikes.Whether your stay is a brief visit to the village, a holiday in the area, or you plan on making a home in Kritsa." ...this book will delight.

Thus, Yvonne well is qualified to be the next 'victim' in my occasional series of interviews with fellow writers on a Greek Theme. And so, I'm proud to produce what follows, an interview with fellow author and Grecophile, Yvonne Payne:

Where do you live?
Along with my husband, I spend my life between two small homes. One is an apartment in Swindon, Wiltshire in the UK, where we have easy access to family and walks in rolling green countryside.  The other, our favourite, is a house in the traditional hillside village of Kritsa on the island of Crete. 

Kritsa scene

Here we appreciate being part of the community and our walks are in rugged mountains and countryside, often with views of the sea. People say we’re lucky, but it took a lot of planning and compromise to achieve our preferred balance. Where we are lucky is to have the health to enjoy our chosen way of splitting the year. 

What do you write about?

I write historical fiction based around my village of Kritsa. Bear with me and I’ll explain how this came about… Kritsa has a famous heroine called Rodanthe. Back in the time of Ottoman oppression a local Turk ruler had her abducted from her home in cruel circumstances. Somehow Rodanthe killed the man and escaped to the mountains wearing his clothes where she joined a group of rebels led by Captain Kazanis. She maintained her disguise as a young man and fought alongside her fellow rebels in a huge 1823 battle just outside of Kritsa. Severe battle wounds led to the discovery of Rodanthe’s true identity. 

Rodanthe’s family home in Kritsa is close to my house and as local villagers still hold an annual memorial for their ‘Kritsotopoula’, meaning Girl of Kritsa, I soon learnt her story. As with many folktales, local people share the legend of Kritsotopoula via an epic poem. I set about researching the life and times of Rodanthe to write a leaflet for village tourists. Then two questions kept turning over in my mind: 1.  How did she maintain her disguise? 2. What equipped the daughter of a local priest to fight so bravely? When my research failed to find answers, my leaflet turned into a novel, "Kritsotopoula, Girl of Kritsa." 

This period in Cretan/Greek history was very turbulent and when I found out that Captain Kazanis, a key figure in my first book, had fought in the siege of Missolonghi on mainland Greece the result was my second novel, "Rodanthe’s Gift."

Now I’m hooked! My future novels will continue to have a basis of historical fact with the key action centred in Kritsa – I’ve discovered a wealth of information that will keep me busy for years. 

Oh, and I should mention that I’ve recently published a non-fiction book, "Explore Kritsa," featuring 15 local walks.

How long does it take you to write a book?
"Kritsotopoula, Girl of Kritsa" evolved over several years as it grew into a novel needing several rewrites as I learnt more. By the time I wrote "Rodanthe’s Gift" I had a much clearer idea of what I wanted to achieve so it only took two years. I completed "Explore Kritsa" in less than a year using accumulated knowledge and walking routes that we’ve been enjoying for over eighteen years. 

What do you enjoy most about writing?
As I write historical novels, the research is both essential and enjoyable. I strive to gain a good grasp of facts before weaving them into a story. This takes conversations, visiting sites, reading books and internet searches. I try to corroborate facts from at least two sources–then the inconsistencies and unanswered questions leave room for my imagination to take over. This phase can be fun for my husband too as it involves visits to new places, museums, walks to check feasible routes and, for "Rodanthe’s Gift," a holiday in Missolonghi, Greece. 

I also relish the second rewrite as this phase brings characters to life and I also add in details like smells and taste. 

How do you go about writing, that is to say, are you organised, do your research, disciplined, are you a messy sort who gets it done one way or another?
I guess you’d say messy as I flit about collecting a wide range of information as I never know what will be useful. 

Look at this photo of a painting that I took during a visit to the museum in Missolonghi as an example. 

Wikipedia informed me of a battle on a nearby island but this painting gave me a whole chapter for "Rodanthe’s Gift" and that couldn’t have happened without going to Missolonghi. My description of clothes worn by Lord Byron and a general are all taken from paintings in the museum. If I make it as real as possible for me then I think it adds to the reader’s experience too.

