Soon all my old posts will be disappearing to be archived in my private files. Instead here will appear my random pearls of wisdom, tales of my adventures, or lack of in the publishing world, marathon training, (yes really!) and parental fears, failures and successes. As the kids are getting older I have decided to keep the tales of their formative years for myself and maintain their anonymity.
So I guess I need to make a few introductions. I have three children the eldest and youngest are girls (Hpops and pixie) with my poor son (imp) sandwiched in the middle of a world of pink and fairies. I have a husband who works very hard but also sometimes has to travel, sometimes at short notice which can make life difficult as I try to juggle the social life of the three kids – they definitely have a better social life than me. I taught in a primary schools for five years before the kids and since then have been dabbling with my other passion – writing!
My novel Tumbling Through Life was published a few years ago and since then I have been working on several projects – some for adults and some for children without really reaching the end of any of them, the kids schedule hasn’t helped and my talent for prevaricating means that I am able to make things that should take half an hour last for several! This year the youngest is off to school full time in September and so the time for prevaricating must come to an end and the time for serious writing must begin. My aim is to keep things ticking over until then and from that moment on write for 4-5 hours a day and maybe actually finish off some of these half done projects and get somewhere. While it would be nice to be the next J K Rowling or Stephen King my main hope is that I can write something that will entertain people for a few hours. When I read I want to connect with the characters and place, no matter how outlandish the world set before me I want to be able to believe in it and forget myself for a while – if my writing can do that, even for just a few people then I will have considered myself to have achieved my goal.
Before I get to September I have a marathon to run! For the last few years I have applied to participate in the London marathon and this year I was successful in gaining a place in the public ballot. Initially I was overjoyed then reality set in! So far I have been very lucky with the weather and have largely been able to keep up with the training schedule. I started proper training back in September and went from struggling around for 2-3 miles to running over 7 miles and feeling as if I have some left in the tank. As the date draws nearer training becomes more intense I hope to go a mile further each week and have done a few 20 mile runs before the big day!
I am sure the summer will be spent watching the Olympics, football and kids on various climbing frames as the summer holidays hit. Through this blog it would be great to hear from new people, hopefully you can check out some of my book/film/theatre and toy reviews as they appear as well as examples of my writing work. Most importantly wishing everyone a happy and safe 2012!