With a certain social media site undergoing a complete meltdown and throwing a big tantrum, I thought it would be helpful to list all of the places you can find me on the web so we can keep in touch.

This website!

My newsletter

Amazon Author Page

Mastodon

Facebook

Instagram

Goodreads

Twitter

Connect with me on one or all of those! I always love to chat about books and all sorts of random stuff!

Hey folks. I just wanted to pop in and say Merry Christmas and happy holidays. Whether you celebrate a religious holiday, a nonreligious one, or don’t celebrate at all, I hope you have a wonderful few days. I’m going to try to be off-line until Boxing Day. We’re spending this Christmas Eve wrapping presents, making gingerbread cookies, and just generally getting into the Christmas mood. I’ll see you all after Christmas for a roundup of the year and some news. Look after yourselves and have fun!

Today we spent the afternoon up at our local vineyard with a bunch of other mums and lots and lots of small children. (Yes, we do live in Wales. Yes, it rains a lot. Yes, there is a vineyard here.)

I actually packed my computer and notebook, intending to get on with some work (I’m desperately trying to finish off a novella that’s tied in to my forthcoming book, Secrets of the Dragon Tomb, and I have a freelance project due at the end of next week), but the weather was so nice and the kids were having so much fun that I left it all in the car.

Somehow, we seem to forget that this vineyard is nearby and that it’s absolutely great for kids (there’s a stream and plenty of places to play) and of course for adults, and then we remember and absolutely swear that we’ll come back. The Easter holidays are just beginning, and my brother Martin is bringing his kids down to stay for a couple of days, so if we get some nice weather (not guaranteed here!) we’ll have to bring them all up for an afternoon.

In the meantime, we’re not planning to go away anywhere over the break, so we’ll be trying to do some day trips with the kids. I’m going to take them to the aquarium in Bristol, and their grandma will be taking MrD to the science centre in Cardiff (his little brother, MrX, is too young for that), and then we’ll see. We’re thinking about the Wales National Showcaves, which look absolutely awesome but may need a few days rather than a day trip.

In between all of that, I’ll have to try to get some work in.

Still, it’s spring and it’s been warm, and I’m feeling happy. It’s funny how that can make everything seem much more possible.

The photo of the Sugarloaf Vineyard is by Shakespearesmonkey on Flickr and is used with thanks under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic License.

Today is Saint Patrick’s day, and ever since I was a little creature, no larger that you are now (and probably a great deal smaller) growing up in Zambia, I have had a massive, unearned sense of entitlement about Saint Patrick’s day.

We lived in what was then a small town in the African bush (and which is now quite a bit bigger). Every year, on Saint Patrick’s day, the Irish nuns in the nearby mission baked a cake especially for me, based on no more than my name.

We weren’t Catholic. We weren’t even Irish. (My father was a teacher and he was working at the local secondary school, which I believe ran a British curriculum at that time.) I don’t think we ever went to church there, but where we were, the nuns weren’t exactly spoiled for choice in the availability of Patricks.

Anyway, each year, this wonderful cake would turn up and I would feel special.

Wind forward until I was nine years old and back in Britain and the first Saint Patrick’s Day came along. You know what I got? That’s right. Nothing. Zilch. Nada. Here I was, still being a Patrick, and nobody thought that was special. Nobody baked me a cake.

There should be a special lesson here, an important moral message to pass on to you, dear readers, but there isn’t. I’m still bitter. It’s Saint Patrick’s Day again. Where’s my cake?!?

The image is a photo of Saint Patrick from the stained glass window from Cathedral of Christ the Light, Oakland, CA. Original photo by Simon Carrasco on Flickr via Wikipedia, used under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Licence.

Today is Blue Monday, the most depressing day of the year. I know this because it says so in all the newspapers.

Today the sky is high, blue and clear, and the sun is the bright with that kind of brightness you only get in winter. The hills and mountains around us are capped in fresh, white snow. The air is sharp and clean.

I’ve got old vinyl spinning on my turntable, green tea steaming in a mug, dark fruit-and-nut chocolate to nibble, and a short story with fourteen (fourteen!) major characters to write.

Today is not depressing.

Image credit: “Snowdon in the Snow” by user Eifion on Flickr. Used under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic License. Used with thanks!

We’re about to move house. This isn’t exactly voluntary, because we rent, and our landlady wants to move back into her property, so we have to find somewhere else. First up, we considered moving here:

Unfortunately, it’s just a bit too far to commute to Mr. D’s school, and we’re not about to make him change schools for a puny house like that.

Then we considered moving here:

But, apparently, it’s not actually real, as such. So, you know.

