This is a post of two halves, with a little extra bit in the middle - you can skip to the heading 'Big Announcement' if you like. As I began to think about planning for 2026, I realised that this was also a good time to reflect on 2025, and also that January itself is …
Inching Gradually Forwards
(I have a feeling I've used this post title before - inching gradually is often the only way I can make any kind of progress!) Although I knew I would probably not be able to do a lot of writing during my scheduled hospital stay, I didn't realise there would be absolutely none, and very …
The Horse with Two Names
Here's a quick update on my writing progress. First of all, having reached the end of the first draft of 'Heiress in Exile' I am now gradually working through some edits, which this time seem largely to consist of changing people's names (and the names of houses in one or two cases) which I had …
June catch-up – what’s happened to summer?
First the good news - having seen someone questioning on Twitter whether self-published writers really only sell 250 books on average, which sparked a discussion about whether this meant 250 altogether or per published book, I decided to check my Amazon author reports page to see how many I had sold overall. I was slightly …
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The Plan for 2024
I have a feeling there is a quotation about Fate (or maybe the gods) laughing at planners, but I've been unable to find it amongst all the 'inspirational' and mostly somewhat stern quotes about how essential it is to make plans if you want to achieve anything. However I have located one of my favourite …
Cecilia Peartree and the (so far) Non-fatal Accident
'But what were you doing on a wall?' is usually the first question people ask when I tell them I broke my hip falling off a wall. (The second and third questions are often to do with where I got my jumper and where I am from because they don't recognise my accent.) Actually the …
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Opinions Wanted!
Because I'm trying to do some editing at the moment, naturally I would prefer to be doing almost anything else. I found myself wielding a duster for the first time for months (maybe even years) earlier today, and I've just sent out a summary of actions from a meeting in record time, which will probably …
Goodbye to July
I am fairly happy to say goodbye to July. Due to circumstances beyond my control I've spent more of the month in the house than expected, which has translated into some extra writing, but only enough to exceed my Camp NaNoWriMo goal by about 10,000 words. The goal was ridiculously small to start with as …
Muddling Through
The River Ness in Inverness As mentioned in my New Year post, I've been focussing on the completion of my two unfinished novels, and I'm happy to say I've actually got to the end of both of them, more or less. Because 'The Elusive Widow' is longer and therefore will probably be harder to edit, …
Hope Triumphs over Experience, as often happens
I'm happy to announce that yesterday I created a new writing plan for 2022, despite having failed in all previous attempts to keep to one. I think there's slightly more hope with this one as I added a new element, which was that as well as turning over the page and starting again, something I'm …
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Cecilia Peartree - woman of mystery 