Cold stops Creativity

This week, not much has happened. I had a head cold, which meant I couldn’t think straight. The last painting hasn’t been completed as I had hoped. Not to worry, as the owner won’t be back in England until March. I was hoping to get back to my novel, or at least complete a short story before Christmas.

I decided to play around with some polymer clay. For two years, I have promised myself I would create fungus using polymer clay. I had bought the oven, all the tools and clay, so as my brain wasn’t up to much, I thought I would watch some videos on YouTube and see how it went. Goodness me, it’s time-consuming. The clay needed working before it was soft enough to work on. I’m certainly going to need more time before I start playing around with it to create the sort of detailed fungi I have seen in some of the videos.

Today, eleven years ago, I had my first crime short story published by Bridge House. “Rat Trap” tells the tale from a serial killer’s point of view and was the forerunner to “Stone Angels”. In “Rat Trap,” the main character, Aaron, is the story’s narrator and speaks directly to the reader. When I wrote the story, I was on a huge learning curve and still unsure of my writing ability. Although it was the second short story I had published, I still didn’t feel confident in myself.

I just felt I had gotten lucky when my story “Rat Trap” was accepted. It was also the first time I had worked with an editor as we got the story ready for publication in the Crime After Crime anthology. It’s one of the reasons I enjoy working with Bridge House Publishing because working with an editor helped me to understand the editing process, too. All of their writers have the same opportunity to work with an editor when their stories are published in any of their anthologies. At that time, I was unsure of how a sentence worked, whether I was using the right grammar and punctuation, etc. I wasn’t sure whether I really understood how to write or whether I was any good at it. Bridge House and its sister, Cafelit, allowed me to develop my writing skills along with learning how to feel more confident when reading aloud to an audience. It’s amazing to see how far I have come in eleven years. Now I have six books published and over a hundred short stories too.

Today, my husband and I went shopping. Shopping isn’t something I enjoy. We were hoping to buy the Christmas gifts in one go, but unfortunately, it wasn’t something we achieved. I know this might sound mean but what do you buy people when we all seem to have more than we need already? I know most of us could do with more money to pay household bills. Some people don’t see money as being a thoughtful gift.

Over Christmas holiday we are having friends coming for the evening. I’m really looking forward to it. It’ll be a fun evening as both couples live in our street so no traveling is required.

I look forward to catching up with you all in the New Year. Have a brilliant, peaceful holiday, everyone.