There's A Goalden Sky...

Just realised I didn't post a blog in January. Well, we had all that snow and it was freezing cold and I was busy trying to get warm! The house is in uproar at the moment. We're redecorating the front bedroom which meant moving into the back bedroom, but first we have to replace all the windows as the double-glazing has blown and so the temperatures have been practically Arctic. I was also busy trying to sort out my mum again, and getting Goalden Sky under way.

On top of that I've made a concerted effort to job hunt again as I want a change of scene. Application forms are a real drag but it has to be done!

Goalden Sky is well under way now and I'm aiming to finish it by September - 2013! - at the latest. Like its prequel Goalden Girl it's written in the first person and told from Gemma's point of view, but this time she's telling her step-sister Portia's story. Portia is going to walk through a storm, at the end of which there will be a golden sky. It's so refreshing to write a simple story again! I loved writing Epiworld and Big Brother but they were far more of a challenge, and they took longer because I had to make sure I covered every angle of their plots. Not that Goalden Sky isn't a challenge, too, but I'm far more comfortable with the subject matter of football and how the characters fit around it. All the old characters are there with Gemma and Portia: Tyrone, Gemma's old Nemesis and now her friend; Daz, Tyrone's and Gemma's mate; Mrs Lawford, the scary games teacher; Tim, Portia's older half-brother and a junior games teacher; Lizzie, his twin sister and Gemma's football coach. There are a few new characters, too.

Meanwhile I secured my first review of Big Brother which got five stars on Amazon.co.uk, and I've just discovered another on the Book Depository, my first ever review on there! A nice one, too. 4/5 stars is good. I'm happy with anything above three stars, but I've always accepted not everyone will like what you write, and any review is better than none. Big Brother is doing quite well although I appreciate I may never sell millions of copies, I'm quite pleased and I get a lot of appreciation on Twitter and Facebook.

The Big Brother bookmarks have been printed and I'm going to send them out for promotion when himself gets round to guillotining them at work! He's been too busy, he says. Previously I used the Vistaprint oversized postcard template, but this time I used their rack card template, designing the bookmark in Micosoft Publisher by halving the rack card measurements for one bookmark and putting two bookmarks onto the rack card - which is why they need guillotining. It worked really well and was cheaper! I'm going to send some to independent bookshops, too. I'm not bothering with postcards this time around. Hopefully the bookmarks will be left on counters for readers to help themselves.

Big Brother bookmarks designed using the Vistaprint rack card template

 

Back to the writing, then...