Keep on moving...

What a week! If anyone wanted to know the sheer joy and desperate heartbreak that a writer endures, often within minutes of each other, then they should have been following me around during the last seven days!

Negative stuff - 

Another rejection for my first novel When the Country Calls and I think quite possibly the last, but more of that in a bit.

Positive stuff - 

The Cherry Tree Cafe word count has increased a few extra thousand and I am still enjoying sumptuous tray bakes and afternoon crafting sessions.

I have a secured a spot on the Romantic Novelists Association New Writers' Scheme - so excited about this! The Cherry Tree Cafe will be my work of choice for submission before the August deadline.

I have also decided that When the Country Calls may one day by self-published, depending on a number of factors including my thoughts on it when I re-read it in a few months time. If I am not convinced that it is worthy of publication it will be consigned to the memory stick and duly labelled part of my 'writing apprenticeship'. Every writer has to serve this I know but it is hard to set aside something that you have poured over with so much love, care and attention.

Lovely Samantha Tonge (Doubting Abbey, Carina), wrote a wonderful blog post last week and included a photograph of her gargantuan writing pile which did go some way to reassuring me that I shouldn't take rejection personally! Everyone has to pay their dues and as long as we all put in the effort and the seemingly endless hours then publication will come when it is meant to.

On the reading front I have read Thursdays in the park by Hilary Boyd this week. Gentle flowing prose, a fascinating mix of characters and back stories and a wonderfully conceived plot that tosses you around in an emotional maelstrom but leaves you feeling ultimately satisfied and ready for the next one. I loved it.

H-J