January Wildlife

It is still cold, dark and damp up here in the north. It doesn't get light until about 8.20am which doesn't inspire me to get up in the mornings. However, the sight of a flock of 30 Waxwings did light up the day for me recently.
These beautiful birds are exotically coloured like little parrots. In severe winters they fly over from the Russian tundra and Scandinavia to the UK looking for berries to eat.
We only get to see them every second or third winter so it's a real treat to find them. In flight they look like a flock of starlings but once they settle on a tree their head crests give them away.
Look for them now because by the end of February they've gone, not to be found until December if we're lucky or two or three years hence if we're not.

Frozen Heart - new My Weekly pocket novel out now

Just to let you know that my latest pocket novel 'Frozen Heart' is on sale now at newsagents and shops or directly from DC Thomson. The story is based on the ever popular Cinderella theme and of course has a very happy ending. I hope you enjoy it. Merry Xmas!

Wildlife Diary -December - The Robin

For December's Wildlife Diary I had to chose the Robin of course. The Robin symbolises Christmas and appears on Christmas cards in various jolly poses. These usually include a line of robins all sitting happily together on a wire or fence.

In real life this would never happen. Robins are fiercely territorial and will fight with incomers. Males and females look the same but it's the males who fight most. Although you think of your 'own garden robin' in actual fact our robins are partial migrants. So when you are chatting to your robin, it may or may not be the same one you saw last week!

New Book Release!!

I'm very excited. My book 'Wild For Love' will be released as an E-book by Astraea Press on Thursday 12th July.

If you'd like to purchase a copy, please go to www.astraeapress.com.

'Wild For Love' was originally a My Weekly Pocket Novel and is also available in some libraries as a Large Print book.

I think it's marvellous that at the click of a button, my book is available for download (or will be soon!) and can be enjoyed on PC or Kindle or other devices to be read at your leisure.

I hope very much that you enjoy it.

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.