Photography

I love taking photos. I spend far too long when I'm out somewhere taking photos of things rather than actually paying attention to whatever else is going on.

I recently bought a lovely new DSLR camera too. A Sony A390K. It's brilliant.

 

The Barbarians' Key Progress!

Ok, so the goal of finishing The Barbarians' Key for my birthday has been missed. But, I'm now at 58 thousand words. I've written 8k in two months.


I kinda think that sounds okay. But then again, I completed the NaNo challenge of writing 50k in one month so... Probably not so good.

This manuscript is already longer than The Empress Graves and I think I'm about two thirds of the way through. This will probably end up being the longest book in the trilogy. It has so much more going on and a lot of the action takes place at two different parts of Aldenland. It's more complex too and I'm having to keep notes in my file so I know who's doing what, where, why and with who!

But, The Barbarians' Key will be finished this year. It will. :)

Behind the Shutters

Behind the Shutters is a collection of short stories by the very talented Jo Robertson. These stories are all set in suburbia and feature ghosts, demons, and strange occurrences. The stories are well written and genuinely creepy. My favourite is 'My Name is Graham Roper.'

I highly recommend this book! You can buy it from Amazon.

Writing The Barbarians' Key

I started my Power of Malinas trilogy when I was seventeen. The first two books, The Kingdom of Malinas and The Empress Graves, were finished within a couple of years of each other. Book one I polished up and published. Book two I re-wrote, adding some scenes and another storyline before publishing.

Book three... Book three is The Barbarians' Key. I started it, but only managed about sixteen chapters before I got distracted by, well, life I guess!

Several years later and I'm trying to finish writing this book, telling myself to work on it every day. It's far more complex than the first two books with more plot lines and 'grown up' characters. I'm determined to finish it. Once it's written, then comes the task of editing and re-writing!

I'm currently at 45000 words and think I'm about halfway through. My target date is May. My birthday.

We'll see...

HGE

Last weekend my dog, Beau, had to be rushed to the vets and put on a drip. He had HGE or haemorrhagic gastroenteritis.

Luckily, he's ok now but it was a pretty horrible thing to go through. If you have a dog which had bloody diarrhoea, take it to the vets straight away! Beau went in as soon as possible when we noticed something was wrong, and then again when it got worse. Luckily, the drip, a course of antibiotics, canikur paste, and some special food for intestinal problems sorted him out and in a couple of days he was back to his old self.


Now I'm trying to work out what's best to feed him on for his sensitive stomach! He loves meat but it's so expensive and a lot of it gives him the runs... not pleasant when you have a dog as hairy as Beau is... and the dried food he just won't eat.

I'm pondering tripe. Nobody should have to ponder tripe.

A lovely, lovely poem

This is about crane flies AKA flying daddy long legs - the most evil, scary creatures ever.

There’s a daddy in the window

With long and spindly legs

I don’t know if it’s living

I don’t know if it’s dead

I can’t go any closer

In case it is alive

I’ll just stand here and watch it

And wait until it dies

NaNoWriMo

So I decided to do the NaNoWriMo this year. And I won! It's pretty hard work, having to write 1667 words a day, especially when you have a puppy chewing on you. I fell behind a few times but managed to catch up.

I now know that I can and should be writing every day. When I finished on November the 30th I vowed to write every single day.

Do you know how much writing I've done since then?

None.