Where I am organised is in my use of a tool called Scrivener as it means I don’t have several notebooks on the go making it difficult to find information when required. It is as easy to use as Word but a quick click and drag alters the order or even which manuscript a piece is in. Once the draft is complete, it takes seconds to produce a Word document for editing. This allows me to have complete flexibility over how I store the information i.e. a screenshot of a webpage, photos, or a written scene between evolving characters that may or may not prove to be useful.  At present I’ve got three story outlines on my Scrivener. No matter how much research I do before I start I always need to look up specific pieces of information while writing. For example, when writing "Rodanthe’s Gift" I had to look up limb amputation techniques in the 1820s – very gory!

By the time I’m ready to get on with the writing I know the characters and plot so well that I can write at any opportunity, I don’t work office hours or need to sit at a desk. However, that’s not as mechanical as it sounds, as characters, who are of course real to me, can take me in unexpected directions. I remember my husband being bemused to find me in tears when a much-loved character in Kritsotopoula died unexpectedly in horrible circumstances.

Which other authors do you read?
I have always chosen action and adventure stories where the setting is a key part of the inspiration behind them – Wilbur Smith and Ken Follett are two that spring to mind. I’ve read several of the books by Nikos Kazantzakis and my favourites are Christ Recrucified (the setting for much of the 1957 film was in Kritsa) and Captain Michalis (known as Freedom or Death in the UK). A book that seems to have less notice than it deserves is Birds Without Wings by Louis de Bernières set in a small community in south-west Anatolia at the end of the Ottoman Empire. The Carpet Weaver of Uşak by Kathryn Gauci is another great read in the same era.

I read many of the books featured in your Facebook group, A Good Greek Read. I knew I’d like your recent wartime book, Panayiota as you based it on fact and took me to an era I knew less about. 

Apart from research, what do you enjoy most about the internet? 
I love how it makes the world a smaller place. As a child I had pen friends in Australia, France and Canada. A grown-up version of this is blogging and social media sites like Facebook. It is possible to develop friendships and gain insights to life all around the world from the comfort of your armchair. Some people spend time reading magazines and flick through until they find an article that interests them and I do the same with blogs about travel, cooking, writing, and lifestyles. I’ve been fortunate to meet up with several bloggers and, as we’ve already something in common, it makes the basis of a good friendship.


Favourite Greek dish?

Traditional cooking methods turn a few humble vegetables into a feast. This is great for me as I chose not to eat meat and I’ve yet to find vegetable dish I dislike. If pushed to choose a favourite, I’d say vegetarian moussaka made with green lentils and aubergines. As well as eating out, I enjoy shopping for seasonal produce in the weekly Agios Nikolaos farmer’s market to recreate tasty dishes myself.

The memorial to Rodanthe, which stands in the village of Kritsa today.

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So, there you have it, Yvonne Payne's answers to my questions, giving quite an insight to the background behind the two interconnected novels that she's written so far, and a definite hint that there will be more where they came from. If you want to explore Yvonne's writings further, here are a few live links:

Website - https://kritsayvonne.com/
Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Yvonne-Payne/e/B00TSBPYSK
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/kritsayvonne/

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For the next post I shall be returning to a photo-heavy travelogue about our continuing stay in Ierapetra, in Southern Crete, not much more than a stone's throw, in fact, from Kritsa.

Southern Cretan Scenes

Here are a few shots from around the Ierapetra district taken this past few days. Hope you like them...

This and the next four are taken in the tiny village of Kavousi (I keep calling it Karpouzi!). It's a village that's half-lived in and half deserted, but boasts what they claim is the oldest living olive tree in Crete, reputed to be over 3,200 years old. This photo is taken at the point where the inhabited part of the village has a stand-off with the old ruined part.

If walls could talk, eh?

We're staying with good friends in Ierapetra, which is one of our favourite towns in all of Greece. It has tourism, but on a small scale, quite different from Rhodes. It's in a largely agricultural area, so that tends to hold back too much development.

Here are some photos from in and around Ierapetra...

This is the beach at Gra Lygia, about seven km west of the town. The village is rather drab, and the road is lined mainly with businesses and agricultural traders' premises, but the beach is lovely and, as you can see, not particularly busy for August.

