CupCakes and Creativity

Sometimes it's good to take time away from writing. As authors we can get so wrapped up in our WIP that it's all we think about. But it can be refreshing not only for our health but also for our creativity and writing inspiration, to take time out to do something utterly different.

Today I attended a cupcake workshop where I learned to decorate cupcakes in a variety of ways. I had a lot of fun and feel better for it. It was good to do an activity which was not writing related and as a result of a day off, I am enthusiastic and ready to write tomorrow.

Also, I now have new experiences that perhaps I could use in my writing - one of my characters could be in the catering industry like the lady who took the class - twenty years in patisseries! Sounds blissful. I people-watched too - there were twelve of us at the class with an age range of 20 to 70 with different jobs and different aspirations from the class. Lots of potential for character development there.

If you want to try decorating cupcakes, it's a simple recipe - one block of butter to one box of icing sugar mixed with 2 egg yolks. Half of this can form your base layer, then colour up the other half and use in a piping bag with shape nozzles for fantastic effects!

Lucky 7 Meme

Hi - I've been tagged by Cara Cooper to take part in the 'Lucky 7 Meme' which is going around. What I have to do is go to my current WIP (work in progress)  page 77, go to line 7 and paste the 7 sentences there. So here goes:

She did, didn’t she? He was dashing and attractive and charming. He was attentive too. Okay, he’d disappointed her with his lukewarm view on the slums but perhaps she was expecting too much from him. Not everyone would be interested in it. Besides, Jack hadn’t seen what she had. She was being too hard on him.

It's a bit strange seeing it out of context. I had to use 'Avril's Letter' for this (soon to be published) because my current WIP is only 4 pages long! Yes, I've started pocket novel number 5 and am still freshly on Chapter One.

Taking a little chunk like this at least lets you see if you've got a variety of sentence lengths and structure.

Now I'm supposed to tag 7 others but first I need to start connecting to other people's blogs. I'm finding it a steep learning curve blogging and linking and commenting...back soon.

Getting Started

Welcome to my new blog. I know it looks a bit sparse right now but I hope as time goes by that I will be able to improve its looks!

You will see from my profile that I write pocket novels for the My Weekly collection. I have had four books published.

'Wild For Love' and 'Rescue my Heart' are now available as Large Print books from Ulverscroft - the Linford Romance series. Ask for them at your local library!!

Please look out for my next two pocket novels:

'Return to Barradale' comes out on May 30th 2012

'Avril's Letter' comes out on June 14th 2012 (possibly under a different title - I'll let you know).