Lego Cat

So I may have been distracted this weekend with building a lego cat - see pictures for the progress on it.

So How’s The Writing Been Going…

Hmm, what the honest answer to that?

Well over the summer, it’s kind of been derailed by the Euros, the Olympics and now the Paralympics. So that’s not great if I’m honest. However, I went into the summer months, knowing that I wanted book four finished for September, so I could then move onto website content and maybe a few prequal pieces, and then start book five in October. I’m probably about two to three weeks behind schedule - so the new dates are having book four finished for 16th September (which is the same day I’m meeting my book artist - cool new art work to come), the website and prequal ideas for October and to start book five in November for nanowrimo.

In terms of deadlines - I think I can still get them out on time, with a release date around Easter 2025 for book four and book five to follow winter 2025/6. But its far too early to give specifics on those dates.

What about the book promotion?

So yes, I ran a promotion, for the first week of the school holidays. This resulted in the most downloads that I have ever had in a single day, week and month - which was great! I’m also starting to see some reviews trickle in from this on all three books, which means people are reading through, and I’m absolutely delighted with them.

And in addition to the reviews, I was also email some AI generated fan art by a young fan on her summer holiday - this was by far the most amazing email that I received all summer!

And event?

Yes - I’ve signed up to two. I’m running character creating workshops on the 28th September at a local arts event and am part of the Promoting Yorkshire Authors book fair on the 2nd November. So this has meant putting an events box together, as well as designing wristbands to sell with my elemental badges.

So yeah - its been a quiet summer!

Cheetah Cubs!

I’ve been really bad at posting recently and I’ve had no real excuse for this other than I was distracted by the Euro’s, the Olympics and then the start of the football season. But to make up for it, we have new cheetah cubs at Yorkshire Wildlife Park and here’s a post full of bundles of fluffy cuteness. I seriously can’t get enough of these boys!

Self Publishing Show 2024

Photos and the photos of the notes I took at this years’ Self Publishing Show live - note I own none of the content of pictures of the slides, that belongs to the speakers.

Annual Leave Zoo Photos

This post is coming a week late, but its been a busy week back at the day job and my evening (other than watching the football) has been filled with getting a content edit done on a friend’s book.

London Zoo - 24th June

Yorkshire Wildlife Park - 26th June

Chester Zoo - 1st July

Authors at the Armouries

So yesterday (Saturday), I took a quick train ride up to Leeds to attend Authors at the Armouries - yes that’s the Royal Armouries Museum, which is always worth a visit in itself, especially if you want to do some weapons research for writing. A quick side note - if you are going to walk up from the station, which is a nice walk up along the canal and you plan on wearing your docs, check the back of your socks aren’t thinning or you will get blisters.

Anyway onto the event itself. I paid for the £10 entry ticket - which was just the entry ticket, although on looking at the giftbags, in the future if I’m going as a reader, I will be getting and early entry with gift bag ticket. There were other ticket options too that include activities on Friday night and a ball on Saturday night that looked interesting too.

Getting there at my entry time (11.30), I was arrived to a well managed queue set up, was quickly through the door and into over 100 stalls. It was absolutely fabulous to go in and talk to the authors, hear about their work, talk writing in general and it looked like the authors attending all made some good sales. It is an event that I am going to be adding into my calendar on a yearly basis and I might even look into trying to get a table next year.

Check out more on the facebook page - here.

Back Again? More Yorkshire Wildlife Park Photos

Another Saturday at one of my favourite places.

Fire Rebel is Out!

So no blog post last weekend - but that’s because I was trying to get book three out. However, Fire Rebel is now available on Amazon at £2.99 for the ebook and £10.99 for the paperback.

Which wasn’t as easy as publishing the others as the upload on the paperwork kept failing and I kept getting increasingly frustrated as I couldn’t understand why it was failing. Turns out on the upload there had been little boxes added to the end of chapters that were stopping the upload. After trying three times I filled out the amazon feedback form asking for answers and received them two days later, so Monday morning meant an earlier start as I made the changes, had it uploaded before work, it cleared the system just after lunch, my copies were ordered sections later and arrived on Wednesday.

The Editing Process

So this week has been very busy both with the day job and with the writing process. I received Fire Rebel (book three) back from the copy editor last Sunday morning and knowing I was going to be busy this weekend (a trip up to Barnard Castle yesterday to catch up with friends and d’n’d session today), I knew I had Sunday afternoon, bank holiday Monday and the evening to work on it. So priorities shifted and they had too, I mean we all only get 24 hours in a day, and any tv watching pretty much went out of the window with my tv rule coming back in - the tv is not switched on until 9pm, anything you want to watch before then can be recorded - and I even went as far as switching the wifi off as I edited.

