Wishing You a Good Friday

Meeting the Easter Bunny

At last, Easter is here! Two weeks into the school vacation I feel like the bank holiday is the finish line and I’ve more or less survived. We still have five days before the children go back to school/nursery, but at least there are some family members around to share the small-child entertainment that has left me exhausted.

We have been blessed, though, this holiday, with gorgeous sunny days every day. The kids have been able to run free with me just providing conflict mediation, hugs, plasters, food, drinks, craft supplies, cautions, rules, reward stickers and the occasional trip out for variety. Yesterday we went to play on the new indoor equipment at our favourite Farm, followed by a visit to the Easter Bunny. It was a great day.

One thing I’ve noticed this holiday is that the children have remembered how to play together. With my daughter starting school last September, they seemed to separate, with the age difference much more noticeable. My daughter had less time for her brother, and they squabbled more than cooperated. It’s been wonderful (and terrifying) to see them back to conspiring against me. For example when they decided to empty the sandpit into the paddling pool and across the decking, then fill the sandpit with water from the hose, breaking about five family rules in the process. I didn’t care, I just prayed they wouldn’t draw my attention to it, leaving me no choice but to tell them off.

When my daughter did finally come in saying, “Look, Mummy!” all proud of the carnage, I actually said, “You’ve broken about five rules, which are they?” and after she’d sheepishly acknowledged them, I said, “no matter, I’ll pretend I didn’t see, so long as you tidy up.” Which of course they didn’t, but it took less time to sweep wet sand than it would have done telling them off and finding them something else to do!

Sand Carnage

Rules and consistency are all well and good, but sometimes you have to be flexible. It was also another classic case of different parenting priorities as, when I posted my dilemma to Facebook, expecting people to laugh (because of course I wouldn’t stop them playing nicely just because of a bit of mess) I had a range of responses leaving me feeling somewhere between a dragon for having rules in the first place and a lazy parent for choosing to ignore them!

Anyway, this was just a short note to say hello, I’m still alive, and wish you all a happy Easter weekend. The forecast here is actually for rain, making me feel bad for all the working people who have been looking forward to their four days of freedom. But hopefully they’ll stay in and read a book, as I have Dragon Wraiths on a freebie promotion all weekend. If by chance you haven’t read it, do go grab a copy! (I’m trying out a new GeoRiot link, which is meant to take you to the Amazon site for your country, so do tell me if it works/doesn’t work. And thank you to Sally Jenkins for the idea.)

TTFN.

Pressing the Parenting Buttons

Partners in Fun

Last week I took the children to Skegness to stay in a three-bed static caravan with my good friend and her two children (aged two and six). Despite starting the first day in pouring rain, with my daughter suffering her first tummy bug (north and south!) to boot, we had a fantastic week. The sun shone, the children played together brilliantly, the staff were friendly and, as it wasn’t yet in season, we pretty much had the place to ourselves.

What interested me most was how much I learned about parenting from co-habiting with anther family for a few days. It made me understand why we can often be so judgemental about other people’s parenting techniques. It’s all about personality, or touch-points, or whatever you want to call it.

For example, my kids are flash-in-the-pan tantrum throwers. They shout and sob, sometimes for ages but usually for less than five minutes. They don’t have to get their way, but they do have to feel they’ve got their point across. I’m (mostly) okay with it because I’m exactly the same. A quick shout, some tears, and it’s over. As long as they’re using their words and I know what’s wrong, I can cope.

My friend, though, hates histrionics. Her kids are sulkers and she confessed that she is too. She’s happy that they’ll come out in their own time and at least they aren’t being noisy. She doesn’t mind if dinner gets eaten, as long as they don’t make a huge fuss. I hate sulking, though, because I take all the blame on me. If I don’t know why someone’s unhappy I get frustrated, want to fix it, or assume it’s all my fault.

Playing pirates

So it was hard for us to share a space and parent in our own way. I’m sure I upset her when I snapped at her kid for covering my daughter’s best top in mud during one of his sulks, and she inadvertently made my daughter sad for saying she was making a fuss over a hurt ankle, when she’s used to getting sympathy.

No one is right and mostly we worked really well together. We had some great conversations late into the night. I loved holidaying with another adult who cooked and did dishes (unlike travelling with hubbie! Lol) Best of all, the children learned to cooperate and share a space together. They went to bed (albeit at 9pm) without a fuss. They remembered their manners and made new friends. And I learned to try and remember that what bugs me doesn’t necessarily bother someone else and vice versa. I’m not the world’s most tolerant person, but I’m trying!

