School holidays, finally! I spent three days with the grandsons and now I am exhausted, happy to be camped on the lounge, writing.

However, Peter and I spent the weekend in Mudgee, a beautiful part of the world, especially after all the rain, it was so green and lush. I imagined myself in one of those quaint farmhouses, surrounded by rolling hills, writing with no distractions just the birds twittering in the distance. But, of course, that is the ideal we all strive to attain, the reality is catching a couple of hours each day (if I’m lucky) and adding a few hundred words at a time.

After having the boys for the past three days, I realized that there would be no way I could scrape even an hour of writing time in. It’s not that they are demanding but the pleasure of spending quality time with them versus writing was a difficult dilemma, I certainly hand it to those writers with young children, I wouldn’t be able to juggle the two.

So I guess my lesson for this week is just to write when you can. I have come to the realization that my family saga/historical novel will never get written if I continue to wait for that moment when I don’t need to go to work or when I will be ensconced in that quaint farm house surrounded by rolling hills. So I have resurrected my novel and begun to write short sections, and I am finding that the structure of the novel is finally coming together.

My reading is in holiday mode as well. I discovered during my long drive back from Mudgee that I had read all the books on both iBooks and Kindle, so I downloaded some novels from the specials section of Kindle and am currently reading Are You My Mother, by Louise Voss. I am only into the first five chapters but her writing is upbeat and pacey, and it is set in London!

As for Living in London, I have introduced a new character, Ryder Robertson, I hope you enjoy Chapter Twenty One.