We seem to have reached the end of a week of glorious sunshine in Edinburgh, which coincided with my holiday week and the arrival of a new camera. I even found the first bluebell of spring starting to open out in our garden. I am not sure if it will risk opening fully as the …
A little more about trains
I wrote here a while ago about my obsession with trains. I'm afraid this is about to become even more pronounced, as I am in the middle of making bookings for another train safari round Europe. I have decided to give into the obsession instead of trying to fight it any more, so I've set …
It might (as well) be spring
It's a good idea to be cautious about the arrival of spring, as most Scots are only too well aware! But with two lovely bright weekend mornings having happened one after the other, I've definitely got the feeling that it might be time to crawl out of hibernation. That doesn't rule out the possibility that …
Read an Ebook Week
Apologies for the self-promotion today! But having enrolled in this scheme I thought I'd better do something towards publicising it. I think many readers of this blog will have seen my two 'Quest' novels already, but just in case they haven't, this is a chance to get hold of them for free. As part of …
Grand plans
I was tempted to label this post 'The best-laid plans' on the grounds that my plans have a way of not working out the way I expect, but maybe that would have been tempting fate! To prove I even make plans at all, here is my plan for 2014 in my special plan-writing notebook, complete …
Why I wrote ‘Adventure on the Scotch Express’
The first impetus to write my novella ‘Adventure on the Scotch Express’ came from the re-enactment, in 2009, of a suffragette procession that had taken place in Edinburgh in 1909. I took part in the re-enactment myself, adorned with a sash in Women’s Freedom League colours (green, gold and white) in memory of my suffragette …
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Trains… and trains and trains
I'd better start with an apology to anybody waiting for Pitkirtly VII (A Tasteful Crime). I am gradually working through the editing process but for various reasons it's taking a little longer than I would have liked, although one consolation is that the first draft turned out to be not nearly as bad as it …
12 days of Christmas
Welcome to my 12 days of Christmas free gifts extravaganza, if you haven't already come across it. If you have, then read on for the next instalment! On my Facebook page and across at my McCallum Ogilvy blog (http://mccallumogilvy.wordpress.com) I have already mentioned my two seasonal free downloads, one from Amazon and one from Smashwords. …
So, Giancarlo Petrelli, we meet again…
With only a week to go until the end of November - the end of National Novel Writing Month - I've progressed a good way through the novel previously known as 'Pitkirtly VII' and currently entitled 'A Tasteful Crime'. Oddly enough the writing of this novel has coincided with the creation of a new Amazon …
Blackberry Crumble – the path to publication
Today my (long) short story ‘Blackberry Crumble’ is launched on Kindle as part of ‘Off the KUF Volume 1’, an anthology produced for and on behalf of the Kindle Users Forum: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00GDLGTCS/ and http://www.amazon.com/Off-KUF-Volume-Fiction-Kindle-ebook/dp/B00GDLGTCS To mark the occasion, I thought I would write a little about the processes of writing and editing that led up …
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Cecilia Peartree - woman of mystery 