In the end, we’re moving to a house that is slightly smaller and slightly dingier than the one we’re in now (boo!) but which at least has a separate office (hooray!). Getting ready to move is turning out to be a bit of nightmare. We’ve been in this house for, ooh, something like 4 1/2 years, and to be honest, we haven’t actually gotten rid of anything in those years. And we arrived with boxes of stuff we hadn’t gotten rid of from previous houses.

So, Steph and I have been sorting through piles and piles of random stuff, trying to get rid of it. (Anyone want an old pram/stroller? A carrycot? A baby car seat?) I can’t bring myself to take stuff that is still in good condition to the tip, but I also can’t figure out how to easily get rid of it. I guess we could put it on ebay, but to be honest, we don’t have time to do that before we move.

We have managed to donate about 20 million items of baby clothes to poor, unsuspecting charity shops by taking them there and running off at high speed before they could say they don’t want them. All I have to do now is wait until Steph is out and then get rid of all of her books while keeping mine. :D

Anyway, we’re moving in about a week’s time, so most of our junk will probably come with us again. If you should have our new address and I’ve forgotten to give it to you, let me know!

Now, back to work. I have a room to sort through and a freelance project due tomorrow.

Oh yeah. In other news, it looks like the publication date for SECRETS OF THE DRAGON TOMB has been pushed back again until September 22, 2015. I do so love the vagaries of publishing.

Credit: Photo of Blenheim Palace, by Nicholas Jackson. Used under a Creative Commons 2.0 License.

It was an absolutely stunning day in Wales today. Beautiful, warm sunshine, a clear sky, a slight breeze to relieve the heat. I’ve become accustomed enough to the way British weather behaves with the kind of climate change we’ve been experiencing over the last decade to realise that this might be the best of the summer, even if it isn’t officially summer yet. So, me and the boys and Maya (our dog) went down to the river Usk to enjoy what might be a brief summer.

Mr D. dressed up in his explorer outfit and went looking for dinosaurs among the buttercups and long grass (we were chased by T. Rexes and raptors for most of the walk); Baby X fell asleep in his pushchair. Maya, who is getting on a bit, trudged gamely if not 100% enthusiastically behind.

Now Mr D is playing in his paddling pool and I’m going to watch a bit of rugby.

We’re going to America at the end of July this year and staying for a bit month. So, I’ve decided my target is to write a complete novel before we go! (To be fair, this is going to be a chapter book, probably about 10,000 words, which sounds a little less impressive, so I’m going to say: I’m going to write a whole novel!)

So, last weekend was St. David’s Day over here in Wales. I’m not quite sure what St. David did to deserve a day, but he got one, and so did we (actually, we got three; see later). Anyway, because St. David is the patron saint of Wales, that meant that all the national historical monuments were free, so we took a trip up to Raglan Castle.

My brother was visiting, along with two of Mr. D and Baby X’s cousins, so, along with my mum, we made a big family trip of it. Mr. D ran into a bunch of his friends there, and spent most of the time tearing around the castle, being a dinosaur.

Astonishingly, nobody fell into a moat or off a tower or into a dungeon, but they did get impressively muddy, which kind of made me feel jealous. :)

This was Baby X’s first ever castle, and I’m not sure he noticed much of it, but it’s a tradition, because Castle Raglan was Mr. D’s first castle too.

I love castles. Seriously. They are one of the best things about the U.K., and Wales in particular. They’re everywhere, and they’re magnificent. I want a castle. Really, any castle. My mum almost bought a house with a bit of castle wall in it, but then she didn’t. Supposedly, she would have had to maintain it, and it was crumbling. Bah, I say.

So, as I said, we’ve had three St. David’s Days this year (so far). There was the real one at the weekend, then Mr D.’s school is having an Eisteddfod for St. David’s day, and it overran to a second day. And then to add to the fun today we’re having World Book Day, and the kids have to dress up as a character from a book. Mr. D dressed up as a pirate from Jonny Duddle’s The Pirates Next Door. Mr. D has now dressed up three days in a row. (For St. David’s day, they dress up in Welsh national costume, which basically means a Welsh rugby shirt. I mean, it’s either that or dress up as a leek, right?)

I’m sure school wasn’t this fun when I was a kid.

The Promised Links

Tiffany Trent with an inspiring blog entry – When Publishing or Life Has You Down on the Mat, Answer the Bell

If you’ve got a five-year-old in need of entertainment (and the neighbours are out…) – Bouncy Balls

I’m sure they’re relieved… – Neanderthals cleared of driving mammoths over cliff in mass slaughter

It’s about dinosaurs. It’s cool. – Newly identified dinosaur fauna sheds light on evolution