There’s snow on the ground and a new blog to be written

Hey all! I know it’s been a while since my last blog but I’ve been so very busy! Both with university work, writing and editing Carrion City and other stuff. So where do I start?

Well Carrion City is pretty much complete now. It’s been with my editor for about three weeks. When I sent it to her, it was 109,000 words, when I got it back it had shrunk down to 84,000 words. I knew I wrote wordy, but not that wordy! Actually, I knew a lot needed to be cut and feel that as it is now, it reads so much better, streamlined and much more professional. One of my biggest issues is adding too much detail about what the characters are doing. I’m not good at having a block of dialogue without breaks for actions or observations. It’s something I need to work on and will get there! I’m pretty exciting to finally declare Carrion City complete! Not yet, but soon.

University is going well! I’m really enjoying working in a new class, even if I do miss some of my old classmates. I’ve applied for counselling training with a mental health agency in Aberdeen. I had my interview last Friday, which I felt went pretty damn good, even if I did worry about what to wear for it! If I get accepted onto the training program I’ll start in January, train for around six months and hopefully by August will be seeing clients! This would be a dream of mine, it’s something I’ve wanted to do since I was quite young so feels good to be on the right track. Also, this training and counselling experience would form the basis of the second year of Aberdeen University’s counselling diploma course- after which I would be a fully qualified counsellor! Exciting!

My novella- Only The Dead: An African War was reviewed over at Purple Book Reviews http://purplebookreviews.wordpress.com/2013/10/31/only-the-dead-an-african-war/ I was really happy with the review, although the reviewer didn’t realise that the novella is the first of a series. Not their fault at all. It’s a great site with some really interesting books!

So it’s started to snow here in Scotland. Not bad, but enough to get everyone moaning about it! I really love the snow, however I’m not looking forward to the journey to University tomorrow morning! I really need to get a car! Until next time!