Blog tour stop and ISWG

I'm having a great time so far on my tour - I hope you're enjoying my random musings on the past  year.

Today I'm stopping my tour bus off at Suzanne Furness's The Word Is... blog, talking about TV! This presented a bit of a challenge when I realised my TV watching boiled down to Homes Under the Hammer and endless repeats of How I Met Your Mother.




It's also time for the February Insecure Writer's Support Group, which I completely forgot about when I planned the tour. If you click on the badge in the sidebar it'll take you straight to the sign up list. Although I'm sure everyone knows about this group and the wonderful Alex J Cavanaugh.

A lot of the time I use this group to announce the weird and foolish stuff I'm planning to do - like my first ever attempt at NaNoWriMo - and today is no different. I've been thinking about gathering my published and prize-winning short stories into a greatest hits style collection.

This now means I have to get my head around all the stuff a lot of you have known for a long time. I hate not knowing stuff - the way I've always learned new things is to disappear into a corner for a while and come out knowing how to do algebra or Microsoft Access.

However, the last thing I tried to learn was Wordpress - and I gave up on that very quickly! I found it completely impossible. So, apparently, as I get older the less I'm able to learn! If that's not something to feel insecure about, I don't know what is!

What do you find hard to learn, no matter how much you try?

Please remember to visit Suzanne's blog - link at the top!

Blog tour - off to see Rena

Today I am visiting Rena, the Doctor Fairie Godmother. As Rena loves Science Fiction and science, I'm talking about Felix Baumgartner - and I've even done some research!

So, how's your week been so far?
I got strangely excited by the conformation that the 
body found in a Leicester car park is Richard III.

Cat and The Dreamer - Stopping at Kyra's

I am delighted to announce the winners of the Imaginary Friends bloghop.

Nick Wilford has won my £10 Amazon or Waterstone's voucher. Nick wrote about his daughter's imaginary friend's brother, and it was a really sweet and touching story. I'll be emailing (or already have emailed, depending when you read this) Nick to let him know.

Now pop over to Write Here, Write Now to find out who Kyra chose.



Today's tour stop take's me to Kyra's other blog  Kyra Lennon's Word on the Street blog - a great entertainment blog where she reviews and discusses music, films and TV shows. I'm sharing my music memories from the past year.

The start of the Cat and The Dreamer Tour

Thank you to everyone who took part in the Imaginary Friends bloghop on Friday - I had a great time reading everyone's posts. There were some really inventive twists on the theme - and I really can't believe how many of you didn't have imaginary friends. Because I had them, I was convinced it was really common, but apparently it's not. Now I have to decide whether I'm the normal or abnormal one!!

Kyra and I will be announcing our winners tomorrow, so don't forget to check us out!




Today though is the start of the Cat and The Dreamer blog tour. My novella has reached its first birthday, so I thought it was a great time to have a tour and look back over the past year. Each post on the tour will have a different theme.

Today I'm at Linda King's blog talking about books - you might be able to guess which books feature!

I'm also being interviewed by Ailsa Abraham and Cameron Lawton. If you haven't met them yet, you really don't know what your missing, and I urge to you pop over and check them 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!

How can I feel bad when I'm listening to The Vaccines?

I just wrote a post that was so self-pitying I deleted it.

I'm not even feeling that self-pitying, so I really don't know where those words came from.

It's wet and it's grey, and I was supposed to be having coffee with a friend. When that fell through, I eagerly pulled out my WIP, sat at the table (see, very proper, no slouching on the sofa... I was reading to work), and then... nothing. Which is why my deleted post was so whinny.

So, here's a song instead...

 

Don't forget the Imaginary Friend Bloghop this coming Friday. You can still sign up here.

Elizabeth Seckman's Healing Summer Blog Tour

I'm delighted to welcome Elizabeth Seckman here today as part of her Healing Summer blog tour. I have just finished reading Past Due, the first in the Coulter Men series, and I'm really looking forward to reading about the bad boy of the Coulter family!

I gave Elizabeth the prompt: My Perfect Summer's Day

Hi Annalisa! Thanks for taking the time to host me. I know you’re getting ready to start your own tour and hop, so best of luck on that!

You asked about my perfect summer day? Well, this is the first thing that pops into my mind…

Many years ago, when my oldest son was just a year old, he loved to go outside. Once set free, Caleb would explore. He has always been bright child, so it isn’t surprising that during his second summer on earth, he was intent on learning everything. He’d weed through blade after blade of grass to find an ant. Then he’d watch it as it would roam about like we would watch a lion at the zoo. Then he’d spy a bird in a tree and he would point and watch in awe as it took flight.

To him, the world was fresh and new.

All the things that I saw each day and had come to ignore, he was fascinated by. He could lie in the grass for long minutes (which in toddler time is like hours) and watch the clouds move across the sky, then gasp as a plane flew over. Every little bit of this planet was an intrigue.

Bark on a tree.

The texture of concrete.

A shadow compliments of the sun.

Those things were as exciting to him as the Magic Kingdom.

And on those perfect summer days, he taught me an important lesson in writing:

Look at the world as if you have never seen it before. Look beyond the snap image the brain has pre-loaded like clip art for us. I say grass and you see green…but look closer…there is a smell, a texture, a bend to each blade that you might have long stopped recognizing. That’s where we will find the depth, the clarity, and the realism to make our lies more real.

Or ask a toddler, “What do you see?” and quickly write that down!

Great tips Elizabeth - I'm off to ask the nearest toddler!!

Maybe Love, Not Time, Heals All Wounds

Ditched at the altar…biopsied for cancer…Mollie Hinkle is having a bona fide bitch of a summer. When life sucks so hard it takes your breath away, what's a girl to do? Pack a bag, grab a few friends, and leave the past and the worry in the rear view mirror. What wounds can’t be healed by a drive across the Heartland, where quarter flips at cross roads determine the route and the future? All roads lead to Craig, the second son and bad boy of the haughty Coulter line. Has fate brought her to the miniscule Montana town to find happily ever after or will it just break her heart?

“Healing Summer” is the second book in the Coulter Men Series.

Elizabeth Seckman

Here are the links:

Blog Tour blog page

Facebook page

Goodreads page

Buy Healing Summer on Amazon

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