A belated Happy New Year to you all.

I made it through Christmas – hurrah! I won’t lie, there were some tricky moments but here I am still alive and, more surprisingly, still talking with everyone in my family even without Mum to break up the fights. (I’ll write the play about this Christmas when I’m the last one standing and there’s no longer any danger of being sued!)

The children got a hamster each from Grandpa and all I can say is that it may have been a bit of a mistake. Number one escaped on day two and it took me an hour to fish it out from under the IKEA. Much wine was needed after that. Number two then bit its owner who’s now too nervous to pick it up again so now, not only do I have to do it, but I also have to look like I’m not scared of being bitten in the process! More wine needed. Number one then escaped again. (That may have been my fault for not putting the cage back together again properly after I cleaned it out, but in my defense why the fuck should I have to clean out the cages – I have enough trouble keeping my own house clean let alone theirs!) It took three days to get it back this time and I can tell you that she is one pissed off hamster now. That’s when child number two got bitten. It might be time to get a cat!

Sorry, this blog’s supposed to be about writing.

Well, I have two writing days a week now which is bloody lovely (but still not enough), so I’m really quite nice to know on Mondays and Tuesdays (especially at coffee time because I’ve still got half a Christmas cake left and no one else in the family likes it – much better than a chewy custard cream in the staff room I can tell you.). I’ve been rewritng my children’s book because I had a rather lovely ‘revise and resubmit’ from an editor just before Christmas. My play has been rewritten and sent to many friends and family but the buggers are being a bit slow with their comments. My husband’s lovely Aunt has sent it to some very useful people, and I have a couple of other opportunities I’ll tell you about later because one especially is such a loooooooooooong shot that it seems mad to even write it here. As of tonight I have also found the curtain music for said play so it’s all good really.

I may’ve been a bit slack here with my blog posts but I am so on it with the calendar it’s like an up-to-date piece of genius. It’s also quite full like me after coffee time so I hope this is the start of an awesome year for us all.

Happy writing, folks. X