Living in the past

The wind has changed, at least I hope it has. Thanks to some wonderful support form a few on–line friends, I’m feeling much better.

I’ve been taking stock. My past has been very unhappy. My mother didn’t love me and despite spending  most of my life trying to change that, all I succeeded in doing was to make things worse for me..  I have never had a truly loving relationship with a man and my father, well that’s a whole other story. Those are all facts. Luckily for me they all have one thing oin common, they are in the past. It’s up to me what I do from now on. I can carry all that misery with me, like a tortoise with a shell that’s three sizes too big, or I can look forward, concentrate on the good things, even if it’s just a bit of sunshine and some home made cake to eat.

Now I  have to decide what to do with the book I was writing. I’ve finished all the stuff about my past. All that needs to be done is to bring the story up to date. I’m in two minds. One says, shred it. The other says, get it out there because there must be thousands of other people out there, having their lives ruined by selfish, unreasonable, manipulative parents. If I can help one or two of them to start enjoying their lives, surely it has to be worth it? I will give it some more thought over the weekend.

Louis arrives in a couple of hours. The sun is shining. I’m tempted to gout side, but I have some catching up to do, workwise so it looks like I’ll be stuck inside for quite a while. I  haven’t been able to think straight for the last two weeks, so if you were hoping to hear from me, or I owe you feedback on a story, or I haven’t replied to a message, or followed your blog, anything like that, get in touch and let me know. You can get me on akacatherinehoward@yahoo.co.uk

Now for some positive stuff.

I’m in an on line writing group called the Seriously Serious Scribes. On Wednesday, somebody on the site mentioned a new on line market for short stories where you get paid royalties if people download your work.  I made myself send them four stories – it didn’t take much effort, I have hundreds on file and they didn’t mind if they’d been published. Yesterday, they accepted three of them with some really nice comments too. I also received my first ever royalty statement (I’ve had them for anthologies but was never actually paid anything) saying that Byker books owed me twenty something pounds for e versions of my books on Kindle. The one on writing fillers sold more than 100 copies which isn’t bad.

Now to wrap up another parcel. I'm selling my book, THE WRITER’S TREASURY OF IDEAS, from my web site (www.akacatherinehoward.weebly.com). It comes with a free mini guide to short story competitions. Sales aren’t exactly booming but it’s still early days. Now for a big favour. If anyone reading this belongs to a library, could you ask them to stock my book? I would really love to get some PLR. If you’re going to Swanwick, you could even ask them to order it for you. I’d be happy to pay you back the reservation fee when I see you or offer you a discount on any of my books.

That’s it for now. I have so many fiddly little jobs that need doing, and if I don’t do them now, I’ll have no chance once loveable Louis arrives. .