De-blog

Slight blog overload this week, but life is unpredictable, so I'm posting a few days early. My Christmas novella, A Midnight Clear , is available for free until July 31st in the Smashwords Summer/Winter sale (use SFREE at checkout). If you're not a 'Christmas in July' person, you could download it and save it for later. ;) The blurb: It's a cold, desperate December when a young girl flees home, in search of food, shelter and the real Santa Claus. Stranded in George and Josh's hometown, she discovers that the spirit of Christmas can be found in the most unexpected of places. Includes the story of The Little Match Girl, by Hans Christian Andersen. Length: 26,000 words (75 pages) approx. Suitable for younger readers and adults, aged 12+.  A stand-alone story from the Hiding Behind The Couch series. Also part of Boughs of Evergreen - A Holiday Anthology (proceeds to The Trevor Project). * * * * * An excerpt: "Hey," George said ge...

Next Monday (December 15th) marks the release of my second Christmas story of the year, Red Hot Christmas , so we'll start as we mean to go on, by officially revealing the FABULOUS cover, created by Natasha Snow . Natasha's a brilliant cover artist / designer, and such a great person to work with. For both Red Hot Christmas and Crying in the Rain , I gave her a brief outline of the story and her first ideas were what we eventually went with, even though I fuss and fret and go all around the world before I reach the conclusion that she had it right all along. I think it's what comes of writing a series, whereby Crying in the Rain and Red Hot Christmas are chronologically #5 and #11 (full list at end of post), although I wrote Red Hot Christmas last Christmas, and wrote Crying in the Rain during the summer. By this point, the characters are so familiar to me that I have a clear picture in my head of what they are like - it's more of a psychological profile...

So, yes, well. I have NEVER been so tired in my life. Or not since my dear daughters were yay big [imagine me holding up a finger and thumb with an inchy inchworm sized gap between]. But today my youngest daughter is leaving home. She's the blondie at the start of the Boughs of Evergreen trailer. My eldest says she's never leaving home... can't say I blame her. Home is nice. Home is also my place of work, and part of the reason I'm so blooming tired, but we're...so...close... Boughs of Evergreen - the holiday anthology from Beaten Track - is out on 21st November and today is the 5th [kudos, Mr. Fawkes, not quite the folk hero people think, but anyway] and I am still editing. Goodness! But fear not, intrepid readers! We shall be victorious! How victorious? Well, there's a giveaway to enter, if you're quick! You can find it on the Beaten Track website here: http://www.beatentrackpublishing.com/?n1=boughs_of_evergreen And here, for your viewi...