How I Found the Write Path bloghop

Today I'm taking part in Carrie Butler's blogfest, to celebrate her bloggy anniversary. You can find out all about it, and sign up if you want, right here. Basically, I have to write a note to my pre-published self with advice. She's going compile all the letters into a free ebook for writers. Carrie, of course you can use mine!

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Dear 20 year old me,

You've just had two short stories published, and you're feeling pretty cool about everything right now. This writing lark is easy, right? Wrong!

I'm supposed to give you advice now, but I really don't want to. By submitting the way you are (a constant rolling process of one rejection landing on your doormat and being instantly repackaged and sent off again) you're learning patience, stubbornness, how to handle rejection... And, believe me, when most submissions are email based and can be returned in an hour, you definitely need to know how to handle rejection.

And, you know what, every time you reach despair, you'll write some cracking stories - honest - and they are the ones that'll get published.

However, there are some things I want to share with you:

• Don't compare yourself to other writers - especially not the ones writing popular genres - that will just depress you greatly.
• Use beta readers as soon as you starting writing novellas. You can get away with when you're writing 2000 words, but not so much 20,000 words.
• Don't ignore self-publishing - it's not the same in 2012/13 as it is in 1994 - in fact it's pretty cool now, and means you get to be in charge and make all the decisions. There are so many options, which means you no longer have to buy 1000 copies and store them in your house.
• Take marketing seriously. In fact, take a marketing course right now! (Pauses to see whether a marketing certificate appears on wall... Nope, it doesn't... Are you even listening to me, Child?

Also, make friends with writers - use social media (it's okay, you'll understand what I'm talking about soon). Instead of being the only writer you know and having to work everything out for yourself, you'll appreciate how supportive, understanding and helpful other writers are. And you'll make some brilliant friends.

Enjoy being 20

xxx

The Game On Bloghop

Kyra Lennon's Game On series is centred around the world of football (although, as it's in America, I guess I should call it soccer), and features a pretty fanciable football player called Radleigh McCoy. She wants to know who my sports crush is... Oh dear, here goes...

Actually this was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be, because I apparently have an inordinate number of sports crushes. So I decided to go with someone who's probably a little less known than the others - because I like to be unique.

Chris Coleman is my crush - Welsh international player and their current coach. He has a lovely soft lilting voice and his eyes are much twinklier than they look in this photo.

Yes, he does have a chin, but it's really hard to find a photo of a football manager when they're not shouting, frowning or otherwise gesticulating in a very odd manner. This is the most normal photo I could find!




(Other crushes may or may not include Freddie Flintoff, Alan Shearer, Kevin Keegan, Roberto Mancini, and the guy at my gym who can do the most amazing press-ups known to man... ahem!)

Check out Kyra Lennon's blog to check out the other participants
and to join in yourself.
Go on, it's not too late!

And breathe...

I managed to visit every single blog in the Get Healthy bloghop on Wednesday - a first for me!! If I didn't leave a comment on your blog it was because your post wasn't up when I dropped in, and I'm afraid I didn't go back because I couldn't remember which ones to go back to!

Today I'm planning to reply to the comments on my post, after I've been to the gym - and I really should get some actual writing done. This week has been very busy with the kids off school - friends visiting, trips to the cinema (Star Trek - fantastic!) and walking in the sunshine. Next week my hours at work are changing - to the benefit of my writing, but the slight detriment of family life. I'll have to see how it goes, and cross my fingers that I become the next big thing within the next three months!

Next week also heralds the start of my That Sadie Thing blog tour, and I've got some great stops on the tour - more on the next week, too.

Today, I am taking the time to just relax and breathe, and look at this lovely picture of the river at the end of my road.

Have a great weekend, folks!

Get Healthy blog hop

Stephen Tremp, Alex J Cavanaugh, L. Diane Wolfe, and Michael Di Gesu have teamed up for a bloghop.

The Objective: Share with everyone something you have done that affected your health in a positive way. You can share an awesome low cal low fat tasty recipe. Post simple tips to lose weight. Or a testimony on what has helped like joining Weight Watchers. Recommend a routine like P90X or Insanity. Or stretches one can do while sitting in their office chair working or writing. We’re sure people have countless great tips and ideas they would love to share. 

So... um... (this shouldn't be hard, I'm a gym instructor... yep, I did slip in a link to my other blog there!) My head is teeming with tips and advice, but choosing one or two things is really hard.

Okay, here's my toppest tip... Eat your veggies! With everything! Buy frozen! 

When I was a kid, veggies were a Sunday roast treat, when we would have two or three types. The rest of the week consisted of egg and chips (no veg), fish and chips (with peas, but nothing else), cheesy mash and pickled onions (definitely no veg - and yes, folks, that was a very regular meal, potatoes!)

