Hey everyone,
It’s me again, defying the many rumours that I may have passed away, won the lottery, or given up writing and gotten a proper job again.
I’m very happy to announce that none of the above are true.
Well, I’m not so happy about not winning the lottery, but I think even if I had, I still wouldn’t give up the writing. I’d just be writing from somewhere hot and exotic, maybe in the Caribbean, with my toes dipping in the edge of the sea…
Ok, I’ll save the rest of that dream for later!
So, how are you all? I really hope you’re all keeping well.
It’s been so long! I know!
And before anyone asks if I took a year off, I can promise you, the answer to that is hell, no! So, what have I been up to?
Well, I moved house in late 2021, expecting to have little to do as we were moving into a two year old house.
Haha, what was I thinking? I should have remembered that the gardens of new houses always resemble building sites with a little topsoil thrown on top!
I also hadn’t thought of how many things wouldn’t be to my taste, or, dare I say it, done to what I thought should be the right standard.
Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that hubby and I have been working our backsides off to get the house and garden fixed up to how we want it, not to mention making it 100% safe and enclosed to keep our rather large fur-babies from getting out of the garden.
We now have fencing and walls around the garden almost 7ft high, and our big boy fur-baby still tries to jump up to see over them! Thankfully our bitch isn’t nearly as big or agile, so all we have to worry about with her is the habit she has of trying to tunnel out underneath! Dogs! Sheesh!
So, where was I…?
Oh yes, so we’ve been working our socks off on the new house.
And then there was my first attempt at book 4.
I actually started book 4 straight after Christmas 2021 and worked on it for over 2 months. I won’t tell you precisely who it was about, but it just happened to involve an existing character from Ukraine. Yes, the same Ukraine that Russia invaded at the end of February 2022!
Well, I don’t know if you’ve realised yet, but I try and stay away from writing about conflicts that are still going on, so I stopped writing for a few weeks to see what was going to happen.
Obviously, when I realised that the situation was desperately serious and not going to resolve itself anytime soon, the book got shelved, and I had to start writing a new book about different characters.
What will happen to the original book 4, I have no idea. I’m hoping that with some tweaking of the storyline, I’ll still be able to use it on book 6, because I absolutely love the characters in the story.
But in the bigger scheme of things, I’d much rather that it never sees the light of day, if it would only mean that there was an end to the war, and people could start to rebuild their lives.
So, anyway, I started writing the new book 4 in around May last year, and between the work on the house, problems with my back again, and family health issues, it was very much stop/start for the next 6 months.
Those of you who’ve been in regular contact with me will know that we also had other things going on, and sadly, we suffered several bereavements during that time, but I won’t dwell on those here.
Late last year I started to make good progress on the new book 4, only to have more disruption when my father’s health deteriorated.
He was diagnosed with dementia close to a decade ago, and like many sufferers he would deteriorate and plateau and deteriorate and plateau. About a year ago he needed more care than he could get at home, and he moved to live in a residential home at first, and then a care home when his health deteriorated before Christmas. He was very happy in both, with their lovely, caring staff to make him smile.
Sadly, we lost dad in March, and said goodbye to him at his funeral this week, a lovely service that paid tribute to the devoted husband and family man he was.
In between his death and funeral, I finally managed to shut out all the white noise and get the latest book finished, and surprisingly, I’ve checked, and it does actually make sense. That’s actually come as a pleasant surprise since it’s taken so long to write, I wasn’t always sure it would.
Sadly, it missed the Easter release date I’d been aiming for, but I’ve finally managed to get it uploaded to Amazon and available for pre-order. The release date is 7th May 2023, so not too long to wait.
What’s it called? Oh, yeah! Sorry!
It’s called Isolation, and it’s Damien’s story.
I’ve posted the first chapter at the back of all new downloads of Inception, and it’s also on my secret page.
If you want to read what the story is about, just head over to the Isolation – Synopsis page.
At the moment I’m just waiting for the pre-order page to go live, and once it does, I’ll add those links to the synopsis page on my website so you can jump straight from my website to the Amazon site of your choosing.
Remember, you can’t buy directly from my website. Clicking the link will simply take you to the Amazon page, and from there you can either buy, or not, as you choose.
So, there you have it, all up to date.
The next few weeks are going to be crazy busy trying to get all the editing done, but as much as I hate this part, I can’t wait for you to get to meet the new characters.
I’m even more excited to finally be able to start book 5! LOL
So, take care of yourselves, and I look forward to getting your feedback and chatting about the new book.
Bye for now.
Beth
xx
I couldn’t go without sharing some fur-baby cuteness;