Best of all, I learned to assess my parenting more objectively. Sulking is okay; sometimes kids need time to process and calm down. I also discovered that other parents aren’t judging you as often as you judge yourself. At one point I thought my friend was judging the fact that I let my son eat only rice for tea because I had no fight left to get veg in him. Afterwards she said she didn’t even notice!

Parenting: I make it harder than it needs to be! 🙂

Messages Sent and Received

Petronas Towers

Author Richard Wright set himself a challenge this year to write a story each week based on photographs sent in by his blog followers. I was lucky enough to have one of my pictures chosen, of the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur. Below is the story that Richard wrote, based on my photograph. Do stop by his blog and have a read, there are some great stories.

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The 52: Messages Sent And Received

Every Monday I’ll post a new short story here, based on an image somebody out there has sent me. Welcome to the 52. There’s been a bit of a hiatus around here, because of reasons, but we should be back to normal for the next couple of months at least. This week I’m collaborating with Amanda Martin for your reading pleasure. She sent a picture of the Petronas Twin Towers in Malaysia, which entirely by coincidence I was able to visit last month. They’re majestic in their own right, but it’s difficult in light of modern history to appreciate them in isolation.

Messages Sent And Received by Amanda Martin and Richard Wright

The Petronas Twin Towers are Malaysia’s modern jewel. Those who live in Kuala Lumpur and turn their eyes to the sky of a night draw comfort from their pale white glow, and are filled with strange pride that their city hosts the tallest twin towers the world has ever seen. Visitors fly in from across the globe just to gawp at them.

Kevin barely glances up as he returns to work that September evening. The smoggy, twisted streets are crowded, and he does not appreciate having to go back to the office for a late night conference call. While Tower One houses the behemoth that is the Petronas Group, Tower Two is rented out to a host of multinational companies, Kevin’s included. Life in Malaysia suits and fascinates him, with its heady layers of exoticism, technology, and squalor. The occasional requirement to touch base with his masters in the US is only cross he bears in grudging trade for the year long opportunity to work there at the company’s expense.

Walking up to the plaza on which the towers stand, he casts a glance skyward. No matter how often he sees them, the twin sentinels always impress him with their serene beauty. Were it not for the double decker skybridge shackling them to one another like conjoined twins, they would each seem like a vast syringe poised to vaccinate the clouds. From the top floors it is possible to see the stars, though from ground level that can be difficult to believe. The banks of pollution make the sky a flat void at this time of year.

In the absence of constellations, the towers define the sky. They are vast antennae, waiting to capture signals transmitted on a scale beyond human comprehension.

As ever, tourists surround the ghostly structures, craning their necks as they try to find ways to capture the whole edifice in a single snapshot. All nations mingle as one in the attempt, a ring of flesh around the towers that grows loose at the edges and bunches like tense muscle at the entrances to the bright shopping centre at the base of the structure. Security guards wander among the visitors, hunting out the pickpockets who float up from the city’s dark corners to prey on those made careless by wonder. With so many faces cast to the heavens, sly hands have open access to pockets and purses.

Kevin is crossing in front of the mall’s guarded doors at 20:30, weaving between shoppers and tourists, when his skin turns clammy and his pulse quickens. Claustrophobia plagued him as a young man, but he has not had a serious attack for five years or more, a period which not coincidentally matches the length of his relationship with Tasha almost exactly. He makes that link for the first time. They have not seen one another since her visit three months ago, and her absence is a dreadful ache. She is almost exactly half a world away, twelve hours behind him in New York, and will be arriving at her own workplace at that very moment.

Tasha is his soul mate. They are connected.

Closing his eyes, he fights the need to get out, find air, find space. It doesn’t work, and so he tries and fails to swallow it away. It will be better inside, he thinks. Away from the crush and din of the crowd he will feel calm.

The din has vanished, and when he opens his eyes and looks around at the crowd he realises that he is not alone in his strange trepidation. Everybody has fallen silent. Most are walking away from the building, an almost thoughtless drift that their expressions suggest they are not conscious of. They stare up at the towers. Allowing himself to look up too, he understands that it is not the towers that are so fascinating. It is the flat, dark sky and the thing that it conceals.

