I am writing this from the one bloody computer that remembers the blog log in details. I am somehow keeping going with this damn thing, but I am right now the equivalent of a rolled up piece of paper, sellotaped to a chair in an empty room in an abandoned building; no one is going to read this and it’s not clear what they are going to get out of it if they do… My blog stats are flatter than my wit, which is at half-mast as it is.

Anyway. To get you all up to speed, because it is my blog and I can if I want to; I am writing again, to the extent that I have submitted an entry to the Penny Dreadful novella competition. If it does well, I find out in December. If it doesn’t do well in December, you find out too, because I will put it out to sell electronically as an ebook, so I will. I worked on it since my maternity leave so I am eager for it to strut its stuff.

I submitted that at 7.30am last Thursday at my office desk. Which is where I will be for quite sometime. My usual routine is to get to a swimming pool before work, but increasingly the nagging voice on my shoulder has been asking me which is more important, writing or swimming? Usually followed with a sarcastic Hmmmmm? as nagging voices are oft to do. It also usually points out all the flaws I have as a worker, a parent, and so on, but on this point it has been getting louder. So twice a week I will be working solely on my writing. It is the weirdest thing, to do what I want. No doubt it will play out like the first fifteen minutes of Casualty and I will be killed in a car crash/left by my husband for a stripper/see a meteorite crash through the ceiling while a bunch of cardiganed middle aged women, standing a safe distance away, will watch the fireball unfold, fold their arms and purse their lips and say nothing more than a smug hmmmmm… Ah here!

“Good luck!”

I do have a novel that I have about 15k written about and most of the rest plotted out, and I want so much to write it I think I would enjoy doing it with Dolores Umbridge’s pen. It is about people who I love so much I think they are almost real, really, and I can’t let them not be read. Being able to get to a desk to discuss them is so wonderful I would do it at any time. I do not have that space often, very few of us do, so I am very, very lucky.  Really looking forward to it, am willing to dodge comets to do so.  I am to swim three days a week, and still try to get home at a sensible time to clean the house and pick up mah son and do all the other stuff.

I aim to write up again next week, next Sunday hopefully. Very much hope you’re well, reading this, and that life is all good and happy. Drop us a line if you can? Best wishes…