Needles, birthdays, donuts and calendars ;)

Yeah, that's just my weekend....

Just a quick one before we go into everything, but, if you’d like to join a fledgling writing community, please head on over to Facebook to join, plus we’ve got our own Discord server. I’ll be talking about challenges in there soon! Waywards will be doing a half million and million year challenge, as well as one, two or three books from concept to completion challenges, and supporting one another as we do. I’d love to have everyone that would like creative support to come over and if there’s anything else we should be thinking/doing, let me know!

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So, my birthday yesterday was pretty cool, even if I did have to go get my third booster and my flu shot. I don’t tend to feel ‘my age’ (I’m 43 now) but…today? Yeah, definitely. As I’ve frequently told people, my views on vaccinations are pretty uncomplicated. As long as I don’t die, and they don’t make me sicker than I might already be, and there’s a good that comes from them, I don’t see I shouldn’t just do them. Your mileage may vary - mine is informed consent based, despite knowing I’m going to be as sick as a dog in one way or another for a couple of days.
Sure enough, today I woke up really hot, sore glands in my throat, and my arms both really hurt. Hasn’t taken the shine off my birthday weekend though. It’s been one of writing, sprints with my Nano crew and youngest, who is also taking part in Nanowrimo, donuts, pizza, and a lunch date with Tempus yesterday that I’m calling scientific cause I got to mess with dry ice (in my cocktails!) and change the colour of a drink. It was all very tasty, fun and highly recommended, if you’ve got access to anywhere that offers anything like it. Our venue is called ‘the Alchemist’, I don’t know if they’re UK only or global but there are videos of the fun I had and me squealing with laughter. I got some other stuff too - my Mandolin was an early present (it’s a bit of a thing in our family, if we find something that someone could have for their birthday and it’s unlikely we’ll get back to get it, we usually just buy it early. So, Saoirse, my beautiful Mandolin is from Tempus, and his mom got me a lovely glass paperweight while she was down visiting Stratford Upon Avon, and I’ve got my Mimic (Bitey box) as an ornament/jewel/dice box. It cracks me up to think that if it does end up being my jewellery box, that someone might get it left to them in my eventual will. I’m warped.
(you can see lots of pictures of these on my Twitter/Instagram etc. though I’ll round up everything on my blog when I’m a bit clearer. I actually get spoiled silly for about 2 days, because we did lunch together, a family meal for the four of us, then donuts for my ‘birthday cake’ today, because normally we’d do shopping on a Friday and put it off to today, so I’m just feeling lucky and happy all over.

Mostly, I’m just happy to be able to take time to recover properly, and looking forward to handing some really pretty stuff over to various clients this week, along with, of course, announcements to do with my backlist and more, which is where the calendar comes in. I’ve had word back from the guy that took on the edit of some of my backlist and he’s almost done with Glass Block (but that’ll probably still wait till I’ve finished Nanowrimo), and he’s going to do the trilogy that starts off both Garrett and AMFAR, where we meet… well, that’s a surprise, unless you got to see them before revision. SO they’re going to him next, which means Glass Block, Naming the Dead, EvenStar and Undercover Archivist are going to be out before year’s end. And I’m hoping to go onwards and upwards from there :)

More on that on Monday I think. Have a great weekend!

Kai