Our favourite stop for coffee in the town is the Veterano Bakery café. They do a homemade bougatsa that easily rivals the delicious one we usually succumb to at the Aktaion in Mandraki. Their Freddo espresso is brilliant too.

The 'promenade' in downtown Ierapetra is a delight to stroll along, lined as it is with cafés and restaurants, sandwiched in amongst which are a few tourists shops selling the usual stuff like plastic sandals, sunglasses and souvenirs. They're nowhere near packed with 'lobtser' bodies though.

The plateia in the tiny village of Episkopi.

This building is recently restored and stands beside an old mosque in a quiet square to the west end of town. Once again, it reminds one of parts of the Old Town in Rhodes, and, of course, of the many centuries of Ottoman occupation.

In amongst the low-key action along the town's sea front. You can't get much closer to the sea than this for a meal or a drink, can you?

There's this rather odd and weirdly unused harbour for small craft at the western limit of the town. It's been finished for quite a few years, yet has never yet been put to use. Except, that is, for this lonely chap. 

I'll post lots more yet, so I hope you'll come back for more.

I'll Just Sitia and Wait then...

Took the ferry boat from Rhodes to Crete on Sunday. At rather the last minute we changed our plans to visit our very close friends in the delightful town of Ierapatra. Just out of interest, Ierapetra holds the distinct position of being the most far south town in the whole of Europe.

Last time we went, we took the plane, and yes, OK, it is  much quicker, but if you have the time to go by boat (and we do these days) you get to see scenes like these en route from Rhodes Commercial Harbour to Sitia, eastern Crete...

1st Stop out of Rhodes is Halki, the 2nd is Diafani (above), toward the north of the island of Karpathos.

Diafani again.

After Diafani, next stop is Karpathos, the main town, which put me a little in mind of Kalymnos.

Karpathos detail.

After Karpathos, you stop in at Kasos, which, despite being a great deal smaller than its northern neighbour, nevertheless boasts a much grander quay for the ferries to tie up at. Karpathos has a population of just over six and a half thousand, whereas Kasos has a mere thousand or so.

The rest of the photos, below, aren't in any particular order...

The old ya ya centre shot, was waiting beside the pickup with what appeared to be her husband, here in conversation with someone else. When we'd tied up and dropped the ramp, the ya ya heaved a huge sack on to her shoulders from the pickup's flatbed and walked aboard to drop it on the ship's vehicle deck for delivery somewhere else.

The ya ya referred to above-plus-one can be seen half-way aboard, sack across her shoulder, negotiating her way among the vehicles that were disembarking. All the while her hubby remained manfully in conversation with his friend.

There's something deeply relaxing about standing on the rear deck as the ferry arrives at a quayside, swings itself around and drops the ramp for vehicles and foot-passengers to disembark or come aboard. To me, it's one of the earliest experiences of Greece I ever had, back in the 1970's, and I suppose that's why it makes me feel not only truly privileged to live here, but grateful to have the time to enjoy such experiences. Going from island to island is something one must do at some time, to truly enjoy what the Greek islands are all about.

Cheeky?

I know I've probably mentioned this before, but the news reports on Greek TV are rubbish. It doesn't really matter which channel you watch, all the terrestrial channels have hour-long bulletins. You could start watching the "News" at around 3.00pm and still be watching it at 11.00pm the same evening simply by flicking channels.

That's not what amazes me though. What I find myself remarking to my better half most times when we tune in, whether it be to Alpha, Ant1, Open Beyond, Skai, Star or the three ERT channels, is that the actual content of the news during the high summer is verging on the pornographic.

In the UK, despite morals being at an all-time low, all female TV presenters most obviously are told to 'dress-down' (There's no way most of them would even consider wearing some of the weird dresses, jackets and tops that they sit behind the desk or stand beside the Video screen wearing when on camera). Each TV station simply must have a 'wardrobe' dept. where the news readers and presenters probably have to go to change out of what they came to work wearing, into the awful, frumpy, disgusting-coloured stuff that they appear before the Great British Public wearing, and that's my immovable position on the subject.

