New writing goals

Happy new year. Yes, I know it's a bit late but have been busy with personal things going on. So, it's a new year, and I have more writing goals with one main one to focus on from this year on. I am going to concentrate on being an indie author and writing and publishing my ebooks/books for adults and children. I might think about sending an idea to a magazine that published a story of mine last year, but not sure. I have to go through any ghost stories I have already written and printed, see if they are suitable then write a blurb for it.

So here are my main writing goals:

1. Publish 'The Valentine's Card' in February. It is out for editing at the moment, and I am sorting out the cover for it. So this should happen.

2. Publish 'Qessa and the Bouncing Blazer'. Edits have been done and I just need to do minor checks on some repetition my editor pointed out.

3. Publish 'The Friend' short story. Will be later in the year as I haven't finished writing it yet. I know what the cover will look like.

4. Either send a ghost story to a magazine or work on ghost stories for a short story collection of my own I have in mind.

5. Get 'The Rainbow School Guide to Anxiety' ready for publication. Nearly finished this. Want to add illustrations to this and work out the cover.

The first three I will definitely do this year. Hopefully the other two, too.

Well, they are my goals for this year as a proper indie author. Good luck with yours.

Autism and hobbies and interests

Here is a rough guide how parents and teachers and other guardians can help children with autism use their special interests.

Subjects: Art, science, music, craft, maths

Skills: Drawing, creating, writing, making, numbers

Knowledge: Birds, pictures, tunes, plants, patterns

Encourage the child to work on related activities to do with their interest. Eg if it is music, they can draw instruments, write their own tunes, write a guide, photograph things. Go to places of interest and learn about music. Join groups of same interest. Play the music instruments.

All these can help the child to socialise and not be alone all the time. They can also learn more and get educated. It could later on become a career.

So, what about me? Well, I liked writing stories at school. English, as it was known then, was my favourite lesson despite being bullied. And look what I do know – I am an author writing for adults and children.

This is a brief guide to a full book I have planned to write about hobbies and interests for children with autism, as part of the Rainbow School guide series and 'Learn about autism'.