For someone who had a career in web design before turning to writing, I should really be more diligent in keeping my website up to date. But when you have two kids and one of them is home part of the week, it leaves very little time for anything outside of parenting and keeping the house from looking like a bomb site.
And then when you set yourself goals like finishing two novels in the space of a couple of months, you definitely don’t have time to keep up with things like social media and blogging. But I really shouldn’t be making excuses. I will do better next time.
In August / September, I finished the first draft of Perfume Therapy. Part of this book was pulled from the original second half of Saved by the Celebutante – before I rewrote it without the perfume element. I did a perfumery course a few years ago in Thailand and thought it would be the perfect setting for a novel – and when I re-watched Chocolat recently, I was inspired to write something in that style. I don’t think it’s actually turned out anything like Chocolat, but hopefully the spirit is still there.
Edits for that went on hold for November while I decided to use Nanowrimo to do a complete draft of another book I had sitting on the backburner for a few years. We’re two weeks in and I’ve managed to stay on track so far. I’ve only completed Nanowrimo once before – although I used last year to finish Saved by the Celebutante – so I didn’t actually care that I didn’t reach 50,000 words. This new book is called 1996 and inspired by my love of time travel stories and one of my favourite years in my personal history.
I have one other book that I’ve started a few drafts of, and so I hope to possibly finish that too in December / January and then spend a few months editing everything before releasing them all some time in 2017. They obviously won’t all be out on the same day, but the aim is to put them on Amazon within a month or two of each other.
This weekend I’m going to see the very talented Kylie Scott at a Romance Readers High Tea in Brisbane. I’m currently reading her book Lick and enjoying it immensely.
Other than that, I recently ran a promotion with E-Reader News Today and it went much better than I expected. So for any writers out there who are looking to advertise their book, I highly recommend them.
I think that’s all for now. I’ll try and be more entertaining next blog!
P.S. Does this qualify as entertaining? The other day, my four year old was playing out on the driveway with his Nerf rocket, and as it was shooting up into the air, it scared a bird, which dropped its lunch, which happened to be a freaking SAUSAGE it had found somewhere! It landed a couple of inches away from my four year old. My husband hadn’t actually seen the bird, so he was very weirded out when my son told him a sausage fell out of the sky. I think that’s more bizarre than when I was in the front yard the other day clearing out some weeds in the landscape rock and found that someone had tucked a piece of salami in there. Considering we’re a vegetarian family, I have no idea how it got there!