haze on the hills

(and your last chance to pre-order)

I opened my window this morning and saw haze on the hills. After a hot, bright, dusty fortnight of train travel around Italy and the South of France, breeze was welcome on my bronzed skin. The hills beckoned me, whispering of misty mornings to come. I am never one to wish summer away, but I have seen purple blackberries ripening, I have noted the liquefying of the light. Late August is a time of beautiful transition, these shifting, drifting days between one month and the next. Soon, the haze tells me, it will be September and—if we are lucky—the fog will come back to us, as it did last year, and as it did two years ago, when I was deep in the writing of my then secret book:

September comes, and the fog suddenly returns, as my artist friend had told me it would. Opening my kitchen door one morning to feed the chickens – the touch of holiday sun lingering on my skin – I look up in the direction of the hill, but see only a mass of pale cloud. Without pausing even to boil the kettle for tea, I set off along the valley to the levee. Where the cyclists stood on my last visit is now just a blankness of sky, an absence of colour. Clematis vitalba climbs the wall beside the ramp, fronds in between flower and fluff. Alongside the path, a bank laden with plump blackberries, and two hawthorn bushes hang heavy with red. The damp air is deliciously cool on my face after weeks of dry summer heat. Stepping out onto the flatness of the levee, I see the river enfolded with soft fog – Sabrina’s veil has fallen and I can barely make out the far bank. The sky is heavy and uniformly grey, dropping down to the Severn, where the tide is out. In the distance someone stands beside the water – a tiny silhouette. I wonder if this enigmatic figure could be a fellow fog lover, but – like the Wanderer – they are inscrutable.

{This is an extract from Chasing Fog, which will be published by Simon & Schuster this Thursday, 29th August 2024}

 ‘eerie and evocative’ - Cal Flyn | ‘haunting and beautiful’ - Rebecca Schiller |

‘lushly sensuous’ -

Dr Sharon Blackie

| 'a beautiful adventure’ -

Alice Vincent

I appreciate your patience with all my recent talk of pre-orders! You probably know by now that a pre-order is the BEST way that you can support an author and make a genuine difference to the success of their book.

In many ways, today is the PERFECT time to pre-order. Chasing Fog is almost here… it will be published this Thursday 29th August… so if you pre-order today, you’ll have my deep gratitude for supporting my book AND you shouldn’t have to wait more than a couple of days to receive your copy!

If you’re outside the UK, Blackwells offer free international delivery.

There’s also a special Substack pre-order bonus that you can read about here.

I know that pre-ordering isn’t always an option but it would also be a huge help if you could request a copy of Chasing Fog from your local library or if you could share this post—I’d be so grateful if you would forward to any friends, family or colleagues who enjoy nature-writing or memoir, or who you think might like Chasing Fog.

Thank you so much for reading, and for being with me throughout Chasing Fog’s journey— I wrote this book for you.

Laura x