Hello everyone! Hope you all have had a chance to relax and celebrate over the past few days – I know I’m slowly recovering from an overdose of chocolate and good food, the glow of spending time with family still warm within me.

But I haven’t stopped writing.

Even though I’ve been staying with family and enjoying a lovely Christmas, I’ve still been writing notes, scribbling in my notebook, ideas coming to me as I sit at dinner or walk the snowy streets, held like precious candle flames in my mind, sheltered by an imaginary hand until I have the time to sit and write them down, then I can let them go.

‘I used to tell interviewers that I wrote every day except Christmas, the Fourth of July and my birthday. That was a lie. …. The truth is that, when I’m writing, I write every day.’ Stephen King in On Writing

I read On Writing quite some time ago, and I was struck by King’s observation that he writes every day. Because I think I get it. The act of writing, at least as I see it, doesn’t have to mean actually sitting down at the keyboard and knocking out pages of prose. For me, the process also includes thinking and scribbling notes and working out plot tangles as I walk or iron or cook or am in the car – my mind is always, on some level, working on my current story. This is something for which I’m extremely grateful, for I know there could come a time when the idea mill dries up (although hopefully only temporarily). So that’s why, when the ideas come, I let them through. I guard them and turn them over in my mind, honing and polishing and keeping them safe until I can convert them into black and white. A notebook and pen are usually with me or, failing that, the Notes section on my phone comes in very handy. Because I don’t want to lose them, these ethereal wisps of thought and memory.

However, I am very much behind on my reading. A pile of books, half of them started, sit next to my bed waiting for me to join them. I am also woefully out of date on the blogs I follow, unread emails sitting on my machine, comments to be made, feedback to be given. So that is my plan, this coming week. To catch up on it all. To (hopefully) be able to reconnect and read. I do find it more difficult to read while I’m writing, so it’s something I plan to focus on in the New Year. For after all, as writers, part of how we learn our craft is by reading the work of others.

So on to a New Year. All being well, Oak and Mist will be published by the end of January. The cover design is almost done and will be revealed forthwith, the final edit underway.

I wish you all a fantastic New Year and a happy 2015! xx