Like Bees To Honey by Caroline Smailes

The fabulous Caroline Smailes, has another fabulous book out next week and you lucky devils can grab an early showing by following this amazing blog tour. Below I am hosting Chapter 26, with the next chapter being hosted at www.beinglucydiamond.blogspot.com.

If you wish to follow the tour from the beginning then start here www.carolinesmailes.co.uk/blog

Open publication - Free publishing

Blog Of The Week: In Search Of Adam

I can't quite remember what came first; stumbling across Caroline Smailes' blog or reading an article in one of the woman's magazines on how she became a writer. All I know is when I read her first book 'In Search Of Adam', I was hooked. http://insearchofadam.blogspot.com/

There are very few funny people in this society, even fewer that can translate that humour into the written word, but Caroline's blog is so full of humorous anecdotes on her life as a writer, that I regularly laugh out loud. Caroline paints a very honest portrayal of how immensely hard it is to gain recognition as a writer in this celebrity infused world. Gone are the days of the huge advances on a book deal, unless you are the latest reality show star, but Caroline's determination to succeed and be heard, inspires a whole new breed of wannabe writers, including myself.

I have a lot to thank this lady for. Mainly the fact that I'm sat here with my first finished manuscript and about to start work on my second, something that I had only dreamed about, until I started to read her blog on a regular basis and her motivation and desire to write began to rub off.

So if you haven't done so already, then please visit Caroline Smailes' blog http://insearchofadam.blogspot.com/ and immerse yourself in the every day life of a writer. You won't be disappointed!

Christmas Hats And My Lost Mojo

Well both of my Christmas parties have come and gone, the latter being only Friday, when I decided to treat my co-workers to glow stick bracelets and comedy hats which included, Smurf, Sailor and Pirate! Didn't really feel in the mood for this one at all - I kind of lost my mojo as entertainment consultant that night, so I let the party carry on around me and I was more than happy when I got home at midnight.

Now that Christmas is nearly upon us, it gives me chance to reflect on what's happened this year, blog wise.

I'm more than happy with my profile at Radio Nottingham at the moment, so the fact that it's increased this year was pretty great.

Task wise, well I could have achieved more, it has to be said. I lost my mojo on this one, a little bit in the year, but I have promised myself that 2009 will be the year to complete a dazzling array of tasks (watch this space!)

Organisational skills - well it has to be said that most of my tasks this year have been organised last minute and I've gone into them at a hundred miles an hour, I've promised myself that next year I will a) put more thought into the whole task process and b) not get so stressed in doing them!

And finally, getting to meet some wonderful people this year, has been a definite bonus. I met Caroline, Trousers and B at Caroline's book signing and hopefully I will be meeting Heather - my 40 things American counterpart in New York over the New Year.

So I'd like to wish all my readers a very Happy Christmas and I promise I will comment more on your blogs next year!

The Day I Got Excited About A Fridge Magnet

The Internet is a marvellous place. Not only can you gain any information you require at the touch of a button, you also get to meet a whole host of people that ordinarily your paths would not cross with.

Take this Saturday. I was excited, almost giddy in fact. I was going to meet Caroline Smailes at the signing of her new book, Black Boxes, someone I've been blog buddies with for almost a year. I even chose a suitably non freaky outfit to wear, not that I have freaky outfits in the first place you understand, but first impressions and all that.

Armed with my sheep poo bookmarks (a present for Caroline) me and hubbie set off on a road trip up to Cheshire Oaks. Then we met C and it's kinda of weird when that happens, 'cos you feel that you've known this person for ages, because of this whole blogging thing, but really you are only meeting them for the first time.

Then we went back to C's house for cake and it felt even weirder, but in a nice weird way. Her house was full of bloggers! There was everyone there, from Badger to Trousers to B and a few more besides that I didn't get chance to say hi to. C wore a 'I Heart Lesbian nurses' t-shirt and I got two new fridge magnets, which I have to admit, I got a little bit giddy about (not quite sure what would have happened if I'd got a lesbian t-shirt as well!!). I also saw Captain Jack riding a dinosaur, but I may have dreamt that, or perhaps there was a secret ingredient in the cake, that nobody told me about??!!

Anyways (oh gosh, I can feel myself going giddy all over again!) I heart blogging people, I think they are ace. Even hubbie commented as we drove away, that very much like the Flickr folk that we meet on our travels, we didn't meet one bad person and we managed to get home to catch X Factor, how good is that?

So now the fridge magnets are pride of place next to Captain Jack and my signed Black Boxes is being kept safe on my special 'signed' section of my bookcase in between 31 Jewell Street and In Search Of Adam.

I had a lovely day, thank you Caroline and the rest of the blogging folk!

Apologies to my blog friend

Sorry Caroline that it's taken me nearly all week to display the fine widget (on the left hand side of my blog) for your new book. I hope this special non - 40 things post, makes up for the fact! If you haven't already tried it, then please have a go, go on you know you want to! Just press on decide and this will lead you through a set of questions that will in turn take you to another blog person, that answered roughly the same.

And for those of you who are in the Cheshire Oaks area on September 27th between 12-2pm, then please do go to Caroline's book signing of 'Black Boxes' at Borders. Her first novel, 'In Search Of Adam', was stunning, so I can't wait to grab a copy of this one.

PS I hope one day Caroline can write a blog post about attending my book signing

The Novel

So I've started to write my novel, after many years of procrastinating. So far I'm up to 5043 words. Caroline Smailes, whose blog regulary makes me laugh out loud, is currently on book 3 and 17312 words. I guess Caroline is winning at the moment.