Anita Dawes's Blog: http://jenanita01.wordpress.com, page 3

You Never Know!

I never knew this blog would turn out to be a very important part of my little writing kingdom, when I first decided to see if I could create one. Everyone said at the time that as the blog improved, so would I. That you should treat it like a child, feed and nourish it, even learn to love it, and it will make you a better writer, if not a better person.
What it has given me is confidence.

It has also provided some much needed discipline, for although it is only a 'blog' it is governed by the same rules as any other writing. The content should be the very best you can do, none of that 'oh, that will do' attitude.

I have learned far more about writing since creating this blog and reading other people's.
Those who haven't tried it don't have a clue and tend to dismiss them as harmless time wasting.
That couldn’t  be further from the truth.
People will not fall over themselves to read what you write, whether it is a letter, blog or full-length novel unless you are well known and/or famous. You have to create a written magnet, one that will attract attention. One that people will love to discover and keep coming back to.

In the years I have been building this blog, I have discovered many such magnets and they are as good as reading a book. My day would not be complete without these 'mini reads'!

I have always been of the opinion that if you want to learn how to do something, study those who have already learned and succeeded, for you will discover that they have risen to the challenge and not been found wanting.  Some of them will even tell you the right way to go about it!

This is how I learned to cook, knit, wallpaper a wall and even change the carburettor in an old Triumph car. Not to mention all my craft projects. My theory is, if someone made it in the first place you can have a go too. It's not really rocket science, but the important thing to remember is the quality of your achievement. None of my first attempts were any good, but if you are stubborn like me, it helps a lot and eventually you will manage something you are happy with.

Despite all my other interests, I have always wanted to be a writer. I enjoyed English at school and ideas for stories have surfaced from time to time over the years, but overall I was much too busy trying to live my life without too much heartache, and failing miserably.

But I am retired now and the misery has moved on. I can finally find out if I am any good as a writer. (or not!)
And this blog (and others like it) will be my benchmark.
I have now self-published two mystery thriller books, and editing the third. Reasonably happy with my progress, although to be honest, I never expected it to be so hard. Not the writing you understand, but everything else you have to do has added years to my life!

My sister Anita has really gone up in my admiration; she must be a genius, for she has completed six really good novels. But then she does have  a brilliant editor (me!)

The Biggest Thank you!

I just had to share the latest surprise to come from our attempts to spread the word about our books.

We have run KDP promotions before with varying degrees of success, for instance, Anita’s book Secrets had 37 uptakes which I thought was pretty good, considering we are beginners after all.

The Ninth Life is due to leave Kindle Select soon, as I wanted to put it on Smashwords to see if it did any better. So before that happened, I did one final promotion on Kindle Select.

And it got 149 uptakes…

This post came about because I wanted to try and thank everyone who picked up a copy.

I sincerely hope you enjoy reading The Ninth Life , and if you do, to remind you that a short and simple review on Amazon from you would be wonderful.

The fact that I will love you forever is not designed to influence you in any way at all!

Brainwaves… not heatwaves!

My brain never ceases to amaze me, and if you think about it, that just shouldn’t happen. For at my age, 72, you would think I would know my own brain pretty well by now.
A few weeks ago we had the day from hell, at least that’s what it felt like. The weather was so hot, my energy levels lasted about thirty minutes. For the rest of the day, I hauled my over-heated, sweaty body around, trying to at least look as though I was working.
I gave up about 4pm, for by that time I thought I was dying. I had drunk copious amounts of water in an effort to stay hydrated in the extreme heat, so couldn’t quite understand why I felt so bad.
That night was worse. Just as hot, and what precious breeze we had during the day, had vanished, leaving the humidity climbing the walls. Not much sleeping was done, and it wasn’t for the want of trying either as I still felt ill!
At one point, I strolled around the garden in my nightie, pondering the possibility of sleeping out there. It was so blissfully cool and peaceful, I really didn’t want to return to my stiflingly hot bedroom.
Somehow the morning arrived, and the sun was not in evidence so it was noticeably cooler. As I drank my first cup of tea, my brain produced one of its early morning flashes of inspiration. Not a new thing, you understand, but surprising considering the day I had yesterday. I can do some of my best writing at that time of day.
It seemed to be firing on all cylinders, so I switched on the PC to explore the new found ideas that had appeared literally out of thin air. Then, supercharged with all this coolness and enthusiasm, I found myself in Waitrose at 8.30 doing a quick shop. Would there be no end to the surprises today?
I hope it’s not as hot today, as I have work to do!

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One Step at a Time!

