Happy New Year

Yes, I know we are well into the year already and my absence has been notable over the last month.  I’ve been putting my New Year’s resolution into action.

I’ve been keeping busy. Initially, my plan was to take two weeks over Christmas to read and relax. It didn’t quiet work out that way. I did manage to sneak in some reading and I also got some work done on a couple of projects I’ve had on the back burner for a while. I submitted the Ember sequel to my publisher. Not exactly sitting on my laurels but not far off it either.

Sadly, Eric didn’t engage with the Christmas spirit  as much as I’d hoped he would. He finally emerged from his room at 11.50 Christmas night, peeked under the tree and shuffled off to bed again. He has yet to open a single present. Despite ordering a roast beef dinner, he decided on chicken nuggets on the day.

That aside, we had lots of family round and plenty of Champagne.

As soon as Christmas was over, I set about organizing an office. I don’t work well in clutter and this has been a problem for me over the last year, part of the reason I tend to write in the dining room rather than at a desk. I’ve spend a vast amount of the last month clearing clutter form my life. This involved a lot of heavy lifting furniture and being brutal about letting go of items I’ve hoarded for years. Yep, I’ve finally come out from under years of denial. I’m a hoarder. I like to keep that top I bought in 1985 because I never know when it will come back into fashion. Until recently, I had always thought I was good at not holding on to useless stuff but I think it’s the kind of thing that crept up on me when I wasn’t looking. One minute that box of keepsakes was empty and the next time I looked, I couldn’t lift the thing and it had spread like an Ivy plant, creeping into every crevice of available space in the house.

So, it’s all gone, gone, gone. Old journals mooning about life, love, faith and heartache(incidentally, my journals are as purple as my fiction writing.), hard copies of stories I wrote in school, clothes, video cassettes I never intend to subject myself to watching again, pictures of people who were once important but are no longer relevant to my life. It’s all gone. Replaced by a spacious room I didn’t know existed.

There are still some last minute adjustments to  be made but after that, I shall sit down at my shiny new desk and throw myself into editing Shades of Avalon. New Year resolution complete.