He's Climbing In Your Windows...

Sorry I haven't been around much. As well as preparing for Christmas and the release of Storms I'm also setting up a new blogsite. As well as looking after a baby. Really can't wait for a break over Christmas.

I meant to catch up with you all yesterday, but as those of you who follow me on Twitter may already know I got distracted when someone tried to break into my house. In an urban neighbourhood. At 11am in the morning.

I was feeding Polly Pocket in the living room, when my dog jumped out of her bed and ran to the front door and started barking. Now, despite being a large dog with a large bark my dog is afraid of her own shadow. She doesn't bark very often, and when she does bark in fright at something she usually runs back and hides behind me.

When she didn't stop, I walked into the hallway with the baby, thinking she'd gotten spooked and needed calming down.

Not so - there was a gloved hand coming in my letterbox and trying to reach up to the latch (the letterbox is very close to the latch in my door. He tried to pull his hand out after he heard the dog barking.

I ran in to the living room to put Polly down, but by the time I made it back to the door he was gone. There were some people on my street, but I had no way of identifying which one it was. None of them seemed to be hurrying.

I was kind of calm at the time, but it freaked me out a little bit later. If Roxie had been in the back garden, he might have gotten into the house before I'd realised what was happening. I guess it's just a sign of the times, economy is getting worse and the run up to Christmas is a tough time for everyone. Though unless the burglar has a penchant for paperbacks or craft beers, there isn't much to steal in my house.

I do have the best dog in the world though. She's definitely on Santa's good list. And yes, her favourite thing in the world is teddy bears.

Thanks to everyone who offered support on Twitter and Facebook. You are all stars, I really appreciate it :)

It's halfway through October. Really?!

I can't believe that it's already October 17th. There's so much that I still have to do. Finish edits, finish first draft of Guildhall, plan my Nanowrimo stories, get a start on the Christmas shopping, buy a tiny Halloween costume in the shape of a cute bug for Polly Pocket... I also have to catch up on my social media, write some articles and do some historical research. I also, crucially, have to sleep. I have no idea how I am going to do all of these things before midnight on October 31st. 

Has time sped up? I don't know why, but the past couple of months seem to have just flown by.

What about all of you? How are you doing on your goals?

On Audiobooks

For those not in the know, fibromyalgia is a syndrome. This means that it has a number of characteristic symptoms, and patients have a selection of them. One of mine - visual disturbances.

This can lead to migraines, floaters, light sensitivity and muscle tiredness. At the end of the day, when I'm tired from having looked at a computer screen for most of the day, I find it difficult to read. I've carried books around with me since I was a toddler, so not being able to read is uncomfortable to me. What to do with the time?

So I decided to download a couple of audiobooks. This rankled for three reasons.

First of all, I'm a traditionalist. Despite the fact that owning a Kindle would be easier on my wrists (because it's lighter - the weight of paper books can hurt me) I still haven't managed to bite the bullet and buy one. I have an emotional block. I like ink, paper and being able to mark my page with a bus ticket. Audiobooks are the same deal for me. It's like someone trying to convince you that paper plates really are the classier alternative to ceramic.

Secondly, it makes me feel old. I'm 24, and I already feel like a pensioner the majority of the time. I have fibro and inflammatory arthritis. I wear glasses, sensible shoes, and occasionally have to use a walking stick.I have to pace myself, and not over exert myself or I may need to go for a nap. I've come to terms with all this, but nothing, NOTHING has made me feel as old as downloading audiobooks.

This is irrational. Plenty of people download books to listen to while commuting to work or doing household chores. It makes sense. It's only in my head that I see my ninety year old great grandmother listening to her Catherine Cookson tapes.

I found the audiobooks ok, but the price was ridiculous. You can pay twice as much for an audiobook as you do for a paperback, and that's a conservative estimate. Considering an average book is five hours long when read aloud, this is pretty steep.I know you have to pay the narrator, sound engineer and get the book adapted but it makes reading expensive for those with eyesight issues. At least I have a choice.

What about you? Do you 'read' audiobooks?

