Why I've not been blogging.

I've been avoiding the blogging - I have, I have :(

Because every time I try to think of something to post, I'm always thinking of crappy, depressing stuff, which is no good. I'm currently ill with a horrendous (and I mean horrendous) virus. We're ALL ill: me, my little girl and my partner.

Writing has not happened in a week, 'cause this cold is like the evil queen bitch of all colds and I've been laid out, barely able to move for a couple of days.

I managed 1000 words last night, which is awesome :) Haven't managed it tonight, even though the story is all there in my head. I run out of energy when I go to write it down, and that's assuming I can with the little one coughing her guts up :(

So ... this is why I've not been blogging. 2014 is still challenging, with so much going on within the family, and I don't want my posts to be all about illness and dying ... and strange viruses that I fancifully wonder aren't induced by some top secret spraying of chemicals into the air that the government could have done around the same time that they announced London had gone above the allowed air pollution levels for the city (which was around the time this cold kicked off - a week ago).

New things you may have missed....

The new paperback cover for The Spell Of Summer

My radio interview up in Manchester and also meeting loads of fab readers and authors - I will conjure up the energy to write about that.

General chit-chat via Facebook (that's where you go to really stay up-to-date)

That's all from me for now. Over the next month, imagine me with my head down trying to finish The Spell of Summer, because time is running out and the universe is throwing up a whole load of obstacles this time around - one after the other :/

Perceptions and Deceptions: The Drunk Lady and The Lost Swan

I had nothing to blog about last night. This morning I thought, "Powers That Be, please help me out here - my mind is blank - I don't want to spend every blog  post talking about how much I hate pigeon-holing my books into genres!"

They listened :)

I was walking my daughter to school today, and we were walking through the car park of her school, which is also the car park of a very large park, with a huge pond to the left, where you find ducks, geese, swans and some other birds...

And there in the middle of the car park was a cygnet. Probably a "teenager" in swan years - it still had its baby grey colouring, but was almost full grown swan size. It was clearly lost and trying to find its way back to the pond and its mother. I slowed the pushchair down so as not to scare it - swans are known for attacking if they're frightened or angry. Of course, my daughter was intrigued.

To my left, there suddenly appeared a drunk man, looking fairly pissed off to be awake first thing in the morning, strutting / waddling into the car park with a beer can in one hand and a humongous beer gut. My first reaction was "Ew..." followed by, "I have my daughter sandwiched between a could-be unpredictable swan, and a could-be unpredictable drunk man."

As the events played out in front of me, I realised that I had made a huge error of judgement. Huge. Which, although maybe understandable because I was thinking about the safety aspects with my daughter around, was also mildly annoying because I like to think I'm not a judgemental person... Firstly, the drunk man was a drunk woman (my bad!). Secondly, the drunk and the swan immediately formed some kind of connection. She started to speak to it and coaxed it back towards the pond. I immediately thought of the story, The Ugly Duckling. The drunk woman, maybe because she was drunk, had no fear of the swan and no barriers up at all. In return the swan gave her its trust and followed her back to the pond. The drunk woman was the ugly duckling - she had been a little girl once, undoubtedly playing make believe that she would one day be a princess, or the superhero... For a split second there, she sort of was the superhero...

We form so many judgements about everything, based on what we are conditioned with - based on what we think we should see; on what others want us to see... It stops us from seeing the truth. I wonder, when the time comes, who will actually be the one to destroy The Witching Pen, or if it will even be destroyed at all.

Let's hope so... because it's time to wake up. The drunk woman and me are not that different - we both have a problem fitting into society. But whereas I immerse myself in writing, she immerses herself in alcohol. The only difference is the reaction; the response to life; how we cope. I wonder if any of us are really that different from each other.