Holidays

I’m just back from a lovely holiday in the Lake Garda area of Italy where it was mostly hot and sometimes thundery. It’s a beautiful area though and we explored it to the full, taking in Milan, Verona and Venice, as well as some of the beautiful villages around the southern end of the lake itself.

Back home now in the UK, the long, hot summer we experienced in May, June and July seems a distant memory and instead, apple crumbles, Halloween and Bonfire Night are on my mind. There is no thought of the C-word as yet though so please don’t even go there!

New Boxed Set

I have spent most of the last few months wrestling with the creation of a boxed set of my From Here to Nashville novel and its sequel novellas, and I’m pleased to say I have finally finished it. I now have an ebook and paperback version of my From Here to You series with beautiful new covers ready to go. These will be publishing shortly and I’m going to have a special offer for my newsletter subscribers which I will be revealing soon. However, I thought you might like to see my beautiful new cover for the series which I am so pleased with. I have Mary Jayne Baker to thank for the vibrant new covers of the rest of the series and I think you will agree that she has done a wonderful job for me.

Marketing

I have been concentrating more on marketing over the summer as well, learning how to advertise my books on the various platforms with some success, and some failures of course! But I seem to have got my head round it a bit more now. I have also been steadily building my newsletter list and this has been very successful. When people join, they now get a free download of the prequel novella to the From Here to You series and this has been very popular. If you’d like to get a copy, you can do so here.

Writing

Writing wise, I have been steadily keeping up with my 12 Short Stories Challenge so that I have now written 9 this year and as soon as the year has finished, I will be editing and publishing this collection for you all to read. My next big job though is to get on with the editing of my next book which is long overdue. This is the one set in a bistro you might remember, and I really need to get on with it now. To be fair, I have had a few unexpected obstacles to overcome, including being taken into hospital at the end of June, and subsequently, being off work for a few weeks. I am feeling much better now but I still don’t have a diagnosis as yet so I need to keep myself busy! Being able to go on holiday really helped and was great creative inspiration 🙂

So that’s all for now. Look out for more updates soon!