That there is a thing approaching, borne of nightmare, is something he believes to be true even though he does not know why.

Tasha stops him from backing away, putting space between those luminous towers and himself. It had occurred to him moments earlier that when he was finished with Head Office, he could call her at her desk and bid her good morning. Kevin loves Tasha a great deal, and it is that which makes him force his unwilling legs onwards to the staff entrance at Tower Two.

It is not a pleasant journey, nor an easy one. Every instinct he has wants him to run away. Logic tells him otherwise, for nothing is happening, nothing is wrong.

Logic is simply a means by which a person can be wrong with authority, but he lets it bully him into the building anyway.

Inside it is better. He has the open plan office on the sixty-first floor to himself, save for a solitary cleaner who cleans each surface with a slow precision borne of tiresome routine. Kevin has a desk beside the window, and stares out as his managers in New York drawl on about market share and next quarter predictions. While making reassuring noises at appropriate moments he watches the dancing fountains far below as they arc and spray in time to music he cannot hear. The coloured lights playing through the water are hypnotic, and make his eyelids heavy.

At 20:46 something vast fills his vision, even though it is not there. It has such weight and size that it gives the illusion of travelling very slowly, even as it rockets into the building.

Except it doesn’t, because it does not exist. A vast, encompassing roar does not deafen him.

Screaming, he throws himself to the floor, away from the window, and a blast of shattering glass and steel does not shred his face and clothes. He lifts his head, sure that tremors should be rocking the building, not understanding how everything can be so still. The telephone dangles on its cord over the edge of the desk, and he can hear tinny concern from his boss. Although he wants to pick up the phone and make some attempt at explanation, he cannot bring himself to step closer to the window. There is danger at the window, even though there isn’t.

The cleaner has gone. Kevin is alone. Easing across the carpet, as though the wrong step might cause something to implode, he makes his way towards the door.

He is terrified, hyperventilating, and does not know why.

At 21:02 Kevin pushes open the fire door and steps into the stairwell. For ten minutes he had stood by the elevator, willing himself to press the button to summon the car but unable to make himself do so. The lesson was too strongly ingrained. Elevators are to be avoided in an emergency.

There is no emergency. Nothing is wrong. He wants to go back to one of the offices and call Tasha, but the need to get out is stronger.

At 21:03, as he makes his tentative way down to the floor below, he feels the echo of an echo of a second collision. The building doesn’t move at all, but his body feels it anyway, as though somebody has pulled the stairs out from under him. Losing his feet, he topples backwards, landing painfully on his tailbone with a cry. Instead of standing, he huddles with his head in his hands, not knowing how to fight back the incomprehensible sensations wracking him.

For a few moments it is peaceful, and then something catches his throat. He coughs, which makes it worse. Now that he has started he cannot stop, and he hacks and splutters as phantom smoke fills his lungs. Although the temperature does not change at all, he begins to sweat.

With his eyes streaming, he makes his way back up the stairs on all fours like a parched man in a desert. Only when he reaches the corridor at the top and closes the door behind him does the burning cease.

Back in the office he huddles beneath Sayid’s desk, still too frightened to approach the windows and the sense of lethal void they represent. For the longest time he cowers, hugging his knees to his chest. The scale of what isn’t happening overwhelms him. There are no coping strategies to deploy, no defences to erect. It steamrolls over him.

For forty-five minutes he weeps, a swirl of regrets and longings. Tasha looms large over him, but when the taste of phantom smoke started to permeate the room, drying his throat and making him gag, it is not his lover that he calls.

Dragging the phone off the desk by its cord, he dials his mother like the frightened boy he has become. The call goes to the answering machine, and he babbles his love, and his regret, and tells her he is sorry even though he does not quite know what for.

Half a world away, she does not hear his muted voice in her hallway because she has the volume on the television up as she watches the world end.

Kevin stops talking when he can no longer breathe. The room is a blur seen through burning tears. He punches the underside of the desk as sweat drenches him, then claws at his throat and eyes as tiny choking noises spill from his lips. It is too much. It is unbearable.

Crawling out from under the desk, he staggers to his feet. The windows are dark patches, and he stumbles towards them, picking up speed, willing to die for just a touch of the cool Autumn air. He is on the sixty-first floor, but that has ceased to matter. He needs to get out. He needs to breathe.

