Gorgeous song...

If you appreciate great musicianship, you must check this out!

Hilary from Simply Yours Designs (who designed the layout for Coffee & Roses) has it posted on her blog... and it absolutely blew me away! Wow...

It's all happening...

I'm one busy bee at the mo...

The book is coming along very nicely, with the last set of edits due back from my editor today - so I'm a little bit nervous about how those will be when they arrive, but excited too!

Also - and this is incredibly exciting - I'm finally being able to put my album together!!! I've been self-funding the album project for the past couple of years or so, and with all that happened last year with losing my job, the whole thing had to be put on the back-burner. Now I have a little bit saved I'm finally able to fund the last few bits so I should hopefully have a sparkly album all finished in the next couple of months or so!!! Keep watching the blog for more on this as it happens!

Talking of music, two of the tracks going on the album are songs I created with the very talented Mr Reuben Halsey... He's just remixed a song by Orbital and created a brilliant video for it, so I thought I'd share it here... Enjoy!!

Watch My First Music Video...

I've got a Music Video!

My great chum (and all-round brilliant composer/chill-out artist/producer) Reuben Halsey has produced this video for a song we worked on together called The Meaning of Life, which is being released at www.indiestore.com on 1st December- just in time for Christmas!

You can hear more of Reuben's amazing music here...

Listen and enjoy - and mark the date in your diary for your opportunity to own it!

I won an award - let the squirrels dance!

I've just won an award!

I am the winner of Best New Artist in the 2008 ISSA Song Contest Awards!

It's come at an amazing time because I've just been made redundant and my confidence had hit an all-time low. The prize includes a cheque for $500 (about £300), which is really going to help with the bills in the coming months. Right now I'm OK till mid-January and then I'll be in the financial equivalent of Wylie Coyote dashing off a cliff and running on thin air...

It's a scary time - not least because everything rests on my having a job. Not only have the wonderful Tories decided to put me out of work just in time for Christmas, but I've also just discovered that the performing arts academy I teach at is ending in December. There are no jobs anywhere it seems right now and I'm not earning anywhere near enough from the few bits of freelance writing I do to pay my rent and bills. I know it's happening right across the country and it's horrible - even though you know it's your job that's redundant, not you, it's impossible to separate the two sometimes. All I can do is to draw heavily on my Optimism Stores to try to tell myself everything will be OK - and just ride out the panic when it arrives.

I've got to keep positive - if for nothing else to show the world that I'm not beaten yet. In the meantime, I've started writing my NaNoWriMo novel, Travels with my Teapot - excerpts will appear here soon, so watch this space!

My sister sent me this YouTube link and it cheered me up no end - you've got to love Dancing Squirrels...