Whew....

I just haven't had the time/inclination to sit down and write down what's going on... mainly because I've been too busy living it!  I went to a large book fair in London (the LBF, to be precise, but I'm trying not to make this post Googleable since privacy and all).  It was amazing!  Reader, I felt like a grownup again.  I wound up going to dinner with editors, publishers, agents. And it was nice to connect with other authors. I feel like I'm going somewhere with this whole writing thing.

My novella is going to be published in 2 weeks.  I'm not going to link it here because I'm writing under a pen name... and at this point I think I'd like to keep the specifics of my personal and business lives separate.  This blog is mainly for family stuff, recording how the kiddos are doing, blogging about trips and days out, maybe a rant here and there.

And pictures, of course.

Top - climbing a tree.  They have helmets on because they'd ridden their scooters to the Common.  I'm not one of Those Parents.  Below, exploring one of the structures at Kew.

Up until a few weeks ago, the above is how C did a "thumbs up."  At the time I snapped the pic, we were going down the Strand, near Fleet St, on our way to visit a museum.

'Scuse the quality of these snaps - they're all from my Dumbphone.

I will have more stuff later... once I get a bit more time to sort my head out.  Right now I'm writing two novels at once.  I'm 9k into one and nearly 16k into the other.  The former will be shorter - 55-60k.  The latter is a big undertaking, different than anything I've done before, touches on socioeconomic stuff that I don't often see tackled in fiction, and should run 80-90k.  Right now my editor is looking at three of my pieces, a short story, a novella, and a novel.

We are going off to Wiltshire in about 6 weeks, staying in a little family-friendly resort type place (Center*parcs) for four nights.  I think that'll be our big trip this year, due to car issues (the sucker was in the garage for 10 weeks or something ridiculous, and did I mention that we bought it with only 25k miles on it?!).  Fees here, fees there, Tories cutting things left and right - it just seems prudent to live a slower life.

So since this post is totally stream-of-consciousness, tonight I made a smoothie from fresh bananas and strawberries and a few splashes of apple and beetroot juice.  Nothing else.  It was pretty tasty.

At some near point in the future I'd like to post a) a more extensive Dumbphone set of photos and b) "regular" camera photos.  Right now I am off to get the kids in their pajamas and into bed.