I took myself to one side and had a serious talk about my life, and after much soul searching, I realised the current state of my head was caused by cramming too many things inside it, most of them completely unreasonable and beyond my control.
 It was time to take a long hard look at my workload and come to some sort of understanding. It was at this point that I remembered the serenity prayer . . .
“O Lord, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.  The courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference…”
There are more verses to this prayer, written by Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971) but the first verse should be indelibly written on the inside of my skull. I am usually the most patient person on the planet, but due to an unfortunate combination of circumstances, I must have decided to forget that detail.
After that miserable post, everyone has been so supportive, and all their messages were the same. I have to take a step back even for a day, in order to regroup and concentrate on the do-able, as opposed to the impossible.
Even though patience is my strong point, I know I have been slowly falling under the spell of doing far too much and expecting miracles. I always expect to stumble upon a magical doorway where everything miraculously works or happens yesterday, and when this fails to happen, I get depressed. Against my better judgement of course, but what can you do when you want need to succeed?
Therefore, I will stop shoving so many irons in the fire. Common-sense is telling me this is not the way to do anything.
I will concentrate on doing one thing at a time and see it through to the end, before moving on.
I will rearrange my schedule to include some ‘me’ time, for life is getting shorter by the minute, and as they say, we will always regret what we didn’t do . . .

FREE copies of The Ninth Life...

The Ninth Life, the first book of my mystery thriller trilogy, is FREE on Amazon until Friday!






Click on the Universal Amazon Link below to get your Free copy!   myBook.to/TheNinthLife

While you are here, I wondered if you could do me a favour?
Not sure if this blog is working as well as it should, so could you leave a comment, just one word will do, to see if it registers?

Thank you so much!
 

If at First you don’t Succeed!

Last week, I finally managed to make sense of the Mailchimp website. Something I have been trying to do, on and off, for the best part of two years.
We are told it is important to build a mailing list, but up to now, my brain had resolutely refused to grasp the finer points. So imagine my delight, when I managed to create a pop up for our subscription list, something I never thought I would do, for they are not my favourite thing in the world. Annoying things, usually popping up (no pun intended) all the time.
I understand they are not meant to be. Once you subscribe, it shouldn’t appear the next time you visit. I felt a bit happier knowing that. So far so good, I thought.
But.   And there is always a but, at least when I’m around. One of our subscribers contacted me, wondering why she hadn’t received a welcoming email from us. Obviously, I had done something wrong, so I hot- footed back to Mailchimp to see if I could put it right.
Over an hour later, I gave up, frustrated to the point of chewing my hands off. But I have learned a thing or two on this blogging lark. When in doubt, google your problem. Chances are, you are not the first one and someone will have written a post on how to solve it.
Not all of these posts are well written or easy to understand, and it can take several searches to find the one for you. I am always amazed at how two people can explain the same thing to me, but only one of them will switch on that light bulb in my head.
Armed with this new knowledge, I go back to Mailchimp only to discover I had only completed half of the procedure and once this was put in place, our subscribers received their welcoming email.  Yay!
I also leaned that Mailchimp can amalgamate your subscribers from several places, building a comprehensive email list. Handy for us, as we have two blogs. For those who don’t know this,  we can be found here on Blogger at http://anitajaydawes.comor www.anitajaydawes.net.
This was our first attempt at blogging, and a world away from WordPress, but we are quite fond of it. Can’t bring ourselves to close it somehow.
The next thing I want to learn is Paint.net, as everyone says how good it is. The ability to merge layers of images sounds good to me, but so far, a lot of it is going over my head. Mind you, it took me long enough to learn how to use Picmonkey, but I am so glad I did.
It’s a great pity you can’t find new and improved brain cells on the net, isn’t it?

What is Your Favourite Pastime?

Someone asked me this question the other day and I had to hesitate before answering. I thought it would be writing or reading, but other hobbies pushed the word aside. And it is true, there are so many things that I enjoy doing. There are also many things I no longer have the time for.
The next question is usually, “but one of them must be special in some way?”
Again, there isn’t just one that comes to mind and this must be true for most people.
Depending on our mood, we like doing different things. For instance, my writing mind works best first thing in the morning. Later in the day, I have trouble writing anything. And when I am tired, I like to spend time in the garden with my bonsai.


I love jigsaw puzzles too, but these days I prefer to do them on line. So much choice, easier to do, no more juggling hundreds of pieces on limited table space. You can’t lose any of the pieces either.
In many ways, I realise that all my favourite pastimes are very similar. They all involve a degree of patience, attention to detail and an over active imagination.
At the moment, I have a huge pile of work in progress. Two fiction books to finish, a collection of short stories to prepare for publication and various editing jobs for Anita’s books, not to mention a veritable queue of reviews to finish.My collection of bonsai should come quite high on my list, as they always need something doing. There is a very good reason they are never considered finished. They continue to grow and need constant attention. Plus, they are all different ages with different needs.
Add to this list, two crochet projects and a pile of dressmaking as yet unfinished. And all those other urgent things that hide in my brain, lulling me into a false sense of achievement.
So the answer to the original question, what is my favourite pastime, should be . . .
“My favourite pastime is living and enjoying everything I do . . .”

