A Quick Catch Up

Apologies for the lack of blog posts recently, such a lot has been going on with several projects in the air at once. I will be back in the bloggersphere more frequently from now on. I hope you all had great summers and fabulous holidays.

Here’s a quick catch up on what I’ve been up to over the last couple of months.

I’m currently working through the second draft of a completed novel aimed at a young adult audience. If you like action adventure with a bit of thriller thrown in then I’d like to introduce you all to Ben Weir. In the first book in his adventures he finds himself caught up in the activities of MI9, they’re a bit like MI6 only better! Even more secret and they don’t have to work within the law, which gives a lot of scope for foiling and defeating some of the worst villains around. When this second draft has a bit more meat on it I’ll drop you some tasty morsels as to what Ben gets up to.

The thing I am really excited about is happening on the 1st November…I am desperate for the start gun to get me off my writing blocks for NaNoWriMo…never heard of it? Well, it stands for National Novel Writing Month and happens every November. I hope to write the first draft of book one in a science fantasy trilogy I’ve had in a planning stage for a couple of years. It will be so good to finally start this now that I have other projects completed and out of the way giving me space to devote to it. If you want to know more about NaNoWriMo then shoot over to their website www.nanowrimo.com - if you’re wanting a framework and a bit of deadline pressure for your next WIP then it could be for you.

My holiday this year was revisiting a couple of the fabulous Channel Islands in preparation for starting the fantasy trilogy. I’ve been many times to the various islands in the group. Walking through the beautiful differing landscapes the islands have to offer, plus their varied and interesting histories, inspired me to come up with the idea for the trilogy. I will reveal more as time goes on, plus lots of pictures. One of the absolute highlights was watching dolphins arcing out of the water as they swam alongside the small ferry from Guernsey to Sark…we were even lucky enough to see them again on the return journey!

On the crafting front, part of the autumn bounty for the market stall came in the form of quinces from my neighbour. I turned them into quince and cardamom jelly, which, even if I say so myself, is delicious. I also spent a day at the Knitting and Stitching Show at Alexandra Palace on 11^th October. After a few hours of wandering around my head was exploding with ideas, colours, yarns and fabrics. If you’re interested and haven’t been, I suggest you get yourself along to the next one. I’m already planning my visit to the show next March at Olympia in London. There are various shows at venues around the UK and Ireland so check out www.theknittingandstitchingshow.com for more information. I’ll end this crafty bit with a picture of some of the amazing textile art on show. This image of a Maasai village was actually a quilt where the textures of the various fabrics reflected the natural textures of the sand, tree bark, leaves etc.

Finally here’s an update on the World War 1 fiction book based on my great uncle Basil. If you remember from my previous blog posts I was writing a piece of fiction around the actual war diaries for his battalion. Well, I got into a bit a hole as I was trying to stay true to the diary entries, but as I got further into the book the events timeline wouldn’t fit easily into the story I had planned. We’re talking square pegs and round holes, and the more I tried to make the two fit, the more I wrote myself into a deeper and deeper hole. So, I put him away while I finished off other projects. I am in the process of picking apart what I have written (about three quarters of the first draft has been completed) and reworking both story and actual diary events so that I can crack on with him anew, probably in the New Year now. His story is too important to pass by.