Wednesday 5 March 2025: Publication day!

Monday was publication day for Ash Wednesday, Flash Fiction #13. The plan was to plug it yesterday, as Monday’s post was the month ahead. But I missed yesterday too, so as today is actually Ash Wednesday, I’m announcing it now instead.

You can buy it here.

Friday

I was up in good time on Friday and once I’d fed the birds and made us both a drink, the first job was the graphics for the March blog posts: the month ahead and the wrap-up. 

Because it was the last day of the month, despite being up against the clock with Book 4 for the great novella challenge, I had planning work to do, both for this week and for March. I had to put a couple of short stories to one side as I simply won’t have the time in March to work on them. 

One job was completely removed from all future schedules. I don’t have to create a monthly word-count spreadsheet now, because my 12-project spreadsheet covers it all, for up to 12 projects up to 12 months. Of course, I already have 8 projects on there, so I’ll be making a new one soon, Workbook 2. But it does save me a lot of time. Depending on how many I have by the end of the working year, I’ll either have a summary sheet as part of one of them, or I’ll create a separate summary sheet. Just so I can keep track of my annual word-count. 

Once I’d decided on my workload for March, I wrote up yesterday’s Hello March post. I had about an hour on The Haunted House Hotel, and then I had to go and get my hair cut. When I got back, I had another hour on it before it was time to eat our mid-afternoon dinner. I did another hour, then came in to start today’s blog post. I finalised yesterday’s post and scheduled it.

I spent the entire rest of the evening working on this novella, before and after tea, while the poet watched at least 2 films I wouldn’t watch and a load of YouTube videos. I submitted it at 3:30am Saturday, UK time, which was still the day before in Vegas. I shared the graphic on BlueSky, Instagram and Facebook, all from bed, and finally turned out the light at about 4:10am.

Weekend

We had a lie-in, unsurprisingly, and had a very lazy Saturday. The first email in my in box was the acknowledgment for the great novella challenge.

We went out at about 3pm to do the shopping. We have to catch the butcher before it closes and the supermarket before all the shelves empty. The mincer was broken at the butcher, so we had to get some beef mince from the supermarket, but we got everything else we wanted for this week. But the supermarket shelves were indeed looking a bit sparse.

On Sunday we went to Nostell Priory in the campervan. We want to give it a run at least every week if we can, and we’d already missed that last week due to illness. We packed a picnic and headed over there, eating our breakfast bars on the way. 

We’ve both been to Nostell loads of times, both on our own and together, and we went to a 1980s concert there too. But this was the first time we both actually went into the house. We usually had dogs with us before, so only ever visited the grounds. It’s a nice house, very inspiring. Also quite sparsely furnished, but much of that is probably due to a fire they had there in the 1980s.

I bought a guide book and we read some of the history, then when we got home, I started to jot down some ideas for the Lady Mathilda Investigates… cosy Regency mystery series. Although I may yet make her a Victorian lady. I also did some work on the client edit, as I wanted to get that back to the author this week.

Monday

Monday wasn’t a very nice day. The poet had to get up early and drive to the midlands, and I had to drive myself to the hospital for a blood test and then to the dentist for a check-up and hygienist visit. Before I went, I did a couple of hours on the client edit.

I don’t like going to the dentist at all (does anyone?), and now I have to go back again for an extraction and a filling. I couldn’t fit it in for the next 6 weeks in case they open me up tomorrow in the operating theatre (rather than do keyhole surgery). But we wanted a clear month between the treatments and my next hygienist visit in 3 months.

So I had to book the treatment in for the week we come back from our tour around the NC500 in Scotland. It’s slap bang in the middle of my next study along workshop too, but I’m hoping I’ll still be able to at least watch the videos and make notes. There will be an assignment due that same evening. If I decide to do the assignment, I won’t be able to do it in advance because it’s usually a 24-hour turnaround. I’ll just have to do as much of it as I can before I go.

It’s supposed to be the Smashwords sale this week, but when I checked, my book prices hadn’t changed. I must have done something wrong, or forgotten to do something, because I know others have worked just fine. Ah well.

Grand-doggy #1 came to stay on Monday evening for 2 nights.

Tuesday

I spent the rest of Monday and ALL of Tuesday on the client edit. I didn’t turn the computer on for 2 days and I only checked social media and the Smashwords sale via the phone. I finished the hard-copy edit, but I won’t get the electronic edit done before my operation tomorrow. Instead I’m going to write up the notes and get those sent to the author. He doesn’t need the edited file to answer my queries.

Today

So today I’ll be catching up on everything I need to catch up with on the computer. I’ll write and schedule a blog post for tomorrow and maybe a book review for Saturday. The rest I’ll play by ear.