Author Archives: suzie81speaks

Smoke and Mirrors: How to Avoid Hating Your Blog in 2018

Posted on by

167

Blogging tips

A new year always begins with the same pattern in the blogging world. My emails, reader and social media feeds become filled with targets for the next twelve months and an influx of New Year’s Resolution bloggers will start to appear in the comment section on my blog or across various Facebook groups.

The next few weeks will be filled with an overwhelming amount of conflicting information and I can pretty much guarantee that most will disappear as quickly as they arrived. For some, the novelty of having a blog wears off pretty quickly. For others, there’s a disappointing realisation that thousands of views can’t be achieved simply by pressing the publish button.

However, for the ones that stick it out, it can become a minefield of self-doubt and, at times, a huge knock to their confidence in their writing abilities. Continue reading →

A Coventry Win, And A Guardian Article – Happy Weekend!

Posted on by

A huge congratulations to Helen over at Journey to Ambeth who recently had an article featured in The Guardian! Please don’t like or comment on my reblog – hop on over and say hello!

Helen Jones's avatarHelen Glynn Jones

If you’ve read my Author Bio, or my About page, you’ll know that I grew up in Coventry, England. My family have deep ties to the City and most of them still live there, so I visit often. When I returned to the UK in 2012, I spent my first six months back in the country living there again, only moving away due to my husband’s work. It’s a place that holds a lot of happy memories for me.

Coventry is also the real-world setting for my Ambeth books. Alma lives on my old street, and the Gate of Oak is in the Memorial Park, a place that has always held magic for me. It is telling that, when I sat down to write my first book, Coventry was the inspiration and starting point. It is a city I still hold close to my heart.

So, when Coventry was named…

View original post 177 more words

Top Tips for Selling at a Car Boot Sale

Posted on by

45

The Bloke and I are hoarders. We’re not obsessive – we don’t keep things like old newspapers, boxes or general household goods, but we both are easily attached to things that we consider to be of sentimental value. As a result, our house is filled with stuff, even more so now the wedding is over.

On a whim, we decided to try and downsize and sell some of our things in a car boot sale, creating some space and hopefully earning some cash in the process.

It was an eye opening experience.

We found a reputable car boot about half an hour away that didn’t require you to sign up and only charged £8.00 per car. We were ruthless and threw together a load of things that we could possibly sell, and at 5.45am we found ourselves stood in a muddy field in freezing temperatures… as you do.

Six hours later, we had sold all but one box of the stuff we had brought, and I had a brilliant time talking to loads of lovely people. I learned a lot, and I was already planning the next one by the time we drove home. Continue reading →

A Winter Wonderland and Christmas Prep

Posted on by

40

For once, The Bloke and I timed things perfectly.

The plan for Friday evening last week was to drive up North to visit The Bloke’s Sister (my new sister-in-law!) as it was her birthday the following day. However, the snow heavens opened, The Bloke’s school closed early and so we decided to risk it and drive up at lunchtime instead. There wasn’t even a hint of snow there and so we spent the Friday afternoon and Saturday catching up, playing with Harvey and Charlie (my sis-in-law’s Goldendoodle and my mother-in-laws retriever), going through some social media (sis-in-law is a blogger and photographer) and eating the BEST fish and chips that I’ve ever had at the Garden Room Cafe in Braithwell. It was nice to kick-back and relax in a different surrounding. Continue reading →

When Suzie Met Dolph

Posted on by

62

In August the brother of my oldest friend shared an advert on Facebook for a Sci Fi convention taking place in Manchester on the 2nd and 3rd December. Now, those of you who follow the blog regularly will know that The Bloke is an enormous geek, but while I like to embrace his geekiness, the convention wouldn’t necessarily be the sort of thing I would actively seek out. That is, until I saw that one person in particular would be appearing: Continue reading →

So, What Now?

Posted on by

43

The Bloke and I met up with a friend that we haven’t seen in a few years. As we were chatting and catching up, he asked us a question that has been in my head ever since:

‘So, what’s the plan next?’

I suddenly realised that, for the first time in over two years, I didn’t have a plan, or goal, or even a general direction that I wanted to go in. Since 2015 I have changed my job, got engaged, got married and been on our honeymoon, and these large life adventures have predominantly taken up the majority of my headspace. Now that it’s all done and dusted, what do I do now? Continue reading →

Goodbye, Jan

Posted on by

I never know how appropriate it is to write about these sorts of things, but as this space is my own to be able to record my thoughts and feelings, I wanted to be able to acknowledge someone very special to us.

The death of a loved one is never easy for anybody, but when it’s sudden and completely unexpected it comes as a devastating blow to everyone who knew them.

We attended the funeral of our friend this morning – a wonderful woman who had joined us at our wedding celebrations just a week before she passed away. The Bloke and I were her colleagues at my former school – she had worked as an English teacher before retiring a few years ago – and the number of friends, colleagues, staff and former students that attended (to the point where it was standing room only) was a sheer testament to how much she was loved. The amount of messages I’ve seen across social media from ex-students (many of whom had particularly difficult circumstances) demonstrates the impact that she left on them all these years later. Continue reading →

Keepers is Here!

Posted on by

73

In my naivety I thought that publishing a novel was a reasonably straightforward process – write, edit, publish, done – but following my blog friend Sacha Black’s journey as she was writing her first fantasy book made me realise just how wrong I was.

And now, KEEPERS IS FINALLY HERE and I am so excited to read it!

Here’s the blurb…

Eden’s life is balanced… until her soul is bound to her enemy. Continue reading →

The Honeymoon: NYC 2017

Posted on by

86

As I sit on the train on the journey back from Heathrow I can’t actually believe our honeymoon is already over. We stayed for 5 days in New York, and with the time difference it worked out that we did a day in London beforehand too.

Getting to NYC was a bit of a nightmare, and the flight back wasn’t much better, but the rest has been totally and utterly fabulous. It’s been a whirlwind of travel and people and sightseeing and noise and VERY cold weather, and I’m absolutely exhausted, but it was a wonderful experience. My back aches, my feet and legs hurt, my gloves are shredded but my phone and The Bloke’s camera are now full of pictures and I have a million memories to cherish and write about.

Here were just some of the highlights… To see the images in a full screen simply click on them. Continue reading →

Blog of the Day: A Healing Spirit

Posted on by

2

Meet Carol, the creator of A Healing Spirit!

Carol is a trained hypnotherapist and past life regressionist who lives in the San Francisco Bay area with her husband and crazy little Maltipoo. She does more than half of her regression and hypnosis work via Skype, and particularly enjoys doing workshops and small group events.

Her interest in working with healing and grief began during the peak of the AIDS/HIV epidemic when she spent more than a dozen years as a trained emotional support worker with the community. Her skills developed further during the years she served as support person to family and friends battling serious disease and facing death. Continue reading →