This was the easier edit to do, I have to admit, when I get the content edit back for book four, that will take much longer than a week to get through and it should. This was the copy edit, so it more a case of discipline over creativity at this stage, which involves transferring the edits off the paper copy I have received and then reading the chapter again to make sure everything made sense. On Sunday, I have got through ten chapters, Monday I added another twenty-four chapters, and Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday nights I wrapped up the last twenty chapters. This left time for me to make an Instagram account, relaunch my neglected twitter/x account, and design business cards so I have them ready for the writing conference I’m attending at the end of June.

I’ve got a final read through of Fire Rebel to do, formatting, and sorting out the cover, but its all well on track (an estimated 10 hours work left) and will be with you very soon. But in the meantime, you can find the first three chapters here.

The Great Escape

Here it is the last Sheffield Wednesday blog post of the season - writing and photography to return from next weekend, especially after I received book three back from my editor this morning (and have made my way through the first ten chapters). However, Wednesday’s escape under Danny Rohl has been amazing given the situation that he inherited.

The season had started under (panic at the) Xisco Munoz who is the only Wednesday manager not to win a single game and gave us of worst start in both our 156 year history and in Championship history. It didn’t turn result wise straight away and we drifted out to 12 points from saftey, but the change in style was immediate and once the ‘Rohl pre season’ and the November international break came, the results picked up, the fans came on board, we more than came on board, I’ve never seen Wednesdayites take to a manager so quickly.

The problem was that while were now getting points on the board, so was everyone else at the bottom of the table, leading to a final day where everyone won and Birmingham City got relegated on 50 when the total to be safe in normally closer to 45 points!

Anyway lets look at how it was done.

So now onto the players and how they did - this first spreadsheet shows and overview of the squad - value at start of the season, appearance details for this season and for their entire Wednesday career.

This next spreadsheet shows appearance details for this season - number of starts, sub appearances and unused sub squad members for each game.

The third spreadsheet shows the players win/draw/loss percentages. The P stat is the win/draw/loss percentages for the number of games that they played in. The T stat is the percentage of times that they played in the team’s total wins/draws/losses.

The fourth spreadsheet is for goals and assists.

And the final spreadsheet is for clean sheets.

Quiet Weekend?

So this weekend I was all prepped for a quiet weekend. I knew there was the big Wednesday match on Saturday and D’n’D on Sunday, but it ended up with trip to the Wildlife Park on Saturday morning as I got up on Saturday and just fancied a trip there (partly to take my focus off the Wednesday v West Brom match) and then a message Saturday afternoon whether I would be her last minute replacement to comedy evening as her partner was not feeling great.

So football first - epic Wednesday win means that we are almost safe, see league table, but if anyone can mess it up from this point - it would be Wednesday. We just need one more point now to do it!

And now onto this weekend’s pictures from the wildlife park.

Audio Books and Wetlands

I am lucky enough to live less than a ten minute walk from some local wetlands. So with working from home most of the time with the day job, I take two or three walks there a day. I will click on a podcast on a quick walk or an audiobook on a longer one, and I have been known to double lap it when I get towards the end of a book.

On a weekday, this helps take me out of the day job, gives me a break from all the responsibilities/tasks etc that I need to do and get in some quality reading time. On a weekend, I’m more likely to go for one of those longer walks and get lost in fictional worlds.

Today, I took my camera with me, so I could give you an idea of what it’s like there.

20,000 Steps and Added Animals

Quick walk around Yorkshire Wildlife Park.

It’s The Hope That Kills You

After the end of last season, I never dreamed that we would have as a dramatic end to the season ever like that again. But the Championship table this year is crazy and the fact that Wednesday are still in it with more than a fighting chance after the chaos left by ‘panic at the Xisco’ Munoz is just as crazy. Whatever happens Danny Rohl has done an amazing job.

So can Wednesday actually pull this off despite being still 23rd and being in the bottom three all season. Yes, I think so, I think we need nine more points to do it and I think that we have another three wins in us, but as the title of this post says - its the hope that kills you.

Looking at our run in. We have two teams around us (6 pointers), which you have to hope that we would get points from in Stoke City and Blackburn. Norwich on Tuesday is going to be a difficult game - possibly our most difficult we have left, as I’m hoping that West Brom are comfortably in the play offs (which they are currently) and have secured this position, so they are resting players for play offs. The fact that both our fixtures against Norwich and West Brom are at home are huge positives as we are much better there. And Sunderland away on the last game of the season seems to be a nice one as they can’t get promoted or relegated and their form recently has been horrendous.

Look at the other teams fixtures - wouldn’t it be nice if we could have a season without having to do that. I think that Plymouth, QPR, Blackburn and Swansea have fixture lists that I would not switch with as their matches look harder (on paper). I think Birmingham, Huddersfield and Stoke have a similar run in to us. And Birmingham have the best fixture list (on paper).

However, football is not played on paper and anything can and will happen. There are still some twists and turns left of this amazing season left to develop.

A Easter Trip toYorkshire Wildlife Park

I spent Saturday at Yorkshire Wildlife Park, teaching a friend’s child to take photos. Here are my efforts from the day.