Irresistibly Sweet Blog Award

I love this award! It gives me an insane craving for meringue, but hey what else is new?

It was given to me by the fantastic Miss Cole. Her blog is great, by the way. Definitely one to check out.

The rules say that I need to share ten random facts about myself. I'm not sure if I've mentioned some of them before, if I have I apologise.

1: I didn't drink much coffee until March of this year. Now, myself and my husband spend so much on ground coffee that it doesn't bear thinking about. I actually avoid thinking about it.

2: I was an only child until I was fourteen. Ten years later I'm the eldest of seven. I got the benefits of being an only child when I was growing up, and now I have the benefits of being part of a large, close family.

3:  My husband is a journalist and editor. He edits my fiction to catch my grammatical errors. We have geeky conversations about the many roles of commas.

4: When I was a teenager I went on a school trip to Belarus. The hostel we stayed in was in the middle of a forest with Chechen rebel soldiers surrounding it. Luckily, they didn't bother us.

5: I prefer the world in my imagination to reality.

6: Winter is my favourite season, and I like the rain.

7: My grandad worked in the Guinness brewery.

8: My favourite musician is Bjork. I saw her play in Belfast three years ago, and she was amazing.

9: My dream house would be beside the sea. Still in Dublin, but beside the sea.

10: I started writing seriously a few days after my fibromyalgia diagnosis in 2009.

I said last week that I'd hold a contest to celebrate reaching the 150 follower mark. I'm now at 174, thanks to the campaign. I'll pick some books this week and hopefully announce it on Friday.

Shelley Watters' First Page Critique Contest

Shelley Watters is holding a first page critique contest over at her blog. You can check it out here. The rules are listed there, but basically writers in certain genres post the first 250 words of their novel on their blog for open critique. Afterwards, the polished extracts go forward to win the chance of being looked at by a hot agent. Pretty cool right? So here's mine:

Prologue

I woke up in a cold sweat, my heart racing. I’d had that dream again. It had been haunting me for the past few weeks, and I still had no idea what it meant.

            It started with me lying face down in a dark room, with a cold stone floor beneath me. I knew there were other people around me – I could sense them, but didn’t know who they were. I heard someone walk across the room, their footsteps echoing on the stone floor.

            ‘This is your last chance,’ I heard a woman’s voice hiss in my ear. ‘Or it will be all over for you and your friends.’

Her tone told me that, if I didn’t do as she asked, something terrible would happen. I got slowly to my feet, and faced her. Moonlight streamed through a window illuminating the voice’s body, but I couldn’t see her face. A black shadow came over the window, blocking out the moonlight. A second later there was a large crash, an explosion.

            Someone pulled me to the ground, away from the shadow.

            ‘Stay where you are,’ another voice whispered in my ear urgently. A high-pitched scream echoed above and I closed my eyes tightly, afraid of what I might see. When the screaming stopped, I opened my eyes. Just inches from where I lay I could see the unmistakeable glossy slick of blood.