Sandy Hogarth is the acclaimed Indie author of The Glass Girl which Frost will be reviewing shortly. 

Breakfast and a beautiful day. Perfect for the Nidderdale Show – an arch temptress. I have a lot to do today. The Glass Girl must go off tonight. I will feel a little lost when Ruth, my protagonist, goes. She has a troubled life but she’s tough.

‘Say thank you to your sister for me were his words. So Ruth fled, first to Australia, then to the outback.

Sisters. I am fascinated by families; by their honesty, their brutality, their love. And fascinated also by only-ones, so I have made Ruth’s lover an only-one: gorgeous Daniel. Everything she is not.

Music and voices from the loudspeaker drift up the hill, scrambled. Enticing

I give in, cease checking my MS and hurry down the hill with Ruth still in my head. And her sister Alexis.

Cars are queuing. I Pay my £10 and walk through the ancient turnstile.

In the first judging arena I come to is a magnificent bull with curls behind his horns. I wonder if it will win.

I remind myself that I must not stay long.

I pass a pig that is bored or asleep. They say pigs are the most intelligent of animals.

My head is still with Ruth.  I especially loved writing the early part: Ruth’s time in the Australian desert.  I love the deserts there with their dunes of red dirt scattered with spinifex, and occasional wild camels.

I try not to laugh out loud when I see a cow receiving a final back-combing to the last 8 or 9 inches of its tail.

Some of the sheep waiting in pens are shivering. It’s a hot day so it must be fear.

One puts up its head to me to have her curls admired.

In the next tent, I find the winner of my ‘best hairdo competition’.

Odd, this fixation on hairdos. From one who often forgets to brush her own.

I’m hungry so I get fish and chips from a van. We are almost as far from the sea as it is possible to be but they taste great.

The sisters take over my head again. And the glass girl. An old man in the desert gives it to Ruth.

“an exquisite glass girl, a dancer, with straight back and proud posture. Her body is draped in a mid-calf-length pink dress, the folds caress her long legs and her feet are encased in delicate oyster pink ballet shoes, the ribbons winding round her slender ankles. Her dark hair is shoulder length, her face tranquil and her hazel eyes as fathomless as the ocean. A brittle beauty. He says that it carries the desert within itself.’

The Glass Girl calls. I walk/run back up the hill.

The Glass Girl is available here.