Writer's Block

Road Trip Wednesday is a ‘Blog Carnival,’ where YA Highway's contributors post a weekly writing- or reading-related question and answer it on their own blogs. You can hop from destination to destination and get everybody's unique take on the topic.


This week's topic is how we deal with writer's block, but honestly? I don't believe in writer's block. I think writer's block is a fairy story we tell ourselves when we want to avoid the fact that we're not being productive.


Obviously, we have days when we feel lethargic, fed up, and writing 200 words can seem like an uphill struggle. But, I think that describes bad days in any job, I don't think that it's unique to writer's. But because we're on our own clock we can get away just saying to hell with it.  


Of course, I could be just grumpy. This is very possible, as I have been sick for the last week and am sleep deprived. Every time I lie down I get a coughing fit. This means I get no sleep, and I wake up husband several times a night. It's easier to come down downstairs and work. Of course, then I wake up my dog with my periodic coughing fits. She's not speaking to me now, and every time I cough she gives me a withering look. She honestly does. I'll have to bribe her with a rawhide chew.


What do you guys think about writer's block?

In which someone entrusts me with a living thing...

The title is a bit disingenuous, because obviously I can be trusted with a living thing. I am an approved foster carer. I have a one year old chocolate Labrador who is happy and healthy. My parents are going away this weekend and are leaving not one but six children in my care ranging from eighteen months to fourteen years old. So obviously, I can be trusted with multiple species of from the animal kingdom.

Plants though...plants are a very different story.

My husband gave me a rose plant when we first started going out. She is no more. I have had half a dozen plants given to me by well-meaning family members over the years and none of them have survived. My mother in law gave me a tub of geraniums, which I put outside and entrusted to mother nature. These alone have survived, without any input from me.

It's not that I don't like plants. I love them. I love the idea of looking after them. I always start off watering them regularly, giving them plant food, doing everything that is required to care for them properly. And then...I sort of forget.

I'm absent minded, and not the most organised of people. If I forget to feed my dog, she lies beside her bowl to remind me. She's clever, so sometimes she 'reminds' me after my husband has already fed her so she gets two dinners. We have to watch her, she's half dog half Wile E. Coyote. But plants don't remind me to do anything. So they eventually die, and I feel terrible because these are living things and I am a terrible person to let this happen.

I looked after a little girl on respite last week, while her regular foster mother was on holiday. Said foster mother bought me a bonsai tree to say thank you, which was a lovely thought. But knowing my track record, I kind of wish it was plastic. How do you look after a bonsai tree? Is it difficult? Maybe I should look for a good adoptive home for it.

Hope you all have a great weekend!

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!

Slainte! (Cheers)

So, as well as trying to persuade someone to buy and publish one of my books, I also am a freelance journalist. I write mainly about business and entertainment, but for the next month I'm working with my husband on a project for a beer festival. Fun times! It's a pity I didn't get this gig when Hart Johnson was writing the first draft of her microbrewery mystery. I could have given expert advice, and she might have even thanked me in the acknowledgements, which is at least a step in the right direction to having my name on the cover of a book...

The great thing is that it's very sunny in Ireland, which is perfect beer-drinking weather. After all, I can't write about different types of beer without doing proper research, right? Right?

It's a good thing I have something to keep me busy, because life is fairly tough at the minute. Writing wise everything is going well, but I'm waiting for news that seems like it's never going to come. Again, for once not writing related.

Hope everyone is enjoying the summer :)

Check-In-Tuesday: Always Money In The Strawberry Stand

I'm back from holiday! It was lovely, I needed a break and I definitely got it. I wouldn't say I did no writing, I scribbled down some thoughts as they came to me and thought about my plans for certain story lines, but that was the height of it.

I had planned to bring my netbook with me but, me being me, I left it at home. I thought it was in the car, but it wasn't in the car when I arrived at the holiday house. I had a mini panic attack, when I went to the Freakerton city limits and worried that I may have left it in my driveway where it would get stolen by my friendly yet opportunistic neighbour boys. I once lost my iPhone in the snow, me and electronics do not have the best relationship. However, when I got home I found the bag was in the kitchen, so all was well. I'm now behind in finishing a crit of my friend's MS and was unable to send my MS to my crit group, but I'll catch up.