Fast forward to my kids... veg with everything - I expect they really dislike me at meal times. Sunday roast consists of at least five types, and my cottage pies and bologneses are crammed with sweetcorn, mushrooms and carrots. Every meal has several different types.

Beans on toast? Add sweetcorn.
Omelette? Throw a salad on your plate - leaves, tomato, peppers.
Cheese sandwich? Grate up half the amount of cheese and grate a carrot into it.

In short, veggies have a huge amount of nutrients, they're low fat and low sugar, high in fibre, can bulk out a meal so you need less high fat cheeses and meats and therefore lower the overall calorie content of your meal.

Bonus tip... Move! Studies have shown that people who fidget are slimmer than non-fidgeters - some of the figures quoted seem absurd (300 - 500 extra calories per day), but it all depends what you mean by fidgeting. 

Personally, I jump up and down on the spot while I'm waiting for the kettle to boil, shadow box when I'm bored, I walk a lot, I balance on one leg while I'm brushing my teeth (perhaps practise this without the toothbrush in the first instance, just in case!), I dance to my favourite songs on the radio. It all adds up, you know!

IWSG - I'm a co-host!

It's the first Wednesday of the month, and you all know what that means by now. Even if you don't take part yourself, you'll have seen this badge all over blogs you visit.

It's a huge honour to be selected to co-host this month's IWSG alongside Julie and Elise.

And co-hosting actually fits in very well with my insecurity this month...

Do I do enough to support my fellow bloggers/writers?

Alex does... everything. Arlee Bird founded the A-Z Challenge that many of you are taking part in - and he has many co-hosts helping, and this year the co-hosts have minions (love that word!), so there are many 70 or so people helping out there. Misha Gericke has her Paying Forward awards, and some fantastic people offering prizes for the winners. Livia Peterson bounced into bloggyland relatively recently and blasted through it all (and she's co-hosting the A-Z Challenge in her very first year of taking part). So many more of you constantly host cover reveals and blog hops and book launches and tours, as well as beta reading for each other and giving random shout outs and book reviews.

I've been on the receiving end of so much good will over the life of my blog, especially once I started having my books published. But I wonder whether I give enough back. Could I do more? 

To everyone who has ever helped me out, let me visit their blog, revealed a cover, interviewed me and reviewed my books...

Thank You - you are awesome, and I'll try harder!

(PS. Before I go I just want to say a huge thank you to everyone who visited my interview on Dan O'Brien's blog. I had a glance down at the other interviews he's done, and they maybe garner one or two comments, or sometimes none at all. You guys have left 13 - as of Tuesday morning, when I wrote this! That's awesome, and completely proves that I belong to the most supportive group of writers/bloggers!)

Bloghop of Joy

If you're here for the Back From the Future bloghop, click here.

Click here for linky list

Kyra and Clare want us to tell them what makes us happy, those small things that happen in the course of the day and week that make us smile.

• The smell of cut grass
• Waving at trains (well, the drivers, and a double thrill if they blast their horn!)
• Listening to the sound of the sea
• Curling up with my cat
• The sun rising before I wake up
• The sun setting after 5pm
• Sitting in the garden with a glass of Pimms 
• Giraffes
• Fresh sheets
• Lying in bed after a really busy day and feeling all my bones settling
• Pride and Prejudice - the book or the BBC DVD, I'm not fussy
• Watching my kids watching comedy I used to watch and loving it - Fawlty Towers, Dad's Army, The Good Life.
• Discovering that my list of joys is pretty much endless!

Have you signed up for this bloghop?
What makes you smile?

Fun things happening this week

I've been talking about myself for a few days now, so I thought I'd give a couple of blogs a shout out. Both of the bloghops below are on Friday - I'm signed up for both, are you?

Click here for linky list

Kyra and Clare want us to tell them what makes us happy, those small things that happen in the course of the day and week that make us smile.

Click here for the linky list

M Pax, Suze of Subliminal Coffee and Nicki Elson are teaming up for the Back from the Future Blogfest. What would you send back to yourself from the future?

And Misha Gericke is asking for votes for her Paying Forward Awards. You have until 28th February to vote for some really great bloggers, so please follow the link and check it out.

The Imaginary Friend Bloghop

Welcome to my very first bloghop - I'm really excited to be hosting this today, alongside the fabulous Kyra Lennon.

We will be reading all of the posts, and giving a prize each to our favourite entries.

Kyra is offering a three chapter critique, and I'm giving a £10/$10 Amazon voucher (or £10 Waterstone's voucher, if you're in the UK and you prefer).



I never do anything by halves - I had twin imaginary friends called Iccance and Occance. I have no idea where they came from, or how long they stayed or how they came to be so called. They were neither boys nor girls but something entirely different.