He hits the window at a sprint, and if it had blown in earlier then he would plummet into the sky and drop like a rag doll, full of terror and regret and relief.

The windows did not blow in earlier, and he bounces back from the reinforced glass with a sick thud that drives stars through his mind.

It is 21:59, and he knows that the floor has dropped away, and there is rubble and crushing and hot death awaiting him.

It ends.

The floor is just the floor. There is a nauseous pounding across his forehead from where he hit the window, and the dull heat of his self-inflicted scratches on his neck and throat. When he raises his hands so he can see them he notes the blood beneath his fingernails.

But it has ended. Whatever it was, it is over. Nothing has happened. Nothing is wrong.

Weak, he drags himself to his feet. The room spins, but that is only because he has hit his head. Limping to his desk, he lowers himself into his chair, retrieves his dangling handset, and punches Tasha’s number. Shaken and in pain, he wants her voice to soothe him and make the world a solid place again.

There is no answer, but that is not possible. If she were not at her desk then the call should route to the switchboard. Instead he has nothing but an ominous single tone to listen to. Kevin squeals with need and high-pitched frustration, then hangs up and dials again. When he gets the same result, he tries again. Still nobody answers, his heart kicks up a little warning. Something is wrong. He is calling the World Trade Centre in New York City. It is 2001, and the switchboard is manned twenty-four hours. It is not possible that nobody is there to answer.

He tries over and again, but it will not be until many hours have passed that he realises he has already taken the last message Tasha had to send.

A rather blunt and to the point affair this week. I shall save subtlety for another time. If you enjoyed the story, please do tell your friends to come and read it too. Nobody will ever know it exists if you don’t.

This story, and the whole of The 52, is yours for free. Please enjoy it on that basis. If you want to support my writing and the publishers who’ve worked with me over the years, then consider buying a book. My latest novel is The Flesh Market, and is an excellent place to start. If short stories are your thing, why not take a look at my story ‘Skins’ in Nightscapes?

Why I Might Be a Paranoid Android

Marvin the Paranoid Android

I’ve come to realise that my depression might be because I’m like Marvin the Paranoid Android from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. A lot of my problems stem from having a super computer in my head that’s always on, always analysing. If it can’t analyse sales figures and response rates to predict market trends and consumer behaviour, or compare tender applications to choose suppliers, or negotiate partner meetings to produce joint marketing targets, then it will analyse being an author, wife and mother.

It will calculate how many portions of fruit and veg the children have eaten, or it will treat the husband like a business partner, detailing his reactions and responses as if there is a need to feed back to the Board. It will check book sales figures several times a day, as if month end charts make it necessary to keep up with the numbers, despite being able to tally up the amount of books downloaded on one hand (two on a good month).

Round and round the thoughts go with nothing to work on, like cattle chewing a field back to mud until it may never grow again. Writing gives an outlet for my creativity and, when I’m editing, it answers some of my need to analyse. But, oh my, I think I’ll never be happy unless I get a job and wear my brain out with productive thinking. Except I don’t want to get a management job again, because I wasn’t exactly happy when I had one.

In the meantime I’m walking the dog and simultaneously analysing the episode of NCIS I watched last night, tallying how much good food the kids have eaten this week (not much, although we did have a fantastic time in Skegness. More on that later), wondering if my SSRIs are finally settling, reminding myself to email the editors I contacted last week, making a mental note to text my friend about a playdate, and remembering I have to get my niece a gift for her fourth birthday next week. Oh, and writing this blog post in my phone. No wonder I’m restless and exhausted at the same time.

Maybe I’ll be better when the children’s homework is more taxing. A few quadratic equations to see if I recall any of my A Level maths. Perhaps I should buy some year 4 workbooks and get practising: judging by the curriculum evening we went to at our daughter’s school that tried to explain their new way to teach maths, I might need them!

Poem About Grief

I just have to share this powerful piece of writing

Ubiquitous. Quotidian.

Note: I want to share this thing with you. Not because it is finished but because it needs to be outside of me. It came to me very quickly. A few words a few days ago. A sentence last night. A phrase when I woke up this morning.

I ate my breakfast. I drank my coffee. I took my daughter to school.

It was waiting for me when I found my chair. It is better, I think, for it to be on the outside of me. What I mean to say is this: I wrote this, then went for a run with a friend and, when I came back to it, it seemed more beautiful than scary.