So, now that I'm back and refreshed I'll do my round-up.

Words written: 3,000 (all on Monday, I didn't write for the week I was on holiday).

Rejections: 3 (Still not too upset. For the moment anyway. I'm sure I'll start wringing my hands and wailing any time now)

Agent requests: 1 partial request. Yay!

Current favourite book: I read lots of books on holiday, but Divergent stood out for me. It's nice when a book lives up to the hype (As factions go I think I'm Amity or Erudite. Whatever else, I'm not Dauntless. I'm afraid of my own shadow, banjos, wrists and my friendly yet opportunistic neighbour boys).

High point of the week: Wexford is the strawberry capital of Ireland. Well, at the very least it grows a lot of them and there's lots of stand along the roads where you can pull in and buy some. My husband and I recently discovered the joys of Arrested Development, so imagine our delight when we found a stand shaped like a strawberry! It's not a banana stand (there's always money in the banana stand, after all) but it's fairly cool nonetheless.

Low point of the week: Thinking that I'd lost my netbook. Panic was not helped by the fact I couldn't remember if I'd backed-up my work.

How about everyone else? How is your writing going?

How was my day? Honestly, I've had better.

Today was a mixed bag of a day. It started off well, because it's a bank holiday in Ireland this weekend. So straight away that puts me in a good mood. And the sun is shining, so that's another plus.

Unfortunately, I'm really not feeling well today. I can't complain really, because my fibromyalgia has been fairly quiescent lately. They upped the dosage of my meds and I've been feeling really good. I've had lots of energy, and my mobility has been very good. This is somewhat of a mixed blessing, as I find little old ladies are much nicer to me when I'm using a walking stick. They tell me things at the bus stop, things that little old ladies seem to intuitively know. Like why the postal system is bad in our area right now, and what's going on in the private lives of our neighbours. One in particular told me that the bus system is getting worse in our area because the government our secretly selling our buses to the Russians...you heard it here first.

So while I had loads of things planned to do today, most of them fell through. Though I went to my favourite cafe with my husband and sketched down some rough idea for Ravensborough edits which was kind of productive. Bunowrimo took a back seat today, but I hope to catch up next week. I went to a production of Joseph and The Amazing Technicoloured Dreamcoat with my in-laws, which was awful, unfortunately. The pain got worse during it, so my husband and I had to grab a taxi straight home.

I'm a bit down about the pain. It just seems relentless, I've been in pain everyday for two years now. But when I get really bad, like tonight, I start to get scared that the pain won't die back down. Or that I'll deteriorate to the point where I can't write any more.

Anyway, enough pessimism. I have a job, a hobby I love, a fabulous husband and great family and friends. That should be enough for most people.

Hope everyone is having a great weekend.

It's The Final Countdown!

(Aside: Don't you just love camp-tastic 80's stadium rock?)

Well, it is the final countdown for me. Next Wednesday, June 1, my first three chapters along with a synopsis and cover letter will be winging their way to agents in the British Isles. Why does it have to be June 1 you ask? Because that was the arbitrary date I picked way back when it was reasonably far away. Now?

Now it's next week and I'm getting nervous. Seriously nervous. My hand even shook as I handed over the money for the ten padded envelopes I'll need.

So...yeah. I am editing like the world is going to end. Which is ridiculous because if I found out the world was going to end the last thing I would do is edit. Although my husband interviewed Harold Camping a couple of months back, and when he asked Camping what was going to happen to him and his wife he was told that not only were we going to die come May 21, we were also going to hell. Nice guy.

If this post is a little all over the place it's because I have stepped up the caffeine intake in order to make sure my stuff is ready on time. I have edited this book many times before, but this is the final polish. I have discovered illy coffee. It packs more of a punch than my usual brand, so I'm a little hyped. I could ease the pressure on myself by pushing back my deadline, but my default setting is so laid back I'm horizontal. I was the same in college, I needed the pressure of the deadline looming at me in big letters to get anything really done. When I was in college I often started an essay the day before it was due. Now I work steadily and start working intensively ten days before a deadline. I reckon that this is maturity. Or as mature as I'm going to get, anyway.

