I grew up surrounded by trees, and I loved them, and I miss them now that I live somewhere different.
But I’ve discovered that focusing on what we’ve lost sometimes blinds us to the flipside… the good thing that might follow in the wake of the loss. (more…)
Continue Reading...
Yes, I know I look awful, but at the moment this photo is taken I’ve been up all night with a nervous, labouring dog. And I have a handful of Adorable, so look at that instead. 
OK, now I know I’m supposed to blog Something Meaningful, but I have Puppy Brain after nearly six weeks of assisting my mother’s border collie with her first litter.
I have had about 45 minutes sleep since October.
And so I’m going to post some gratuitous puppy photos instead.
This makes this story a bit of fluff. Literally.
We have sleeping puppy photos, eating puppy photos, even cute-pink-puppy-toe photos!
Actually, maybe we’ll call it a Photo Essay. Does that make it sound more Serious?
Here we go. Get your “Awwwww” ready. Continue Reading…
I’ve been invited to take part in a “blog tag” called The Next Big Thing. This means I write about my upcoming novel POISON BAY this week, answering a set of questions. At the end of this post, I will also “tag” several other writers who will write about their own books.
One of these things is not like the other...
Are you a dog person or a cat person? Or maybe you favour horses, canaries or gerbils?
Heck, I like the lot of them.
I have to admit that even snakes can be quite beautiful, when they are not anywhere near me or biting my dog.
But what has this got to do with the expectations we place on people and organisations and things?
Well, sit right down and let me tell you a story… Continue Reading…
Iconic mountain with un-iconic writer in foreground
Have you ever soldiered on with something because you started it and you were determined to finish it, even though it ended up giving you little pleasure and the final outcome wasn’t really what you wanted? I certainly have. I’m persistent to a fault. But I learned something while hiking up a beautiful mountain, and it might help you too, so here we go. Continue Reading…
So, I haven’t blogged since October. I have been in the grip of Blog Paralysis, and I’ve finally diagnosed the cause: Multiple Topic Disorder (MTD). My blog didn’t know what it wanted to be when it grew up. Like a lot of youngsters, it dabbled in a few things, took a ‘gap year’, and is finally starting to figure out what it wants to do with its life. Continue Reading…
This is the story of an old dressing gown, nothing special, in fact rather frayed and thin in places. It’s a dressing gown that taught me something valuable about how the human heart heals from grief.
To read the story, click here.
It’s official. Book trailers CAN sell books. At least, a book trailer sold a book to me just a couple of days ago.
Or perhaps in this case, a book trailer sold me an author.
The book was MACHINE MAN and the author was Max Barry. To find out the way it all happened, click here.
A Kindle now lurks close at hand
A year or two ago I was never going to read a book that wasn’t on paper. Now there is a Kindle in the drawer beside my bed. What happened?
I’ve always been a deliberate Late Adopter of new technologies. I don’t need the kudos of being First with newfangled thingies, and I find that patience is rewarded when they iron out a lot of bugs, and the price comes down too.
But there was a lot more than this behind my reluctance to get an e-reader. I love a book with paper pages. Scoff if you like, but I just do.
But the fear of missing out on great books plus some solid financial incentives finally drove me to take the leap into Kindle-land. To find out the details, click here.
How can visitors to your blog find your fabulous old posts without having to navigate a dusty labyrinth of categories and tags? There is a way! And, what’s more, you can get WordPress and Feedburner to do all the work for you!
Welcome to a new system I call Outside the Box Blogging. Click here to read more…
