weekend

We have our grandson staying for the weekend so there'll be no posting, and no wasting time on the computer. He's fourteen now so we're fortunate he still wants to visit. We must make the most of it.

Diets

There's not much happening in my life at the moment. I'm still waiting to hear from my editor and I'm still working on my talk. I'm also jotting down ideas for a new book.

I was looking through my bookcase earlier for a book on poetry - which I couldn't find, but I did spot these titles:

Foods that Harm and Foods that Heal
Colour Me Beautiful Make Up Book
How to Look and Feel Half Your Age
The F2 Diet
Inch LossPlan
The Waistline Plan
Slim & Healthy Recipes

What do you think they are telling me?

That they never did any good, that's what. I'm a stone heavier than I ever used to be, well, two actually if we go back to before children time.

The best diet book I've ever followed is one I bought in Australia called The CSIRO Total Wellbeing Diet. CSIRO stands for Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation. And it worked - till I stopped following it!

There are super recipes in this book. I made their butternut pumpkin/squash and coriander soup a couple of weeks ago - it is to die for.

So that's me cleansing my soul. Now where is the chocolate?

Happy mood

I shall go to bed tonight with a smile on my face and a song in my heart. I've been watching Mamma Mia! I've been toe-tapping along to all of the songs - though I've refrained from singing because because I am totally tone deaf and cannot sing in tune to save my life. My DH always makes fun of me whenever I try so I simply sang under my breath tonight. It's put me in a happy mood though - and who knows, I might hear from my editor tomorrow.

Review

I have a review for The Twelve Month Marriage Deal up on WeWriteRomance today if you want to go take a look. Meanwhile I'm playing the waiting game for my latest.

I have a lot of paperwork to catch up on and as I'm giving a talk at Kingswinford Library next month I'm working on that as well. I haven't given a talk for at least ten years so I'm feeling rather nervous about it.

ebook bundle

I'm blogging on WeWriteRomance today about Surrender To The Millionaire which is on sale now in the WeWriteRomanceSelectsPresents ebook bundle over at Harlequin or Amazon. Don't forget Kate Walker, Michelle Reid and Anne McAllister also have books in the bundle so it's going to be a great read.

I couldn't wait more than one day to read my book through and I was happy that it needed very little alteration. I'm about to press the send button now!!!

Withdrawal symptoms

I managed to go a whole day yesterday without turning my computer on. It was hard. I had withdrawal symptoms. Isn't it amazing how used to it you get? Even if it's not to read emails or blogs or the news, you just look stuff up all the time. I'm not into facebook or anything like that, it's something I'm totally resisting because I know that it would be something else to take up my precious writing time.

And talking about writing, I've finished my book!!! When I say finished I mean the first draft. I need to read through it now and tighten it up and make sure everything's as perfect as I can get it. I'm going to wait a few days before that though - well, one day at least - it's absolutely calling out to me to be read!

I've been polishing the house all morning and cleaning the bathroom and I have ironing to do, so at least it's something to keep my itchy fingers away from the keyboard. I am here now, I know, but my mind is made up. No book today. Not even a peep.

Happy reading everyone!

Compliments

I had the best compliment ever yesterday from a friend of mine who reads all of my books. After finishing The Twelve-Month Marriage Deal she said that for the first time ever she wanted the story to go on, she wanted to find out what happened in the future to my hero and heroine and their new family. Wasn’t that good?

Bread and Soup

I’ve been breadmaking today. And yesterday my DH made a lovely Butternut Squash soup. Anyone would think we were under siege! It is snowing outside but it’s not that bad, not here anyway, most of it had melted before this new lot, but a meal of homemade soup and bread was like a feast. How we enjoyed it. And there’s plenty for another day – or two!

I also have only 4000 words to write to finish the first draft of Zander & Kara’s story.

All in all I’m feeling pretty good.

Weather

For those of us who are still suffering adverse weather conditions I hope this photograph taken when we were in the Caribbean a couple of years ago might cheer you up.

It was the week before Christmas.

One of my Christmas presents was a load of books from Harlequin. Five boxes to be exact. The first time the postman tried to deliver them I was out. It was a Saturday morning. I had no idea then that they were books, simply that five parcels had been returned to the postal depot and would I book a new delivery date.

Since I have a son living in the US I thought it was from him. I thought how generous he was being. But no, it was Harlequin being generous. They were all foreign editions. Italian, French, French again, Brazilian, German, and German again. But not one copy of each, nor my usual two, but four of the German ones, three of the Brazilian, three of the one French and four of the other, and two of the Italian. Twenty books in all.

I thought you might like to see them!

I’m fast running out of space. I’ve no idea what I’m going to do with them all.

Sleep therapy

A few less words today - 2,300. But pretty good anyway by my standards. I'm almost at the end of my notes, though. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I get some inspiration while I'm in bed tonight in that half asleep state. The trouble is that sitting up to write my notes makes me wide awake and then I have trouble getting to sleep. I do have a voice recorder which my DH bought me some years ago, but I'm always afraid of waking him if I use it. Besides I'm old fashioned. There's something satisfactory about putting pen to paper.

Progress

It's been heaven getting back to work today, and even better still that I managed nearly 3000 words. As all of you who read my blog will know this is very good for me.

My main thinking time is in bed and over the holiday period I'd made a few notes scribbled in the dark. Fortunately legible! And this served me well. And I still know where I'm going. Not the whole story yet, but at least the next chapter. Which is number ten and I've done 37,000 words. It looks like I've passed the inevitable sagging middle!

We're out for a meal tonight with friends so I feel I deserve it. I might even have an extra glass of wine.

Happy New Year everyone!

It's all over

And the winner is…

Mary Ann Derbin

Congratulations Mary on winning my Christmas contest. I’ll be posting your prize soon.

So many people said that having their whole family together for Christmas was what they would like best. I expected when I posed the question of how you would like to spend Christmas if money was no object to elicit some fairytale responses. But no, tradition won. Which is as it should be. Thank you to everyone who entered and thank you to Mary for touching my heart.

I’m looking forward to Monday because I’m going back to work. Back to Zander and Kara who have been spending their time in Athens at his mother’s birthday party. I hope they didn’t get up to anything in my absence.

Happy New Year everyone.