Something new

I tried another new food yesterday. I wanted a Gillian McKeith energy bar but all I could find in Sainsbury's was Food Doctor bars so bought his Get Set bar, which has dried fruit, quinoa and seeds in. It was OK but won't buy it again (sorry Dr Marber). I still like Brazil nuts but wont' buy anymore after the packet is gone as I want to cut down more again. The extra exercise is working because I realised at the weekend that I have lost a couple of pounds over the last few weeks. Hurrah. Still doing the dance exercises on Saturday but laxing in the Pilates side of it on Sundays. Must get back to it again next weekend.

Well, this is my news today. Back to work now.

Rejection

Today I decided to chase up the progress with my novella by emailing the publisher as it was 6 weeks ago I submitted it. I got a prompt reply saying that they had sent a rejection on the 17th January, which I didn't get. Now I know. It's back to square one with Checkmate. I think I will put additions to the synopsis in a couple of weeks when I'm on holiday and then send it off to another publisher who has just started out. I would like to find a home for it as I did love writing the book.

Meantime, I have revised Chapters 1-4 of Allie and will type those up at the weekend. I have also amended a short story which I will email to a publisher this weekend for their anthology, as I found out yesterday that the deadline has been put forward to 1st March due to them having received many submissions. Then I will start revising another story for a competition.

Back to work now.

My first success for 2010

As you all know who've been reading my blog lately, I have been writing to various magazines this year. Well, yesterday I had my first success. I got home to find on my armchair the latest copy of Natural Health magazine. Knowing that I had written a letter to them I eagerly opened the magazine and went straight to the letters page. And there it was...as the star letter. Yay. It was a letter about if fluoride is good for you or not, something that I'd previously had another star letter award for. This time my award will hopefully be a whole range of Dr Organic Manuka Honey products, which I have calculated to come to about £60. Not bad, eh? I hope this is the sign of good things to come for me.

Must get back to work now.

Going Nuts

No, I don't mean I'm going mad but I mean nuts in what you eat. I have been eating walnuts but thought I'd try different nuts. So at the weekend I bought a snack pack of nuts, seeds and dried fruit. I ended up trying an almond (don't like the taste of raw), a cashew nut (again don't like taste of) and Brazil nuts, which I did like so might buy a bag of those next weekend as Holland and Barrett's still have their offer on.

Meantime, now that I have started the last chapter of Georgina, it is now going very well. Also at the weekend I finalised a story I plan to send to an anthology, a small piece on natural products and printed and posted two stories for magazine competitions, and finished typing up Chapter 6 of Georgina. Only 3 more chapters to go until I catch myself up.

Well, back to work now and hope this entry goes on here as the last one didn't.

The Ball's Rolling

I have now set the ball rolling for doing library talks to children. I emailed the Head of Children's libraries on Tuesday asking if she could contact all the libraries for me, and today I decided to phone to see if she got my email. She was at lunch so I left a message for her to phone me, which she did. She is very happy to contact all the library managers in my borough with my details, and I have agreed that they can contact me directly in they are interested in hiring me. I won't get paid for any talks as they don't have the budget to do so at the moment but she did say that I could take along some of my books and sell them to any interest people at the sessions. So yay. Now all I have to do is sit back and wait for any interest libraries to phone me. I am already waiting on 2 libraries to call me back.

I am in a happy mood for my writing life. I started the first draft of Chapter 10, the final chapter, of Georgina today and once I've finished that I intend to go back to Allie and revise that to make it a lot shorter. Busy bee, that's me.