***

Grief is the subterranean monster that has been waiting with inexorable hunger since your childhood. She is the unseen creature lurking just beneath the surface, reaching up for you with her impossibly…

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All Quiet on the Blogging Front

Busy busy…

This is just a quick note to explain my silence on the blog recently and to say that normal service will hopefully resume in a week or two.

This week I’ve been concentrating on drafting my children’s book (working title George and the Arch, but that will change!) I’m around a third through, at 22,000 words, and have realised that writing a first draft uses ALL my energy and inspiration.

My daughter’s school teacher pointed out that there are only 11 full weeks of school left before the summer vacation, which means I have that much time to get George ready for the Chicken House competition AND get Class Act ready to publish (I haven’t even sourced an editor yet). Argh!

The reason for my silence over the next two weeks (more specifically the next four days) is that the children are on their Easter Holidays. In four hours the children and I will drive to Skegness to stay in a static caravan for the week with my good friend and her two children. I’m terrified. Please God don’t let it rain!

I’m looking forward to it too, but the idea of four days in a small box with four kids aged 2-6 does fill me with fear! Ear plugs and wine at the ready! 😉 I don’t even know if there will be internet…

So, enjoy the peace and quiet and I’ll hopefully have some new things to write about when I get back! Wish me luck.

Dragon Wraiths – Amanda Martin

A review of Dragon Wraiths 🙂

A book and tea

Format: E-book (Kindle)
Published: 24th February 2013
Publisher: 3AD Publishing
Pages: 341 pages

The Blurb
“My name is Leah. For a quarter of my life I have known the time and place of my death. I have spent the last four years running, from the truth, from the place. I can’t run from the time. It’s tomorrow.”

On Leah’s 12th birthday her parents are injured in a car crash. With her dying breath, Leah’s mother tells her she will join them when she turns 16. Which means Leah will die. That’s if the unseen enemies who murdered her parents don’t get her first. Leah seeks out Uncle Theo’s help to escape both the enemies and her prophesied fate. It seems a fool-proof plan, until she falls for Theo’s son Luke

Rating: 4/5

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How to Get Out of Writer’s Block

Designing plot: like trying to assemble a marble run

For me the most effective way through writer’s block is to become like my three-year-old and son ask questions. “Mummy, why?” is something he repeats ten times a minutes and, as infuriating as it is, it’s how he learns about the world around him. Most of my answers start with “I don’t know, maybe because…”, or, “Let’s google it”.

Working out what’s going on in a new novel is no different. The more questions you ask, the better the story gets. The harder you search for answers the further you get away from clichés and predictable plot lines. But when asking what happens next and why comes up with nothing, you can start questioning the characters instead. What are their motivations? What are they yearning for, even if they don’t know themselves? What are their greatest fears? What might happen to chuck them out their comfort zone.

Like many younger siblings, my protagonist George is looking for his own identity. He knows he isn’t smart like his sister or sporty and musical like his brother. He thinks his mum doesn’t love him, that he’s always useless. Only his dad understood him, and he vanished a year ago. The thing he likes to do most is kill aliens in his computer games. But he also likes to cook.

As the story progresses, George is discovering he’s fitter and smarter than he thinks he is, and his cooking ability is earning him respect. But, now that I’m at a dead end in the plot, I’ve been questioning him to see if he can help me work out what happens next. And he’s reminded me he loves computer games, which means he is observant and tactical. If the games he plays are like the Tomb Raider games I loved as a teenager, he has to work out puzzles and keep trying until something works. He must be tenacious and brave and good at lateral thinking.

So far his co-protagonist Merula has been leading them both and making the decisions. They are in her world and she has the answers. But he’s been challenging her thinking, questioning things she’s always believed in, and now they’re at an impasse. I think it’s time for George to come into his own and develop a clever strategy to take the action forward, using his game-playing skills.

Now if only I knew what games ten-year-old boys are playing these days I would feel on more solid ground. Any ideas?

Stuck and Sahara Dust

Under a dust cloud

I got stuck on my WIP today, despite flying along this week. Yesterday was a 6,000 word day – my first for a year or so I should think – and I managed 2,500 in 90 minutes this morning. And then stuck. Not from writer’s block but from world-building block.

