Rain, holidays and random publicity!

British holidays - don't you just love 'em?

Well, I do - but, of course, in doing so I run the risk of encountering the Great British Weather... So, I've just come back from a week in the gorgeous Lake District and guess whst? Yup, it rained.

Having said that, it's been an incredibly wet year and with people currently facing having their homes flooded, I'm not going to complain about a few soggy days in Cumbria. Despite the frustration of being rained in (albeit in an impossibly lovely Lakeland cottage) I still found enough to do. Catching up on reading, for example - I managed to read a whole book in a week, which is a major achievement for me. In my day job as a Copywriter I've become a 'professional reader' - meaning that I scan text for errors and flow rather than actually reading it. It makes it incredibly difficult to read a book for fun - but I've been making myself do this because I truly believe that my writing suffers if I don't read regularly.

It was also good because I got to do some serious work on my novel, The Mystical Wombat's Guide to Life©. I've completely reworked the ending after finding, during editing, that it lacked pace and resolved too quickly. I'm really pleased with the new ending - even though one of my major characters has suffered as a result. The decision to injure or even kill a major character is always a scary one, but I think it's the right one... Ah well, we'll see soon!

I just need to devote time to complete all the work on the novel - the response from my Wombat Proofing Posse has been incredibly positive so far, so it's all looking promising...

One lovely - if a bit random - thing that happened last week is that the interview I gave to the Stourbridge News was published. It was decidedly odd to be interviewed but a very pleasant experience and the article is fab (even though they got my home town wrong - it's Wollaston, not Wordsley). You can read it online here...

All in all, quite a positive (if soggy) week!