That Way Madness Lies…

 For the past month, I have been driving myself insane trying to come up with an idea for new covers for my soon to be finished Mystery Thriller Series. This came about, because it struck me that the covers I had already chosen were unsuitable. In my opinion, they didn’t reflect the genre or anything about the storyline, and as the last book was almost ready, time was of the essence.
BUT . . . the harder I tried, the harder it became. It was turning into a nightmare, keeping me awake at night and completely ruining my established schedule. I couldn’t concentrate on anything else, making ever more ridiculous covers, each one worse than the last. I think the trouble was that they were for a series. Something had to link them all together. I even looked for ready- made covers, but didn’t like any of them either. I began to realise I was in danger of coming unglued. The family were beginning to avoid me, and I would have avoided me too, if I could. I scanned Amazon, searching through different genres. I prowled around bookshops, but nothing seemed right. Anita was worrying about my ears, likening me to Van Gogh, expecting the worst. I knew I had to come up with something, and soon, or my three books were in danger of going nowhere, languishing in a drawer, coverless.
No, they deserved good covers, good covers are important. I had to do something. In the end, I resolved to create three covers that looked attractive with a shared theme.  Although the idea that I wanted them to look dramatic and intriguing haunted me, but was proving to be impossible for me to do. It began to dawn on me that I might never find what I wanted. That it was yet another unattainable thing, like searching for the Holy Grail. The secret, I knew, was in the looking, not the finding. It was then that I stepped away from my obsession, finally recognising it for what it was. A symbol of the futility of everything else in my life, that endless search for perfection.  Here are the covers I started with . . . And here are the final covers . . .

Autumn Leaves...

Despite the warm weather we have been having lately, the early signs of autumn are sneaking up on us. Little by little, my bonsai are getting ready for their winter sleep and their leaves are gradually beginning to change colour as they start to close down. Imperceptibly at first, then some of them will turn a fiery red before shedding their tiny leaves like so much confetti.
A wonderful sight, but a little sad at the same time, and I always miss seeing them in leaf.

It reminds me more poignantly that I am approaching my own autumn (and hopefully I won't turn scarlet!) emphasised mainly by the fact that I am not at my best this week. Probably doing too much… for at my age you are supposed to be taking it a little easier, but that’s easier said than done when you have a mountain of jobs piling up in front of you!

Despite the workload, I have been doing a fair bit of gazing out my window this week  (searching for inspiration, or at least that’s my excuse!) and just love the way Mother Nature goes about her business, come hell or high water. Maybe we could all learn from her example, especially me. But I'm afraid it is all too easy for me to find excuses for not doing what I ought. I find myself constantly using my age as the perfect excuse and I really must stop doing that, it's really pathetic and doesn't match how I have lived my life up until now.
 The only thing I have always known for sure, is that you can do anything, provided you want to enough. So as long as I am still breathing, I should be able to just get on with it!


It is easy to think of autumn as the end of things, when in fact it is just part of the sequence.  A resting time to reflect on how much better and brighter next spring will be. And we need that slowing down, as working flat out all the time is unsustainable. We need to look back at the past year and really see what worked and what didn't.

You know what I mean, all those things you thought were important at the time, but turned out not to be. I have learnt such a lot this year, but the fact that I am still making colossal mistakes only proves to me that there is so much more to learn and to do. It would be easy to mimic the seasons, shut down and hibernate until spring arrives; and I must admit that sounds incredibly tempting...
 But I have another  book to finish, Anita's busily scribbling away, so lots of editing there. I also have a pile of notes to wade through. Some to digest, others to discard; time to clear the decks and really get organised, ready for impending publication of my next book! So many possibilities just waiting to be discovered...

In addition, a huge thank you to all those of you who have helped us this year, you know who you are...

The Woman before Me…

I’m not sure what attracted me to this book, and for once it couldn’t have been the cover. An indistinct, mysterious image that didn’t convey anything about the story at all.
But the book had won many awards and was highly recommended. Reviews said it was a ‘chillingpsychological thriller with a shocking twist.’
The beginning of the book was more like a naïve memoir, almost childishly written in a matter of fact manner, but with just enough intrigue to get you thinking.  I nearly gave up on it several times, but an interesting cast of characters with in-depth stories of their own, plus the childhood history made me carry on reading.
The introduction of the “Black Book Entries” was a revealing part of the story. This is something mentally disturbed patients are encouraged to do to help their recovery. This gave the story an unexpected depth too. The pace picks up considerably, making the tension almost palpable.
So, after an agonisingly slow, deliberate start, the story escalates, building unbearably to its conclusion. A conclusion I really didn’t see coming. There were so many twists and turns, but nothing prepared me for the final chapter. It hit me like a truck.   A brilliantly executed, grippingly original  story.
About the AuthorRuth Dugdall worked as a Probation Officer for almost a decade, working in high security prisons with numerous high-risk criminals. Ruth's writing is heavily influenced by her professional background, providing authenticity and credibility to the crime genre.