A History of Hitchin

St. Mary's Church, Hitchin

I’ve been procrastinating since I uploaded the chapters of my novel HERE. (Did you see what I did there?) And, while down with procrastination-itus, I’ve created ANOTHER blog.  

OK, I'm guessing you’re going tell me I’m a blog addict. That I’m stealing all of Blogger's domain names.  Well that’s enough name calling, thank you very much. Google very kindly told me I can have 100 blogs if I want, so be prepared.

Anyway, my brand new blog is about Hitchin, the town where I grew up.  It’s called, ‘Hitchin through the years’ and if you know of the town, or just interested to see where all the domain names are disappearing to, do pop over and visit HERE.

I've always had a love for local history, and some may recall this POST, where I mentioned the local history book 'wot I wrote' on the Hitchin school I attended, ‘Hats off to the Past, Coats off to the Future – a history of Wilshere-Dacre School.   The thing is, I recently saw a secondhand copy of MY book being sold by a bookseller for £65.00.  Jeez! Well, I  thought, I’m not having that.  I’m going to upload it onto Kindle – oh yes I am.  Trouble is, I’ve been looking into how to upload onto Kindle on my post on one of my other blogs (I know) HERE.  But, truth be told, the thought of uploading a book with images is pretty daunting, even more daunting than uploading a novel.   But that's my next project, well one of them, once I'm over my procrastination malady.

The People's Friend Annual 2014

Okay, I have a plan.  A blogging plan. I'm going to blog more, and, when I do, I'm going to waffle less...

So, starting as I mean to go on...here we go...

I'm chuffed to tiny bits to be in The People's Friend 2014 Annual.  It arrived from Amazon yesterday and is absolutely gorgeous.  The picture with my story is just beautiful, and just how I imagined when I wrote the story. And even better than that, I'm sharing the pages with so many fabulous writers, including Suzanne Jones, Pat Posner and Samantha Tonge.  *Does a wee happy dance.*

And talking of the lovely The People's Friend, why not pop over to Samantha Tonge's Blog and enjoy her great interview with Shirley Blair, The Commissioning Fiction Editor of The People's Friend?

So what do you think?  Not too much waffle? Too much waffle?  Answers on a postcard please, to arrive before July 31st 2012. ;-)

Have a lovely day all!

So what's been happening...?

Well, I’ll start with the bad news.  When an agent said my children’s novel was one of the better ones they’d seen, I got rather excited and decided to invest in it. I posted it off to a consultancy agency, in the hope of getting it up to scratch, but got a terrible report back. I cried, as you do, and have now seriously lost faith in it. I'm not saying what the agency had to say was wrong, but I'm not sure how long it will be before I find the courage to read it through again.

There is good news though, I sold two stories to My Weekly, and I have a story in this week's Yours. There’s even a teeny, tiny photo of me too, which is nice and slightly scary at the same time.

In other news, I’m planning to publish the first three chapters of my thriller, Eight Degrees, on a series of blogs.  How daring is that?  Well not very, as I'll be hiding behind the pen-name, Amanda Timoney, as I'm too chicken to use my own.  The blogs are almost ready, so watch this space!

  

And in other middle-sized news, I’ve completely amazed myself as, not only have I set up a Facebook page as Amanda Timoney, BUT, and you’re going to say 'WOW', I know it.  I’ve only gone and added a clever ‘LIKEY’ thingy-me-jiggy-widget-type-bobby on Writing Allsorts.  Go that girl! If you cast your eyes to the right side-bar you’ll be able to see it in all its glory.

And on that note, I better go and hang the washing out before it storms.

Woman's Weekly Writing Workshop

I won't attempt to go into too much detail about this wonderful workshop, as Wendy Clarke and Tracy Fells,  have written excellent in-depth posts, which are definitely worth reading.  But I just couldn't resist mentioning what a fabulous day it was.  

Gaynor Davis is lovely and made everyone feel instantly relaxed, to the point I even read out the beginning of a story.  And guess what, my voice only wobbled a teeny tiny bit.  Gaynor smiled, nodded and said, ‘lovely’ - which I was thrilled about. I’ll gloss over the fact she said encouraging words to everyone.  (Justifiably I might add, there were some amazing writers there!) 

It was an absolute treat to finally meet writers I’ve been chatting to on blogs, forums and over on Facebook over the past five years.  They were all even lovelier than I thought they would be.

The talks by Suzanne Ahern and Laura Longrigg were excellent, and the building itself, The Blue Fin Building in London, was incredible.  Apparently lots of films and TV programmes have used the location.  In fact, I watched I'll give it a year at the weekend and felt sure parts of that were filmed there - although don't quote me on that one.   I know The Worlds End was definitely filmed there.  Very exciting! 

       There were lots of photographs taken, so keep your eye on the Woman's Weekly Website and on their Facebook page   I hope they caught my good side.  By that I mean the back of my head!

Woman’s Weekly is the *only magazine I haven’t managed to sell to – but I’m going to keep on keeping on, and who knows, following this wonderful workshop I might just produce the perfect story for them. Wish me luck!

Mini-update...
*By this I mean UK women's mags that carry fiction, obviously.  

Also I've just spotted lovely Patsy Collins's post on this great day - go see! :-)