Finito

At the end of last week I finally typed The End on Crazy. What a relief that was. I had nightmares of the final chapter hanging on until Christmas which would've made me right cranky. The lovely witches read through the whole thing over the weekend and can I just say a huge thank you girls! Especially re suggestions to bring the internal conflict forward. So that's something for me to tackle once the turkey's been scoffed.

Other news - I sent off my fee to join the RWNZ today, which is the first step towards me attending the New Zealand conference next year. I'm so excited!

Also thinking of resurrecting my shelved YA. The one that started off as a YA idea, but by the time fingers touched keyboard morphed into a paranormal romance. But I think it might work better overall as a YA romance. Hmm. We'll see!

Top Five Christmas Songs

I've been tagged by the fragrant Sara so here we go

Top five Christmas songs

Last Christmas by George Michael or was it Wham. I have a feeling it was Wham. Wow, does that one take me back. I loved the snowy video to this song as well.

Merry Christmas Everybody by Slade. Well just because it's sooo loud and happy!

Do They Know It's Christmas. Because it made me think.

Hark the Herald Angels Sing. I adore this carol. I can't sing to save my life, and my rendition of this sends brave men into hiding, but I don't care. It's just a gorgeous song.

Happy New Year by Abba. Okay no comments because I chose an Abba song!! And it might not strictly qualify as a Christmas song but New Year is close enough. And the words always send shivers along my arms. I can NOT believe this was in the charts way back in 79. It's totally not possible.

Prescription for Happiness

Received a couple of early Chrissy pressies today, when fellow witch Pat's most delicious Christmas cake arrived. Hooray! I brought it into the house, and my son sort of leapt on it. I kid you not. He said, 'Is this the cake we had last year?' and without waiting for a reply began to rip it open. 'I can smell it already!' he yelled (the alcohol, he meant... not that I'm raising a lush or anything...) and mmmm my stomach is rumbling as I type since I'm dying to dig in with a good dollop of cream!

Enclosed in the parcel was a copy of the People's Friend Story Collection, Prescription for Happiness by Patricia Posner, aka Our Pat! I'm hopping mad my digital camera isn't working, since I want to take a pic of the gorgeous cover and upload it here. But it's lovely, with the most adorable little girl on the front which is a good thing, since I'd always imagined little Pippa to be that cute!

So... Huge Congrats to Pat!

Hot or Not

I stumbled across the Cover Cafe Contest earlier, and spent way too long looking through all the categories. There are some truly gorgeous covers about, and then there are - um - well, to put it kindly, not so hot ones. Here's the link if you fancy a bit of a procrastination!

Halo Cover Analysis

The lovely Kate Allan has a very informative blog, Marketing for Authors. She's currently analysing the marketability, aka the BUY ME! factor of book covers, and yesterday cast her eye over Amanda's You Had Me at Halo. It's a fascinating read, and impressive just how accurately Kate assessed Amanda's book from the cover (which, let's face it, totally rocks!)

Proud Mama Moment

It was my son's Year 7 Graduation Ceremony this morning, so the girls and I got there nice and early so we could get a good seat in the front row. I told them I might shed a tear or two, which didn't go down too well but hey this is my baby we're talking about. It doesn't seem possible he's been at this school for eight years, and on Friday will be leaving for good. Where's that adorable little four year old with the cherubic face and golden curls?

So then onto the prize giving, and to my delight he won a Citizenship Award and the Guiness Book of World Records. Darling daughter #2 whooped - which was a bit embarrassing since nobody else whooped at any time during the ceremony! - but annoyingly the digital camera chose that very moment to expire. Grrr!!!