It has been a while since I posted on this blog.  I have been busy – flying to and from New York City to be with my husband, who was working over there:  Relocating to Mudgee where we (literally) built a cabin in the woods and:  Writing three books; a picture book — ‘Silly Nan’; the second book in the ‘Simon Goes …’ series — a middle-grade book; — and ‘Wellworth’ an adult fiction, psychological thriller.

Whilst I let all of these projects rest before trying my luck with publishers, I returned to my first blog book – ‘Living in London’ – which I haven’t had any takers on the publishing front.  Well, it isn’t any wonder!  I couldn’t believe how badly written it is and — something I always pride myself on – the plot and storyline was not brilliant!  It goes to show how important it is to revisit previous work to see how much writing and critique improves over time and with practice.

I am slowly working through the old manuscript with an aim to pitch it to YA readers.  I am currently changing it to first person, there will be three narrators – Ellie, Kate and Noni —  and cringing at the work as I go.  Once I have done that and had a good overall look at how it is structured, I will then do a massive restructure before fine-tuning the storyline and plot.

Something I have come to enjoy over the past year of writing is the editing process.  I read somewhere that editing your first draft is like a sculptor working with a lump of clay!  I can fully agree with that thought – though I’m working with something akin to a lump of mud at the moment!

Anyway – my reason for my post today is to share with you my good news about ‘Simon Goes to Spain’. It’s being released in early 2019, still no firm date but I can assure you it’s close and I wanted to share with you the final front cover! Don’t worry I will keep you up to date on the publication date and where you can purchase it from.

I am hoping to post once a month in 2019, despite having to go back to paid work, and whilst I am still writing.  My project at present is to sculpt ‘Living in London’ into a readable YA thriller before starting a new adult psychological thriller.  In the meantime, I will be giving ‘Wellworth’ a polish in preparation for submission to interested publishers, so fingers crossed.