June will be busy too. I'll be editing Ravensborough for submission, I think I've given it enough post-ABNA time to cool. I'll also be taking part in Bunowrimo over at Burrowers, Books & Balderdash. It's an attempt to write 50,000 in June. It can be a new or existing project, and anyone who needs an incentive or a bit of camaraderie to break up this lonely business of writing should check it out. (I got the Bunowrimo image off Hart Johnson's  awesome blog. Hopefully she won't mind...) 

Frailty, thy name is...Christine.

Ok, the title is a bit melodramatic but there you go. I feel bad because I haven't written a blog post in a few days, but there has been a really good reason. I went into a fibromyalgia flare, which for those not in the know (you lucky, lucky, things) is when the symptoms step up in intensity and normal functioning is almost impossible. I've spent the last few days migrating from the bed to the couch and back again. I haven't written, blogged, or edited in days. I even had to use a sick day on my journalism work which I only do when I absolutely have to. I'll freely admit I sometimes cry off my fiction writing too easily, but journalism pays the bills. Some bills anyway. And short term bill paying can sometimes can often get in the way of long term dream building.

Husband was great. He made dinner, and went on valiant searches for dairy free chocolate. He didn't even give out to me when he found out I'd let my meds run low and therefore didn't have effective pain relief. This was especially good, because I do that all the time. Organisation and Christine do not go together. My fourteen year old sister despairs of me. I'm going to the doctor tonight anyway, and have vowed not to be so stupid again...

Back on track with editing now though. And I logged into my account this afternoon to find out that I have 50 followers! Hurrah! I thought the only way I would ever get 50 followers was if I started my own religious cult but, like I said, organisation and Christine do not go together. Thank you to everyone who reads my witterings. It means a lot.

Hope everyone is having a good week :)

U is for...Ugh.

It's a lovely bank holiday weekend. The sun is shining, my husband is off work, there is a ridiculous amount of chocolate in my house. But I have decided to disregard all these things in order to have a rant thread.

My fibromyalgia has been bad this week. My hips and knees are so bad that I had to bow out of a fun game of rounders that my husband and his friends had organised. I was never going to be playing, I wouldn't be able to, but I knew that I wouldn't be able to stand and watch or sit on the grass either. So my husband went off on his own. He didn't want to leave him, but I made him go. He misses too many things due to my ropey health. Even so, I know that he'll be worried about me while he's there, and I feel so guilty for taking the shine off the day for him. And I really wanted to go out, enjoy the sunshine and chat to some nice people. I'm a bit down about that.

I had four of my siblings over yesterday for dinner. They're 7, 10, 11 and 14 and I love them to bits. We had a good time, but I struggled to seem cheery and upbeat for them because of the pain I was in. I really hope that they didn't pick up on it. They're only kids, and the last thing I want is for them to think I don't enjoy their company. I do, so much.

And then, of course, there's my writing. Despite resting my hands and arms, they're in bad shape and it hurts to write. This is bad, because I've reached a seam of writing where it's all flowing, and I'm in the middle of some intensive edits too. I can't work right now. Writing is what got me through my illness, and now I worry that physically my body can't do it.

Living with a long term illness is hard. Not only the pain, the nausea and the lack of energy, but you sometimes feel like you are losing yourself, the person you'd like to be and the person that you want to become. I think to be honest that that's the worst part of all.

I'm just having a bad day. Tomorrow will hopefully be better, and I'll remember that in the scheme of things I'm a very lucky woman. I've a great husband, a lovely family, I get to write a lot and have a lovely house and supportive friends. But right now? I need to vent.

Anyone who has a chronic illness, or knows someone who has should check out The Spoon Theory by Christine Miserandino. It gives a great explanation on what being ill feels like on a day to day basis, and my husband said it really helped him realise what it's like to be me.

Hope this all finds you well, and that you have a great Easter. I'm going to go cuddle my dog, drink copious amounts of tea and read a book.