I don’t have a particularly active imagination – a funny thing to admit for a writer. Or, I should say, I don’t have a world-building imagination. I can do characters and dialogue, but scene building is tougher. When I wrote Dragon Wraiths the details of the world and its history kept me puzzled for weeks. I would wander round the fields walking the dog trying to figure out how it all worked; what happened to the body, how did the mind transfer to Taycee and so on. I’m not entirely sure I figured it all out but, shhh, don’t tell anyone!

And now I’m having the same problems with my children’s book. The world is a mishmash of all the books I’ve read recently – not intentionally I hasten to add. I never set out to steal an idea – I’m a pantser, I very much make it up as I go. But when I review what I’ve written, I can see the influences coming through my subconsciousness. A world covered in cloud? That’ll come from The Curse of The Mistwraith (Janny Wurts). A world like ours but different, where the animals can speak? That’s The Divide (Elizabeth Kay). A missing father? That could be The Extincts (Veronica Cossanteli) or To Be A Cat (Matt Haig). A bunch of boys who mess around? That’s probably from Johnny and The Bomb (Terry Pratchett).

We live in the purple bit…

But now we get to the nitty gritty of my story – where my characters are themselves, not parodies or plagiarisms – and I’m stuck. Merula’s a fairy who goes through blending when she’s twelve (or younger, haven’t nailed down ages yet), but what is blending? And when she’s banished she visits the wild ones, but who the hell are they? A baddy called Vulpini has cast the spell to cover the sky in cloud, but whatever for? And why have all the parents disappeared and where are they?

I love pantsing – I write to find out what happens next (as my husband often says) – but sometimes the drive in the dark is along a nice straight road and sometimes you sense there are cliffs and chasms either side. It’s the same road but one is easy and the other terrifying, even though you’re equally blind.

I tried my usual trick of wandering round the field with the dog, asking and trying to answer questions, but we’re currently sitting under a cloud of Sahara dust and the view is as hazy as my mind. With eyes full of grit and a throat clogged with dust, I returned home defeated. Maybe there’s a reason I write Chick Lit. World building? Give me one that’s already made, please.

I Am A Writer

(Temporary) cover for hubbie’s book

Yesterday I took the day away from my latest WIP to do something I hoped would cheer up my husband: I published his children’s book, Max & Shady, on Smashwords. I spent the first three hours designing a cover for it, because (unfortunately) the one I did for him before used a photo I couldn’t find the rights to. Important note: if you grab an image for inspiration, make sure you know where it’s from. Unsurprisingly, hubbie preferred his original cover (I do, too) but at least this one is bought and paid for.

Then I dug out the word document I formatted for print as a present a few years ago (turning someone’s first draft into a readable document is quite a task!) I’m ashamed to say it was full of typos, despite it being me who proof-read it the last time.

The rest of the day was spent fixing the big stuff (formatting for Smashwords and inserting punctuation inside the quotation marks). By the time he got home from work (having had to hush the kids a few times to sort out the niggly formatting issues that always seem to crop up) the book was live.

It breaks all the rules. It’s a first draft so shouldn’t be anywhere near the light of day. It’s only been proofread quickly, mostly by Word rather than a human being. It’s probably full of inconsistenices and it certainly has pages of info-dump. No matter. It served it’s purpose. Hubbie smiled.

Two things came out of it that should give both me and hubbie a boost of confidence. Firstly, when I was researching covers and categories, I couldn’t find much in the way of space adventure in the middle grade market: that makes his book much more stand out than mine. So, if he ever finds the energy to write some more, on top of being the bread winner who is pounced on by two small children as soon as he walks in the door after work, there might be a new niche he can fill.

Secondly, I re-read my work-in-progress, after editing Max & Shady, and realised just how much I have learned about writing in the last two or three years. I can see my progress from what I would have written as a first draft (much as hubbie’s is – fun but flawed) to my current work: not perfect, but oh so much better. I got quite excited reading it and found it pleasurable rather than excruciating, as reading my own writing normally is (a bit like hearing your own voice on tape). I understand things like avoiding info-dump, developing a character arc, climax and lots of other useful / essential things, mostly from reading blogs on writing. All that staring at the iPad seems to have had an effect. Who knows, I might actually, finally, be able to consider myself a writer!

Now I just need to work out who the bad guy is in my children’s book, what the plot and storyline are, and I can get on and finish it. I might be a better writer now, but I’m still pants at planning!