Brrr, it’s getting chilly! Safe to say winter is definitely starting to dig it’s heels in. I’ve missed a couple of weeks blogging as it’s been manic. The last blog was just after I’d returned from Scotland in October – I went again in November and had a lovely time with my mum and aunt/uncle. Enjoyed my birthday up there also and as you can see from above, I managed to get some fab shots with my faithful Nikon! Yes I actually took the pic of the tiger! What a thrill to be at the wildlife park (again) and get this shot through glass – you can’t even see any glare! The other pic is from around Betty Hill area right up the top. It was a lovely day! On the way back down, me and mum stopped over in Edinburgh and enjoyed afternoon tea on the Royal Yacht Britannia – how the other half live huh! Was a lot bigger than I expected it to be, I could just imagine the soirees and parties held on board.

Then after Scotland it was straight back into normalcy with work. I’ve spent the last few weeks conducting research into human trafficking (little spoiler alert for book 3) and have an interview scheduled next week with a SGT from a certain team who deals with a specific certain field (not to be disclosed as yet!) so looking forward to that. Am also looking forward to being able to sit down and spend a day or two on submissions to agencies. The first three chapters of book 2 are with the wonderful Jenny Drewery for editing so hoping to get that done by end of December/beginning of January with any luck. Then I intend to submit that as a separate novel to agencies to see if any of them like it.

I’ve been trying to get my head round the whole social media thing again, I enjoy facebook, and it’s been ace since I set up an author profile as I’ve connected with so many more authors and writers. But twitter still remains somewhat a mystery to me. I have over 1200 followers (if any of you don’t follow feel free, my tag is @kerryann77) and I try and tweet every day. But what to tweet about – to make it in the twitterverse I believe you have to be active and tweet very regularly (more than one or two a day), but what does an every day Jane like me tweet that so many people might find interesting! I actually have a coffee/chat planned with the lovely Victoria Brown shortly which will hopefully shed some light on this as she knows what she’s doing!

You may or may not know that I am one of those ultra-organised people (yuck I hear you cry!) my christmas shopping is already finished (I have one gift left to buy) and everything is wrapped and put away. I am always too busy nearer christmas with socialising, writing and working to have to find time to wrap, and it takes sooooo long! So I wrap in November to save me the hassle. I normally shop all year round so generally don’t have loads to buy this time of year, which is good as I really don’t like town in December! All I do in the town centre through that month is have Starbucks and people watch. 🙂

I’d like to spare a few words now for a friend of mine. Helen and Paul Anderson have lost their 15 year old daughter Georgina Anderson to a rare and aggressive form of cancer. Georgina passed away almost 2 weeks ago now, and it’s especially sad because she was only diagnosed a mere 4 months ago. I never met Georgina, but from what her friends and family say, she was a lovely girl, and very brave through to the end. Georgina had a talent for singing, she had performed her first busking gig in Middlesbrough not too long before her diagnosis. Her dying wish was to have her music heard across the globe, and shortly before she passed away, one of her songs was placed on you tube. Her song, ‘I can’t make you love me’ has now had almost 300,000 hits. A couple of days after her death, a song she wrote, called ‘TWO THIRDS OF A PIECE’ was released as a single on itunes/google play/android – after only being out for a few days, the song entered the official charts at no 63 on Sunday. I mention this as the song is only 79p on itunes, and 99p on googleplay/android – all proceeds are being split between the teenage cancer trust, and cancer research. It would be fabulous if we could all download this song and help raise funds for such a worthy cause. And you get the benefit of listening to her haunting voice over and over. Georgina’s funeral is this Friday at St Marks Church in Marske, and though I am unable to attend, my thoughts are with the family and friends at this sad time.

That’s all for now, I’ll be back next week, hopefully with more on Marlo’s story – she’s the female protagonist in book 3. Until then, keep your chin up and keep smiling. x