Always Here When Needed Award

Now, here’s a lovely badge, I love butterflies. I am ancient enough to remember when before the crop sprays and other environmental destruction hadn’t exterminated most of them, and I remember a pile of stones my father had left to create a rock garden being covered in basking butterflies on a hot summer’s day.

Rant, rant…

Leaving that aside, to comply with the rules of the nomination, I would like to thank Thomas Cotterill

for the award. We disagree about many things, politics, what the author was attempting to demonstrate regarding characters in books (I’ll just go for a bit of teasing by saying something that will be obscure for most people, but not for him: ‘I still maintain Charley Kinraid is a superficial opportunist, Thomas etc, etc, rant, rant…’) but he has been a wonderful source of support and encouragement for me. My first novel was complex, and that has meant that some readers don’t like it or don’t finish it, but Thomas delighted in it, and that really made me feel good.

His blog is always excellently written and stimulating and can be found on