Blog
September
Tuesday 1st September 2020
There was no August blog--I was deep in the process of editing Stealing Thunder, now available through Amazon. And now it's September. Ahh September. I’ve written about this before—how the first of September is my NEW YEAR. In the past, it might have been about starting a new year…
July
Friday 3rd July 2020
Stealing Thunder, my latest book, is finally finished and I’m halfway through the editing process. One would think with all this social distancing I should have written half a dozen books since we entered lockdown in the UK. In fact, you could make the point that self-isolation would be a writer’s dream and for many writers perhaps it is, but not for me. I have not been traveling since we went into the Covid 19 lockdown and it feels like my wings have been clipped. Most of the plots for my books have emerged while I was physically on the move. The plot for Winter Pursuit…
June
Wednesday 3rd June 2020
May was not a month I necessarily want to remember. There was a couple of highlights—my husband and I celebrated 20 years of marriage and our dog Abbey turned 6. But by the end of the month we had been under 10 weeks of lockdown, my godson had coronavirus and was in a hospital in Portland,…
May
Friday 1st May 2020
I started a journal when ‘lockdown’ began. I hope when I re-read it (if I do!) in ten or fifteen years this whole period feels like a hazy story—with highs and lows. I hope I remember the good things about this ‘lockdown’ period and take to heart the things I’ve learned. I have had moments of real joy—where a simple thing like bird song or talking with a grandchild is more than enough to lift your spirits. And I have had moments of deep anguish, when I hear the stories about and see the…
April
Thursday 2nd April 2020
In the far reaches of my mind—the part that files everything away for my writing—are constantly emerging plots, characters, locations. But no part of my imagination could have dreamt of a plot where a microscopic particle kills millions of people and brings most of the world to its knees. Not even James Bond in ‘Moonraker’ went this far. And yet here we are. 2020. We are all paying for the hubris of governments who thought pandemics were the stuff of bad dreams—they happen somewhere else, and should we have to we, can close the barn door after the horse has escaped and it…
March 2020
Sunday 1st March 2020
I didn’t write a blog for February. After receiving a lot of advice about this, I spent time advertising my books on Facebook for December—stepping WAY out of my comfort zone. When the ‘campaign’ was over I really felt I needed to pull back a bit. Please don’t get me wrong—I do want my books to be read, but the reality is I prefer ‘word of mouth’ to purchased advertising. I want to directly connect with my readers, and so I am back to a monthly blog. One of the things…
January 2020
Friday 3rd January 2020
Today is the first day I have had since the first of September when I didn’t have much of the day planned—when there wasn’t a list of ‘jobs’ that needed to be done straight away. This is not a complaint—I like having some structure to my life even if it is dictated by jobs I don’t like (cleaning, for instance). And this doesn’t mean there aren’t jobs that need doing. ‘Christmas’…
December 2019
Monday 2nd December 2019
As we near the winter solstice, the sun barely makes it over the top of our back hedge (okay, it’s a pretty tall hedge) before plunging out of site like a nightshade drawn down. And then it is pitch black out. More so in our village because—by virtue of public decree?—there are…
November
Saturday 2nd November 2019
I’m a day late, but I THINK I have a pretty good excuse. Yesterday, November 1, I finished the first edit of my new Breaking Camp Mystery, CAUTION TO THE WIND. I’m really, really happy with it and am especially fond of the ending. I wasn’t sure how it was going to end until it ended. And this brings me to this month’s blog. I have no idea how other writer’s work. Truth be told, I don’t…
October
Tuesday 1st October 2019
My husband and I have recently returned from a wonderful trip to the USA. We visited places I had been before—the Teton Mountains, Yellowstone National Park, Durango-Silverton Railway, Mesa Verde, Monument Valley, Flagstaff and finished in San Diego with a couple of days at Balboa Park and the Zoo. But these were all new sites to my British husband and it was a real pleasure showing him places I’ve visited and love. We did a lot of driving—endless miles through prairies with the promise of mountains in the distance, desert landscapes with cactus and rock, snow-capped peaks, forests, many thinned by fires, stunning waterfalls, and sparkling rivers. It was a magical time. I loved the driving, where the lack of…
September
Sunday 1st September 2019
It’s the first of September and as usual I find myself ‘seasonally stimulated’. When I was young, September was all about the excitement of going…
August
Thursday 1st August 2019
Who is this person? This is a question I kept asking myself as I worked my way through the thousand photos—printed and slides—that I was determined to digitize. Once I was finished with this project, there’d be no more lugging around the cumbersome weight of forty-plus photograph albums or boxes of slides (not to mention…
