About Me

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Hi, welcome to my blog, I am a writer of short stories, children's and YA novels . An acceptance from People's Friend finally made me a published writer! Yeah, happy days! I have since had stories published in The Weekly News and The Last Laugh anthology. My main love is writing children's/YA novels...I'm now enduring a fruitless search for an agent... I also draw and paint, I like to draw animals (usually my adorable crazy cats!)Occasionally famous people and motorcycles.

Wednesday 13 July 2011

Go away with that camera!


I took about ten pics of Millie Moo today, but this is my favourite, I think it would make a good painting. I'll have a go when I'm in the mood. Procastination for the win!!

Seriously, she purrs the whole time, but has that look on her face that means she's aboout to get me! So basically she wants to kill me, but is happy about it. :/

Hehe, no, she loves me really x

Sunday 10 July 2011

deleting bit by bit

I have been trawling through the children's novel, looking for blidingly obvious boringness. What I did find, is that a lot of words are just unnecessary. I have been deleting them, ruthlessly.

For a small example, these few lines originally read:


David’s mum nodded and looked at David with a thoughtful expression, as if she was contemplating whether to say something more about the incident. She obviously changed her mind and looked at them with a bemused expression.
“Ooh, have you seen that girl next door?”


After a ruthless word cut,


David's mum nodded thoughtfully, David hoped there would be no more mention of the incident. To his relief, his mum suddenly looked bemused,
"Ooh, have you seen the girl next door?"


Hopefully David's mother's forgiving change of subject is still apparent, in less words.

I don't know, I think I will be at this editing lark for a long long while. What do you think, better or worse?

Interestingly, for anyone writing children's books, there is a competition to write the best opening paragraph in 300 words on 'An Awfully Big Blog Adventure' Thanks to Nicola Morgan's Help I need a publisher for the link.

It looks like fun.

Well, have a great day x