Modest travels

These lovely waterlilies are terribly photogenic - I've taken loads of pictures while staying with family. I can see why Monet found them so compulsive - I found myself hanging over the pond as the sun came out each morning, while below the tadpoles waited, murmuring 'Just a little further, that's right, you'll be fine ...' The tadpoles in this particular pond are so well fed they never bother changing into frogs, they just keep growing. Hope my young friend in Afghanistan recognises this reminder of home!

I'm hoping to make this blog a bit more elaborate in the next few weeks as I work out which buttons to press, though the allotments are calling me in the fine weather. Teaching preparation is nearly complete (I think - it never really turns out that way when the students start arriving, though), we have some new animals in the house much to the entertainment of the cats, the garden is smelling of roses and dianthus and really needs to be inhaled each morning for maximum benefit, and there is a spider the size of a tea saucer in the kitchen. A sparrow flew in the other day and I was scared the spider would get it! Sparrow safely rescued, spider frustrated, cats bewildered.

Now, hyperlinks - what are they, and why?

Fourth book just out!

Well, it's working its way through the mysteries of Kindle uploading, anyway. Thank goodness - and thanks to my ever-patient graphic designer who turns my scribbled pictures into covers! And to all of you who buy the books and write lovely reviews (gosh, this is starting to sound like an Oscar speech). Anyway, I hope you all enjoy 'An Abandoned Woman'.

Allotments full of weeds only just under control - too much wet, warm weather. I've taken a middle-sized decision to drop one teaching job next term and do more writing (and indeed housework, I suppose!), but it hasn't quite sunk in yet so the stress levels are still a bit high. Eventually I'll tidy that bit of my mind away till the next time it's needed. In the mean time the other teaching post needs some work done before August, and the next book is calling me ... The knitting, however, is currently slightly more resistable, for some reason! But there's decorating to do, and tidying to do, and other work taking up two days a week. Oh, well - better get on!

Publication in sight!

That's it, the text is typed and proofread and put into one document and then the formatting, which always goes a bit iffy at that point, has been checked and corrected again. The cover is drafted, though no doubt there will be discussions over it (I like it, but another idea has been suggested which I might try, too) and I'm quite pleased with my efforts to draw donkeys ...

There is a tent in the garden. This is not a problem, as such. It's a new tent, and I, being an old Girl Guide, am used to the type where you pace out the angles of the guy lines and raise the tent poles in one large and glorious movement (followed, at one memorable camp near Hastings, by a large and total collapse as the rotted dolly pegs fell to pieces). This tent I removed from its bag, then I turned to read the instructions and was roundly walloped in the back as it put itself up - upside down, as it happens. The reason it is still there, however, is that putting itself down seems to be beyond it, and is a problem roughly similar to folding a road map up in the way it is meant to go - oh, yes, I suppose we're supposed to use some app on our phones to find our way round these days, not nice foldy map things.I wonder if there's an app for teaching tents how to fold themselves up?

Ah, well.

Too hot to think

Not designed for tropical weather, which is one reason I live in the north east of Scotland. Therefore I feel slightly hard done by when the weather is glorious, though this time we've been cold and damp for so long I admit even I took some delight in the hot sunshine! And though everything is so far behind the allotments are mostly planted and the seedlings, which were threatening to take over, are finally off the kitchen windowsill and out fending for themselves. The tadpoles appear to be luring snails into their new pond with all the aplomb of Cornish wreckers, so they're fine. The worms seem to have given up the ghost in the cold snap but have been partially replaced - might have to get some more. The next novel is 80% typed and 70% proof read, but the cover is still in embryo - teaching has now stopped for the summer (yippee!!) so there are a few days a week when I have, in theory, a little time to type (as well as rewriting stuff for next term and catching up on exciting things like, oh, housework).
I've taken on some work where I have four long country bus journeys a week, a great opportunity for bird watching, as it happens. Though I'm often travel-sick on buses, the speed of the drivers on this route encourages me to think I'll be dead in a ditch before I get the chance to feel nauseous, which is always encouraging!

A lovely day

Thanks, everyone - I've made it to 78 in the top 100 of Amazon's historical fiction! My word.

And the bus arrived at the bus stop just as I did - maybe it's going to be a good day!

Am I a proper writer now?

Flicking through my Amazon dashboard, I find I have sold my first three books in Italy. Does this make me a proper international author?! And if so, what's wrong with France, Germany and Spain?

Spring definitely here!

What a rash thing to say. But the seed potatoes have arrived and I now have to divvy them up and distribute them around our compost bins - which are used as storage on our little plots - for the various other plotters who've ordered them. Another plotter is, I hope, doing onion sets.

Two excellent weekends, one down in Edinburgh again partly dog-walking, partly visiting the newly-refurbished museum in Chambers Street. This time I brought home a litre lemonade bottle full of D's good mixed berry wine (I've finally bottled my over-active coffee and elderflower wines, and took them a bottle of the coffee), two large handfuls of potent wild garlic and half of a large and elderly bracket fungus, found on the ground in an almost fossilised condition. Absolutely no research achieved, but the wild garlic pesto is brilliant. The next weekend in glorious sunshine I dug over Allotment Minor and spent most of the rest of the day helping to plant a variety of community fruit trees in our local park - apples, plums, cherries and amelanchier. May they thrive! The weekend also involved a ceilidh including the lethal helicopter dance, but as far as I know no ambulances were required this time ...

Yesterday I took my students for a walk to see a couple of things round the university - they were so excited! Ten minutes fresh air and that has made their lecture. Anything to break the monotony, clearly. Today I sang to one of my classes - this was perhaps a step too far.

Ah, well, meetings and visitors this week, lots of preparation and minutes and reports and things, not to mention the teaching (now halfway through, hoorah, and the last week of term, hoorah, hoorah!), but maybe next week in amongst the seed potatoes I'll get down to some typing. Working title at present: An Abandoned Woman (or The Abandoned Woman? Definite or indefinite? Decisions, decisions.