The last few days of 2017

As always, it's been a busy time of year at home, getting ready for, and now clearing up after Christmas; leaving little time to research, write or even update my social media.

I gave each of my daughters a paperback copy of 'Orchard View' for Christmas.  I don't know if the eldest has had time to look at her copy. She went home on Boxing Day and had to go to work the next day, so it may be some time before she gets a chance to look at it. The youngest is just over halfway through - just getting to know George Bateman - while the middle one stayed up all Boxing Day night to finish her copy.

They have both spoken to me independently about the story and both agreed that they wanted to know what happened to the Alders after they left Orchard View. They were sad when their story came to an end, and hoped that later in the book there would be and update on how they were doing in their new life.

I found it interesting that both were so heavily invested in Mae and Philip, as originally, I had planned a completely different ending for them. However, whilst writing their story, I became very protective of them and wanted to give them a happy ending, so I created another character for the unhappy ending.

You may have seen that I have been taking part in Melanie Thurlow's #WIPTruthorDare game. It has been very useful for 'filling out' the characters in my next story. It's amazing how a simple idea, query or suggestion can ignite the imagination and produce something creative and entertaining. I will play this game again at some point.

The #DecTheShelves challenge resulted in 25 purchases of books by indie authors. The next challenge will be to find the time to read them all before next December!

And finally with only two days left of this year ... it is time to think about my goals for next year...

Melanie Thurlow's blog

I'm so glad I found Melanie Thurlow's blog. She has a number of interesting conversations on Twitter that I'm following at the moment.

#DecTheShelves invites independently published authors #indieauthor to post buy links for their books in the run up to Christmas. It's a great way to promote independently published works. Thankfully, a few days ago, Melanie posted a list containing 181 titles to choose from which I am finding very useful.

#DecTheShelvesChallenge asks readers to commit to buying 25 books/e-books by independent authors between 1st and 25th  December. I thought this was a brilliant idea; a way to buy lesser known works for Christmas presents and stock up on my own reading material. However, I've already got a bit carried away. We are only on Day 5 and I've started reading 5 books I've bought for the promotion and had only just started reading Serena Mackesy's 'The Temp' when the challenge began. I need to buy a book every day and save it to read later... something I am currently struggling to do. Today, Amazon have sent me the boxed set I pre-ordered yesterday, 'Holidays Ever After: Contemporary Romance Holiday Boxed Set', and it has 20 full-length stories... My resolve to save it for later might be sorely tested today!

While #DecTheShelves is great for promoting already published works, Melanie has also created  #WIPTruthOrDare with Heather Hayden. It is a game where you tweet a truth or respond to a dare each day of the month. Melanie has provided the full list of 'truth or dares' for December and I thought I'd casually sign up and 'play the game' this month. What I have found is that this game is actually helping me focus on particular characters and develop the story line of my next novel. If you're writing something, perhaps you would like to give it a go too.