Catching Up!

As you can guess, I am not a blogophile. It’s been a long time since my first blog, sorry about that for any of you who are interested!

Part of the delay was because I was supposed to be taking over the running of my own website – Ha!  

Give me a pen, paper or keyboard and I’m away, sailing high in my imagination, I can sit there happily for hours; but give me a set of instructions, especially computer ones, and my Jekyll turns to Hyde and my Frankenstein comes alive and puts his big lumbering feet over everything, causing mayhem inside by lovely computer.

This has culminated into asking my computer wizard, Debbie to take me on again. She’s super busy, generous and kind and, thank goodness, will be producing my blogs and webpage entries once again.

So what’s happened since my last blog? Quite a lot actually.

Besides starting my first novel and doing all the research for it, I’ve been entering a (very) few short story competitions. I was delighted to win first prize in the Eastbourne chapter of the Charles Dickens Fellowship short story competition with my pastiche on a ‘Tale of Two Cities’. To read my story please go to the short story section of my webpage.

Then, you know when you wait for a bus and it doesn’t come? Then two come together? Well, it happens with short stories too. The week after I won the Charles Dickens competition, I won first prize (adults section) in the Eastbourne Writes Festival. The theme was, The Day After… My winning entry was ‘The Day After the Tsunami’. A touching tale of one woman’s story. And then, blow me down – (or knock me over with a bus) my second entry was a runner up, entitled, ‘The Day After I Won the Lottery’. You can see both stories on my short story page.

Then, (talk about busses!) I was invited to take part in the East Sussex Over 50’s Show at the Winter Garden in Eastbourne. I was asked to give three talks coupling my experiences in Japan with travelling. As I only had ten minutes to impart my words, this proved a bit of a challenge but I hope I managed to give the idea that if you do have a dream, you can live it. You have to decide on how much you want it. If you decide you want it enough, then have the courage to live it and don’t be put off by uncaring or selfish, unimaginative people trying to discourage you. It’s your dream. It’s your life. It’s your decision.

This was great experience for me and I really enjoyed it. The show was a great success (nothing to do with me!) and I was thrilled to be on the same bill as bestselling author, Peter James and actor, Jonathan Lynsley – (Pirates of the Caribbean ll and lll) who was MC and was very kind to me over those two days. Thank you Jonathan for all your support and encouragement.

A blog’s a great place to name drop and now I’ve got it off my chest and done mine, it’s back to ordinary life. Although now I’ve started to blog, I feel another one coming on – more to follow!