Yet, here in Greece, even the newsreaders (the female ones) have no qualms about wearing figure-hugging garments that often display ample evidence of their cleavage, as they tell the nation about the events of the day. That's the thing, though, they actually don't tell us all that much about the events of the day. What they do is focus on the latest 'major' event here in Greece; like, for example, "There's a ferry strike planned for next Thursday", or "Forest fires rage in some-such place". If there's been a murder, or someone's disappeared while hiking on an island somewhere, or (more often) some corrupt politician's up before the beak - OK so that will be the main headline, which they'll talk about for fifteen minutes (at least), various pundits yelling at each other while they show a loop of fifteen seconds of video over, and over, and over, and over again.

Once they've exhausted the main story, and I use the word 'exhausted' advisedly, they'll move on to the fact that - wait for it - it's summer (NO!!!) and the weather here in Greece is rather hot (it IS?). Cue lots of video footage taken on beaches around the country, with the camera well and truly concentrating on thong-adorned bums and hankie-sized bikini tops. If you didn't know that it was a news bulletin, and you just switched the TV on, you'd dive for your toddlers to cover their eyes, or fumble with the remote in a desperate attempt to change the channel, only to arrive at another, whose news bulletin overlaps the one you stumbled across, and find that they also have only just discovered that there is a lot of flesh on display on the beaches all over the country. Well, knock me over with a wet fish.

The reporter, trying hard to make it sound of vital importance to the nation, will then be shoving his or her microphone up the noses of girls who look like they're taking a break from shooting the next front page of "Vogue" or "Cosmopolitan", while they lie prone on their sun loungers, and they'll ask things like, "So, how do you cope with the summer heat, then?"

Their answers will usually be highly intellectual replies like, "We come here to the beach. It's a good place for some cooler air, it's a great hang-out. We can go for a swim, it's nice." Queue more video of thongs in bum-cracks as some unwitting girls wade into the sea to cool off.

I'm not kidding folks, really. Now and again one or two of the channels, notably Ant1, will squeeze a kind of 'round-up' of world news in towards the end of the bulletin, usually a bunch of clips cadged from other TV channels from other countries showing a series of almost newsworthy events from places as diverse as Italy, Australia, the UK, the USA etc. This 'round-up' will last all of five minutes. Wow.

Looking around the world there's a lot of pretty vital stuff going on. Putin and Trump seem hell-bent on re-starting the arms race, China's about to get heavy in Hong Kong, climate change is bringing hellish conditions to de-stabilise the weather in country after country, North Korea's firing missiles like there's no tomorrow (there may well not be), mass shootings are almost a daily occurrence in the good old USA, but here in Greece? Well, it's summer, so wonder of wonders, there are lots of babes on the beach that can be surreptitiously filmed to titivate the male viewing public and bemuse the old ya yas of the country, whilst handily filling up the allotted sixty minutes of yet another overly-long news bulletin.

I'm really not kidding, if I had a Euro for every naked bum cheek that I've been subjected to on a Greek beach during a so-called TV 'news' bulletin during a typical Greek summer, then I'd truly be very wealthy indeed. It all kind of reminds me of the old Chris Rea song "Tennis." That song was much misunderstood, but, having heard Rea himself explain it, I can say with confidence that it's making the same kind of point that I'm trying to stress here. As Rea sang in the second verse:

"There are people in boats in the middle of the sea
Crying and dying like Jews
Do you like tennis?
Freedom is the man with the red grenade
She ran out of gas, got beat and raped
Do you like tennis?"

He says "Do you like tennis" to stress the point that (and, oddly enough I actually remember this incident) a rather attractive female tennis player, during her debut appearance at Wimbledon way back when, suddenly found that she had an itch in a region of her body that one would normally not want to draw attention to in public. Without thinking, she shoved her hand down her knickers and had a good scratch. That was all there was to it. Afterwards, she served and started the next rally. The result though, was that even though there was some pretty bad stuff going down in the world at the time, including Vietnamese 'boat-people' dying while trying to escape to another land by sea (plus ça change, eh?), the newspapers the following morning all chose to lead with stills of the unfortunate girl player with her hand down her pants on a show court at Wimbledon. Stuff the really tragic news, as he sang in the first verse...

"But the headline's on tennis

So it seems, everything's all right

There's a girl from the Midwest, with a pretty face

Scratched where it itched, they said it was a disgrace

"I don't wanna go to work today

Wanna stay at home and watch that girl play"

Do you like tennis?

