Dear reader, I can only apologise for my long absence. I have no excuse except perhaps rebelliousness.

I have been busy, trying to continue to write, edit, keep our business going and assist in a major back yard blitz.

Pre Backyard Blitz

Until Dave came home with a mini excavator

And it started to look a bit messy

Then came the dingo, that was a bit wild, with the thing almost tipping over, that may have been the operator though 🙂

Then we had rain . . .

retaining wall under construction

Now let’s have a go with the bobcat

back filling, more wild moments

now for the topsoil

and turf- Sir Walter soft leaf buffalo- lovely

Beautiful new back yard

As you can see, it’s been pretty busy and I admit that visiting here and keeping in touch have been pushed so far to the back of the stove that it was in danger of falling off.But to bring you up to speed, I was so sick during NaNoWriMo and I kept writing to make sure I made my 50K. And I suffered for it. I should have given up and gone to bed, instead I persisted and burned out in a big way. December was full of trying to finish, restart, restructure and sort out the mess I’d made of the story. I’d done so much research for it and planned everything out meticulously only to have it come to a lot of incomprehensible waffle. Now I don’t even want to look at it all. It’s dreadful and garbage. But perhaps one day it will come to light and I’ll see if it’s redeemable. Just not yet.

On a good note, I received wonderful feedback for Something on the Water from Charlotte Ledger of Harper Impulse (remember I won a manuscript development in August with RWA’s Clayton’s Conference?), and have been slogging away at rewriting SITW for about the gazillionth time. At times I’ve felt like tossing the whole thing, thinking if it takes me this many goes to get the darn thing right I should just toss it. But then I realised it’s all good practice, and who knows, it may even finish up publishable. Wouldn’t that be nice?

And so that’s me, for the last two and a half months, I’ve been hiding, editing, trying my hand a little poetry and renovating our back yard.

I apologise for my slack friendship, and hope you’ll forgive me and we can remain friends.

Enough about me, what have you been up to? How was your Christmas and holiday season? Did you work through most of it like I did or were you laying back enjoying the sun, or the snow? I’d love to hear so please, share.