Birth Announcement

My latest novel, On the Ninth Day, is now available on Amazon.  No 7 in the Southhill Sagas, though each story stands alone.  I had fun writing this one – actually I have fun writing all of them – I tell myself I’ll stop writing when I stop having fun but it hasn’t got there yet.  I have no idea of what, if anything I’ll write next.  I have several partly written stories but nothing I am desperate to finish, nothing that really makes a novel  – sometimes an idea just turns into a longish short story, maybe I’ll combine them one day.

Perhaps I won’t write any more – that’s what I say at the end of each one, but somehow or other another idea just pops into my head and before I know where I am I am banging away on the keyboard.   Take my third one, But a Dream – I had written two stories and wasn’t planning another and I woke up one Saturday morning with the idea, the almost completely formed idea for But a Dream, even the title, which felt quite appropriate considering where the idea came from.   That’s how I write – I always have to have a title, a basic storyline, a beginning and an ending and the characters, all firmly in my head before I start writing.  The actual story from A to B just develops from the characters – I give them free rein and they tell their tale – that’s why I find it so much fun, it’s a little like watching a movie for me, I’m never quite sure where it’s going or rather I know the ending but not the route.  
On the Ninth Day is fiction but one of the characters is definitely not made up – Smudge is or was, a real cat, a completely crazy but very beautiful and affectionate cat.   Is there an element of the paranormal in this story?  You decide.

Till next time J