Out of Office - Back on Wednesday

Hi all,

Sorry that I haven't been online. Polly Pocket is leaving tomorrow, and we're finding it more difficult than we thought. I don't want to moan about it, yet can't thing of a topic for an upbeat post. So I'm going to leave it until Wednesday.

Thanks guys x

Moving On

I talk a lot about my life on here apart from writing, but actually I'm a very private person. I don't really talk about how I feel with many people in my off-internet world.

Polly is being moved next week. For those of you who don't know, Polly is a premature baby that myself and my husband have been fostering since the start of October. We found out before Christmas but didn't tell many people. We knew that she would be moving at some point, but we're still finding it pretty difficult. It's hard to pack up belongings for a baby you've looked after for almost four months.

I'm not going to write a big post about it, because I don't feel comfortable doing that. I'll return to my usual post themes tomorrow.

Storms in Teacups Release Date

I have been unbelievably flaky with this blog lately. I’m not even going to try to justify it (read: blaming it) on Polly Pocket, as I know loads of you juggle a ridiculous amount of things (two jobs, kids, charity work) and still manage to keep on top of social media, writing, editing, and social lives. I think I’ve adjusted to having a newborn in my house now, which is a good thing because I found out on Wednesday that she’ll be with us until at least February, which I’m really happy about.

I’m working on final editing for my novel that I’m self-publishing in December. One of the great things about self-publishing is that you can decide when you want to release your book, so I’m going to choose December 30 for my book, which is also my 25^th birthday. Kind of like a present to myself.

My new novel is going well too, even if it’s a little bit slower than I’d like. I’m hoping to have the first draft finished by Christmas.

Hope everyone is having a productive week J

Priorities, Priorities...

Life as been fairly crazy lately. I've been editing, designing websites and getting used to living with a baby. It's been a juggling act, but I managed to achieve my most important goal - I dressed Polly Pocket up as a miniature witch for Halloween.

Despite being twelve weeks old, she'll only have reached full-term next week. Her costume was for a bigger baby, but I altered it (read: cut of the sleeves) and it looked fairly impressive.

Anyway, I've been so busy that I'm starting Nanowrimo tomorrow, a little late but it could be worse.

So in the morning ultra strong coffee will be brewed, and I'll start my November project in earnest. Best of luck to everyone taking part!

On Pubslush and Inkubate

So, the endless rounds of querying can get you down. Self-publishing is an option, but it's highly labour intensive and you have to do a lot of the work yourself. Yesterday I read an article in The Huffington Post talking about Inkubate and Pubslush.

Now these endeavours aren't new, I've read about them before. I'm not sure their methods are going to get that much traction. How many people would think a book premise was that good that they'd preorder it without being sure that they'd ever see the actual book in question. It might work for established authors, but maybe not so well for newbies.

What do you all think?

Sorry for the brevity of this post, I'm learning the art of typing with a baby on my shoulder. I'm sure I'll get better at it :)

Introducing Polly Pocket

I've been somewhat absent for the past week because I was preparing for my new foster placement. We brought home a premature baby girl today, who's only slightly more than 2 kg. She's the tiniest thing, but so beautiful.

I spent twelve hours in the maternity hospital waiting for paperwork to come through and learning to care for a baby that technically should still be in the womb. I'm exhausted. Therefore, this post will be fairly short.

I'm not allowed post anything on the internet that would identify a child in my care or breach their right of privacy. Which is good - otherwise you may have to hear about my foster daughter at length (I managed to feed her 90 mls tonight - I was prouder of that than I was getting my undergraduate degree). As I can't use her name online, if I'm referring to her at all I'm going to call her Polly Pocket. Because she is the tiniest thing.

It's twenty to midnight, so I'm going to go to bed. I hope to get around all your blogs tomorrow.

Night all! :)