Weekends away?

I’m blogging today at The Pink Heart Society about Weekends Away!

Love to see you there!

Which Cover Calls to You?

In August, Miracle :Twin Babies hits the shelves in the UK and is available for advance purchase in Australia. Same book but two very different covers.

Which one calls to you the most?

Trying Not to be Jealous

This year my eldest son is at an external campus for school and he’s in the bush. It’s a full academic year along with a huge outdoor program. He’s been doing a lot of hiking in the high country and I surely do not eny him carrying a full pack…BTDT and now I just take my lunch!

Nor do I envy him no heating except for wood-fired heaters when it gets below zero celcius, or hot water dependent on a fellow 15 year-old lighting the boiler. But I do so totally envy him ski-ing once a week this term!  For the second week in a row he has got a glorious sunny day to ski and while I’m stuck at a computer he’s swooshing down the slopes. Am I fluro- green with envy. YOU BET!

Feeling Less than Young

I’m feeling a bit like this jetty today….broken in parts but still trying to do the job required. Good news on the tennis elbow front…finally seeing some improvement although I’m yet to test it with a racquet but at least I can pick up the tea caddy now! Mind you, the tennis team might not want me back seeing as the wonderful woman I found to fill in is actually a better player than I am !

Fortunately I’m still able to type so back I go to sort out Leo and Abbie who really have to get serious and they’re just not

Working From Home In the Holidays…an oxymoron

Sometimes the school holidays and I happily co-exist and I manage to work both jobs and still do some stuff with the kids but not this July. So last week after family life went a bit haywire I just accepted that I had to let all thoughts of writing go. I had to embrace the holidays, enjoy the rest of the week and catch up when both boys are back at school.  Typing that is a lot easier than actually doing  it but I managed it.  I’ve played Wii…I am determined to work out HOW to stay on the track in cow racing, ..I’ve cuddled up on the couch and watched movies with the boys, I’ve enjoyed two dinners with friends and slept in.  It’s all been lovely. The only down side is the fact that Ican hardly remember what Leo and Abbie’s story is all about and the deadline doesn’t shift even though my domestic life has fallen apart. 

Each year the ‘middle of the year’ book is a hard gig because of holidays and July being birthday month. I guess I thought as we were only away for one week I would be able to keep writing but the universe operates in a certain way and who am I to think that this year things would be different?

Meanwhile, I  am all caught up on Harry Potter..watched the Order of the Phoenix again last night and I am READY for the new movie.

How did you get that idea?

This is a question I get asked a lot and I usually reply, ‘they don’t come fast but they come from things around me. Snippets in the paper, a conversation on the radio, in a cafe, events in people’s lives.’ 

Those of you familar with my books will know I have a bit of a love-affair with old buildings.  In my current WIP, I decided that the clinic would be in the original building of the country hospital. I didn’t have anything specific in mind when I thought this so I ‘googled’   and bingo, up came a glorious Edwardian building with the staff lined up in front in their starched collars and aprons.  As I peered at the picture I noticed a hammock hanging between the veranda posts and I decided my clinic would have a hammock too, so I wrote :

“Abbie had seen an old photo from 1908 where a hammock hung between the veranda posts so she’d bought a brightly coloured hammock and had slung it between the last two posts on the front veranda. One day she planned to have time to lie in it more than the brief ‘test’ she’d taken the when she’d installed it. Meanwhile Bluey enjoyed lying underneath it using it as shade.”

About three pages later I needed the hero to appear when Abbie least expected it and the hammock slammed into my head.

“Lying in her hammock and looking for all the world as if he belonged there, was Leo. His long and tanned short-clad legs stretched out in front of him, and one arm was crooked behind the back of his head, the angle moulding his soft cotton designer T-shirt tight to his well defined pectoral muscles and biceps. Aviator sunglasses covered his onyx eyes while his other long-fingered surgeon’s hand dangled lazily over the side stroking Bluey’s head.

The kelpie looked up adoringly while his tail thumped out an enthusiastic tattoo.

Traitor. “

Now, that’s still a rough draft but it’s an example of how ideas plop into my head and at the time I don’t always see how they are going to work out. The hammock had no real role when I first hung it up and then it became a perfect way to really discombobulate my heroine.

Now back to Hammocks…my 11 year old lives in his hammock in the summer and even sleeps in it when we’re camping by the beach.  I’d love to hear the wild and wonderful places you have lazed away a few hours in a hammock and if you’ve met any gorgeous men lying in hammocks