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

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! :)

When did life start to involve so much juggling?

It's been a difficult week. I'm still in flare, but I'm not going to dwell on that. My foster daughter went home on Monday, which was also difficult. I've a number of self-imposed deadlines for my writing from here until Christmas, and I've - crazily - taken on a couple of new projects work wise. I'll talk about them in October.

My biggest news is that I'm going to have a new foster placement! He's an infant with high medical needs, and we'll have him for six months. It's very exciting (if a bit daunting) and I can't wait to meet him.

I went to see the new Jane Eyre film on Thursday, which was so amazing it deserves its own blog post. Which it will get tomorrow.

Have a great weekend everyone! :)

Fostering: It's A Weird Trip

Yeah, I know. The title isn't exactly social worker friendly. But there you go.

I looked after a three year old girl a couple of weeks back on a respite placement. That's when the child's usual foster carer needs some time free, usually for a holiday or because of ill health. She was a lovely child to have, and even though I knew she would be going back to her usual foster home at the end of the week it was impossible not to get attached.

When she left, I couldn't believe how quiet the house was. Even at night time, when she should have been fast asleep in bed, it was like I could feel that the house was emptier than it had been. I folded up some of the clothes that she'd left behind and put them in a drawer to send to her foster mother. I stripped the bed, washed the sheets and put away the Peppa Pig DVD's. What was worse, was that my husband and I realised that we'd started to talk about her like she was dead. 'Remember when she used to do this? The way she did tumbles to music?' I wasn't very upset when she went, because I had known all along that she was only with us for a week. But, knowing that I was probably not going to see her again was hard.

Then I got a call last week asking could we take her for ten days in September! I'm really looking forward to it now, and I'm going to get all her favourite things in. Also, it was her birthday in August so I can now buy her a birthday present without feeling like an over the top foster carer/stalker.

Having an energetic three year old will take some organisation on my part though. I need to get some systems in place to stop me doing the same amount of work I did last time she stayed (tl;dr: none).

Looking forward to it now, she's arriving September 2 :)

A new way of writing

So last week I had my first foster placement, a three year old with a huge amount of energy and a love of chatter. We had her for a week, and I loved it. When she went at the end of the week I missed her, the house seems unbelievably quiet. But the week made me realise something that all of you who are parents already realise: writing with children is tough.

It shouldn't have been too difficult, after all I have a month off from my journalism job which frees up around two hours in the working day for me. My plan was to look after the girlie in the day, and do a couple of hours writing in the evening. This did not happen. I looked after girlie, put her to bed, and was exhausted. It was all I could do to slump in front of the television in the evening, and even this required propping myself up with a double shot Americano. Twelve hours of complete responsibility for a three year old left my brain unable to process anything much more complicated than the plot of a Peppa Pig episode.

Yet I know that it's possible. I follow many blogs of writers who juggle not just parenthood and writing, but full-time jobs,  part-time jobs, volunteer work, academic study, etc. And, if I'd had time, I could have gone to their blogs and picked up a few tips. But my commitment to blogs, both my own and those of others, also suffered a knock last week.

Next time I'll hopefully be more prepared. My new plan is to make notes on scenes and characters as they occur to me throughout the day and then write them up in the evening. That way I have a framework which will hopefully stop me staring blankly at the flashing i-bar ready to fall asleep.

What about you all? Have you any special tips for juggling busy lives with consistent word count? Any and all help gratefully received.

Oh yeah, and sorry for being so flaky for the past week.

Exciting Day!

Good times ahead, because today I'm getting my first foster placement! I'm lucky, because the three year old will be staying with us for a week, and this weekend is the August bank holiday. So my husband will be off for three days of it.

Things are still fairly chaotic, as is our way, and we discovered last night that the stair-gates that we bought because they were the only ones that fitted our super narrow staircase need a drill to put up. Do we have a drill? No. We're currently ringing our way around friends and family trying to find one before she arrives. This afternoon. Our disorganization will come as no surprise to those of you who remember us losing our keys the week we were moving house, and came close to having to move the contents of our three bedroom home, including furniture, via Dublin Bus. Dublin's bus service should not be confused with bus systems in other world cities, which usually arrive on time. The Dublin Bus schedule is more a hope of what could happen, rather than a prediction of what will happen. It is the New Year's resolution of transport timetables.

In other exciting news, my main journalism job is stopping for August. That means that while I may still have some random projects to work on, my Monday to Friday job is on hold for four weeks. Which means that my plan of finishing the first draft of Lemons in August may actually come to fruition (See what I did there?). Good times.

Right, I'm off to write my last business segment for the summer, and to locate a drill. Hope you all have a good weekend!

I've been approved as a foster carer!

Remember that thing I said a few weeks ago about waiting for something non writing related? Well, it happened yesterday. Myself and my husband have finally been approved as foster carers. We first applied in June 2010.

The great thing is, I can tell everyone now! I was afraid to tell people before, in case I jinxed things and made it less likely to happen. Our social worker was certain we would get approved, but I wanted to wait just in case.

We're getting our first placement on Friday of a three year old girl.  I'm so nervous, but really excited.We'll only have her for a week, so it will ease us in gently. Our friends have given us a pram and a playpen, and I've bought some essentials like baby shampoo, wipes and other things like that.

I'm not sure quite how this is going to work alongside my writing, but watch this space!

Another Award!

Wow, I was having one of those awful days today. You know the type. I spent the majority of the day waiting for a delivery person who never arrived, seething inwardly at myself for being one of those people who always seemed to get shoved to the bottom of the queue. I've had a blinding headache since yesterday which means that I'm behind in my edits. So, all in all, not a good day. But then, my day turned around when the fabulous Kate Larkindale gave me this lovely shiny award right here, and my day started looking up! Thanks Kate!

Ok, so this award comes with some rules, which are thus:

1. Thank and link to the person who nominated you.
2. Share seven random facts about yourself.
3. Pass the award along to 5 new-found blogging buddies.
4. Contact the winners to congratulate them.

So here are seven things you may not know about me:

1: I'm trained as a social historian, and my main research interest is public health legislation in the British Isles during the Victorian and early Edwardian era.

2: My name is Christine, and my parents deny that they named me after the female lead in Phantom of The Opera despite the fact it came out the year I was born and they played the album all the time. When I was a kid and I heard the characters sing about 'Christine' I thought that there was somebody in our house calling me, and would run off to find them. My parents found this so funny that they played the album over and over again just to see me search.

3: I was an only child until age fourteen, but am now the eldest of seven. I'm the only biological child my parents have. Three of my siblings are adopted, two from Romania and one from China, and the other three are foster siblings. 

4: The first writing award I ever won was a national poetry competition I entered when I was ten. My poem was about a unicorn.

5: When I was in Transylvania with two of my brothers I got two mosquito bites on my neck about an inch and a half apart. At least I think they were mosquito bites...

6: My first pet was a rabbit called Bunny that I had when I was two. My granny told me that it died because I hugged it to death. I carried a whole lot of guilt around with me about that until a couple of years ago when my mother told me that in actual fact it died from anaphylactic shock after being stung by a bee. Though why my granny told me that I'd killed it is still a mystery...

7: I love archaeology, and worked on an excavation of a Cistercian nunnery in Belgium. The site was so close to the Luxembourg border that we would walk across the border in the pitch black every night to go to the nearest pub.

Ok, so the people I am passing this award onto are:

1: Caitlin Vincent

2: Krista M

3: Dwight Okita

4: Heather

5: Julia

Hope everyone is having a great day :)