November 2012

Here are a few things you should know about me.
I have an adventurous spirit and love to travel. I love to read, anything and everything. I love my family, although my children sometimes drive me crazy. And, I adore my husband who is the centre of my universe.

What am I doing at the moment: I’m reading White Feathers by Deborah Challinor. Its book two of a three book series set in New Zealand between 1879 and 1947. Book one is Tamar and is an excellent read. Book three is called Blue Smoke, which I will be reading next. Now I must be honest here, Deborah Challinor is a friend and fellow member of the Hunter Romance Writers. She is also a New Zealander, a historian and a very fine writer.

As to my own writing, I’m working with the wonderful Serena Tatti (Editor extraordinaire) on my romantic suspense, which is set in northeastern Italy. It is the story of two feuding families.

I am also self-publishing a short story which is a romantic comedy. Serena Tatti is also editing that for me and it should be up on Smashwords and Amazon by February.

And, I am working on my next book, which I will talk about in another blog.

It’s been a busy month. I attended the Hunter Romance Writers monthly meeting. We meet the 3rd Saturday of each month and are a group of both published and unpublished writers who come together to brainstorm our ideas, do writing/craft exercises and support and encourage each other. We also have a lot of fun.

And, along with the other members of the Hunter Romance Writers, I attended a workshop run by Cathleen Ross, on E-book Self-publishing. Cathleen took us through editing, formatting, business practices, writing blurbs, promoting ourselves and uploading our books to various selling platforms. The workshop was very informative and interesting.

And as if that’s not enough to keep me busy, my husband (lets call him tesoro which means my treasure) and I are about to move into our new home. It has ONLY taken ten months to build and we are very excited. Tesoro has his home office and I have my writing room (at long last). We will also only be taking two of our children as our eldest son has just bought his own home. HOORAY. Now if we could just get rid of the other two. Just kidding, I love them all dearly.
The house is set on a very large block, so it will take us years to do the landscaping. But eventually I hope to have a Tuscan courtyard to look out on as I write. DREAMS, I’M FULL OF THEM.

Until next time, be good to yourself and READ. It’s a wonderful way of transporting yourself into another world, escaping from reality, living a fantasy and learning something you didn’t know.