And - boy! - they were very naughty.

They used to make my toys messy after I'd tidied them up, they used to smear my face with ice-cream when I was eating; and it was definitely them who pushed over our telly, right onto its screen and breaking it!

I'm certain that on more than one occasion they had to stand in the corner with their hands on their heads - separate corners, obviously, or they'd have got into even more trouble.

Beside that though, I can't remember much about them - so I went off to ask Mum. "There were two of them," she said incitefully.

"Yes, they were twins," I said.

"Oh, were they?" she replied, proving that poor memory runs in the family.

I thought I remembered teaching them how to read, with the help of my blackboard and pure academic skill, until Mum recalled that it was my baby sister I taught, so she doesn't really count.

So that's the poorly remembered (and now immortalised)

story of Iccance and Occance.

Now I'm off to read yours!

HMV in trouble

Yesterday I went to the gym, came home, messed around with some emails, went to a meeting at work, came home, read some blogs, ate a meal and went to work.

In short, I didn't see the news. So it was a big shock when I finally came home at 9pm to see that HMV is in administration. When I was in there before Christmas, the queue was halfway around the (fairly large) shop - it looked busy and solid. It was great to browse, to pick things up that I may not have just because it was next to the item I did want to buy.

And now it might disappear from our high streets, leaving large empty spaces. HMV have always been there - like WH Smith, Coronation Street (although I don't watch, so please don't attempt a conversation with me - it will end badly) and drumsticks. I hung out there when I was younger, probably annoying the staff by not actually buying anything (... aah, maybe I get it now!), but finding some great new bands.

In the UK, the book equivalent is Waterstone's. The idea of our only book chain possibly disappearing fills me with even more horror, but judging by the HMV situation, no shop is safe. Now, I sometimes hate Waterstones - Fifty Shades of Grey and Twilight featuring heavily in their window displays, for example - but they also do a lot of things right. My local store has a large local history section which is fascinating. It has a brilliant children's section, and the staff are enthusiastic.

I also love my local independent bookshop, which I mentioned here (as well as being a little bit disparaging of Waterstones... yes, I'm fickle!). My belated New Years Resolution is to shop in shops, to appreciate what lurks in my area, and to keep my fingers crossed that HMV find a solution and are around for a lot longer.

Will you miss HMV if it disappears? Do you shop there?

Do you buy books on the high street, or are you an Amazon shop instead?

Is there room for both?

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Did you see my post about my bloghop? Kyra Lennon and I want to know about your imaginary friends. Click here to sign up. There are a couple of prizes to win for our favourite stories, but you must be following both Kyra and me!

Due to the nature of this post, I may change my prize offer slightly. At the moment I'm offering a £10/$10 Amazon voucher, but if the winner is in the UK, I'll give the choice of a Waterstone's voucher instead - every little helps, so they say!

Announcing a bloghop

Thanks to Kyra for both of the badges
on this page

Today I'm very excited to be announcing my very first bloghop...

I'll be celebrating the one year anniversary of Cat and The Dreamer next month, so on the 1st February I'm hosting the Imaginary Friend Bloghop.

Acting as my co-host is the wonderful Kyra Lennon, who has all the knowledge on how to make this go smoothly.

If you've read Cat and The Dreamer you'll know that Julia, the main character, has a big imagination, and she has an imaginary enemy.

We want to know about your imaginary friend. What were they called? How old were you? Were they naughty or nice? If you didn't have one, were there ever times when you could really have used one? Did you ever set fire to your mum's favourite rug and have to take the blame yourself?

I'll be offering a £10/$10 Amazon gift voucher for my favourite post, and Kyra is kindly offering a three chapter critique for hers.

Just make sure you're following both me and Kyra, sign up below and be ready to share your real or imaginary imaginary friend stories on 1st February!

Thank you to everyone who offered 
to host my blog tour which starts on
the 3rd February. I was very quickly 
able to fill all the slots, and I even
had to decline some offers!

Save the date and announcing a blog tour

Cat and The Dreamer is almost one year old - so to celebrate, I'm going to host my very first bloghop on 1st February.

No details yet, this is a save the date announcement! 

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Thanks to Kyra Lennon for this badge!

The other thing I'd like to do is have a blog tour. When the book was first published, I probably didn't do things as comprehensively as I could - I've learnt a lot in the past 12 months, so I'm going to do it all over again.

This time I have a theme - Changes since Cat and The Dreamer was published in February 2012!

I currently have nine topics - including music, books and films. I'd like to run the tour between 3rd and 13th of February. If anyone would like to host me, please leave a comment and I'll email you. If you have a good idea for a topic you'd like me to talk about, on the theme of change remember, please let me know! Thanks in advance!