Yes I do."

See, I get it to a degree. The Greek terrestrial TV channels are largely run on very low budgets. In fact one or two have recently gone to the wall, notably the channel "Mega." So they can't finance trips to all the various far-flung corners of the world for their reporters to send VT back from various world hotspots. They simply don't have the budget. So, my argument would be, why not shorten the flippin' news bulletins, instead of titivating the public with all this banal stuff about "people flocking to the beaches and islands because it's summer." I mean - hello!?

What do they fill the news bulletins with in winter I hear you asking? I'll tell you, almost every night there will be some earnest reporter or other talking 'live' from a fish market, or a fruit and veg market in downtown Athens, and they'll be making the price of onions sound like a global issue that's liable to bring down governments.

Of course, they don't actually have to fill the entire sixty minutes with 'news.' When it gets to around a quarter-to the hour they'll break for a full seven or eight minutes of ads, sometimes more, including quite often the same ads repeating three times during the same commercial break. Once you've put the kettle on, had a shower, done some gardening and solved third world debt, you can flop back down on to the sofa again to watch as the commercial break finally comes to an end, just in time for the presenter, who's evidently been waiting at his or her desk for all that time (probably reading War and Peace), to say "Goodnight, and thanks for watching."

Now, where's the sense in that, eh? Why don't they simply let the presenter sign off and then show the ads, when the programme's over? That would be far too logical. Instead the hapless anchor person has to sit there for what must seem like half a lifetime, simply to be able to say goodnight when the ads come to an end. In fact, I reckon a little advice from yours truly would improve the effectiveness of the ad breaks here in Greece anyway. I'm sure you know where I'm coming from on this. I mean, doesn't it stand to reason that if a commercial break is only two minutes long, then more viewers will sit through it (and thus see the ads), knowing that if they get up and go off then they're going to miss something (frequently quite a lot of human flesh in the case of the news) and thus they'll stay put. On the other hand, if a commercial break is known by the viewer to go on for upwards of eight to ten minutes, you can bet your sweet bottom dollar that no one's going to be watching, thus rendering all that advertising expenditure on the part of the advertisers a poor investment.

I've often watched a football match in a local café/bar here in Greece. Once half-time is reached, you won't see a couple of pundits talking about how the match has been so far for fifteen minutes, oh no. What you'll get is a full quarter of an hour of commercials, and so the barman will grab the remote and change channels. Everyone would rather see fifteen minutes of a truly awful soap, or maybe water polo, while they're waiting for the second half of the match to begin, than sit through ad after ad.

Maybe if they reduced sections of the news bulletins to fifteen minutes; you know, those extended reports from flesh-packed Greek beaches, and inserted them into the half-time break, at least people wouldn't want to switch channels.

I reckon some of these thong-clad beach-girls are missing a trick. If they got various logos tattooed onto their cheeks (the ones below the back and above the legs, not the ones each side of the nose, you understand), they could get paid handsomely for strutting down to the water's edge and taking a dip, all the while telling the viewing public (without words) which air-conditioning units to buy.

I should be in advertising.

Man About Town

Had to go to Rhodes this morning, so, as is our custom these days, we had to have a coffee with bougatsa at the Aktaion. Then a few errands. So, I just snapped these as we wandered about the place...

Zzzzzzzzzzzz...

Hello Peeps. I am still alive, just hiding indoors with the shutters tightly closed against the 38 degree heat we're having at the moment.

Meanwhile, here are a couple of mediocre shots from last night, when we did at least venture out after dark...

Sorry, uncharacteristically I moved my hand.

Anyone familiar with our part of Rhodes will know where these were taken. The first one approximately 20km from the 2nd two.

Talk soon, I'm going back to sleep!

Hidden Gems

Just a few more photos taken in Arhangelos recently. I've posted a few on the "Published Works" Facebook page back in June too. I think it's such a joy to wander away from the main thoroughfares. You end up seeing streets like these...

This was a clever illusion. The far wall is actually simply a boundary wall to the yard, but it creates the impression that it's a cottage. If you zoom in on the doorway, you can see light from the weed patch beyond coming through the crack between the doors.