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
Meet Lorna! She’s the creator of Gin & Lemonade…
Lorna lives in Skye, writes, reads and lives quite happily with her husband, their daughter, lots of books, a few fish, and computers called Hemingway, Truman, and Frank. She’s 36, and happens to be a wheelchair-user. She explains more in her rather epic ‘About’ page:
Back then I had just moved in with my boyfriend (Sarge), and I wanted to write from the perspective of a youngish person with CP in a relationship and living in not the most accessible city in the world. And for added interestingness, I was an American living in Scotland for a really long time, with an accent that betrayed all my years here. Continue reading
… or Why You Should Lower Your Expectations.
In the online world, the idea of going ‘viral’ is a coveted goal. There are endless explanations as to what viral is, from having ten times your normal amount of traffic to suddenly having tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands and even millions of views.
The more time I spend on Pinterest, the more I see posts being shared around that focus on the whole viral nonsense: ‘How to Get Your Posts to Go Viral,’ ‘How to Have a Viral Post,’ How to Go Viral…’ Blah, blah, and again… blah. There seems to be a little obsession with it at the minute, and I get asked the same question all the time… Continue reading
Creating a new life
There’s an inspirational quote that I often see shared around on Pinterest:
If you want something bad enough, it will happen.
Nonsense. It should say:
If you want something badly enough you have to get up, create a viable plan and work hard for it.
It doesn’t have the same ring to it, granted, but it’s certainly more accurate.
Things are happy. In fact, it’s the happiest it’s ever been and I was recently reminded of how life has changed when my Facebook and Twitter timelines were filled with desperate messages from teacher friends as they went back to work after the summer. A few years ago I would have been sitting in a training or data analysis session and feeling utterly miserable. Instead, I made myself a nice breakfast, snuggled up on the couch with a blanket and the cat, watched some TV and then worked through my social media management checklist, followed by a bit of Bullet Journaling in the afternoon. Bliss. Continue reading
This post contains affiliate links, which means I receive a small amount of money if you make a purchase from any of the Amazon links included
For the last two years, I’ve requested one thing for Christmas – a notebook. In that notebook, I keep ongoing trackers of my blog and social media stats, monthly and daily checklists, trackers of my social media client stats and some ideas and small drafts for blog posts.
What I didn’t realise that I was doing was creating my own version of a bullet journal. In fact, up until about two months ago I’d never really heard much about them, that is, until I watched a ‘July Plan With Me’ YouTube tutorial from AmandaRachLee on creating a monthly set of ‘spreads,’ (that’s page layouts to us ordinary folk). Since then it has become a bit of an obsession – I’ve watched more tutorials than I can count, allowed myself a small budget to buy materials, practiced different handwriting styles and layouts and began the process of setting up a bullet journal ready for 2018. My intention is to set up most of the journal for the year in advance, although many Bullet Journal users plan from month to month. I need something that is ready for me to use – I’m the sort of person that would fall behind and would leave myself with too much to do if I had to set up each month the day before. Continue reading
I haven’t been on the blog much at all over the last week or so, mainly due to this:
This is Dougal, my sister’s dog, who I have been looking after while she went on holiday. My sis lives quite a distance from me, so I moved into her flat where (for the first time in about nine years), I was living on my own for an extended period of time. Continue reading
Of all the negative personality traits that I posses, one stands high above the rest as being the most destructive.
I’m a thinker. If something bothers me, particularly in a situation where I feel unfairly treated, I’ll think about it… and then I’ll think some more. I’ll even think about the way that I’m thinking about something and by the time I have finished thinking I will have inevitably blown the initial annoyance out of all proportion in my mind. I think about what I could or should have said or done, what I wish I hadn’t said or done, what I will say and do in the future. I think about what has been said and done to me, and what should have been said to me instead.
It’s a lot of thinking… and it’s exhausting.
Despite the fact that I’m fully aware that this is not a healthy thing to do, I have found it difficult to control at times and the end result is always the same – I will have wound myself up and become agitated, the problem still remains unresolved and the only person left feeling angry, anxious or hurt is me. Continue reading
It’s common knowledge that employers will check social media pages during an interview process and things that are deemed inappropriate can have a potentially damaging impact on a candidates success when applying for a job. Similarly, there are endless stories of people who have had their employment terminated after posting something online. Social media has now become a part of our daily lives, to the point where are now teaching students in the education system about how to manage social media accounts appropriately.
It seems logical for me that blogs that are solely for the purpose of business should be handled in a professional, efficient and eloquent manner, in the same way you would expect someone in any profession to behave in person within the workplace. Continue reading
When it comes to ‘reality’ television, I lost a lot of interest in it years ago. I remember avidly watching Big Brother and X Factor for the first three seasons, I got into TOWIE and Made in Chelsea for a while, and watched a season or two of I’m a Celebrity, but other than that my only regular viewing has been of the Real Housewives franchise, and that’s mainly because there isn’t anything else on the TV at 5.00pm which is when it is generally shown on Freeview. Continue reading
**Warning – spoilers**
Last night I went to see Adele perform at Wembley Stadium. It was the final leg of her 124 date tour (we were at performance 120) that has seen her go through Europe, America, Australia and New Zealand, and with an audience of 98,000 people she had broken the record for a concert of that size at the venue. My sister (who had bought the tickets as a wedding present) had also booked us into a hotel on the Wembley Complex for two nights, so it became a three day mini break and I was ridiculously excited. Continue reading
Suzie Speaks 
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