Belated Happy New Year to everyone! Those of you who follow me on Twitter will know that the reason I have been a bit quiet is because we have had a new addition to our family.
Merlin joined our family on the 23rd of December and he is so adorable my daughter Emily is a very lucky dog owner and because she lives with us that makes us very lucky as well. I will post a picture below for all the dog lovers out there and also you can see why I haven't been able to concentrate on writing. But I told him last week, playtime was going to have to be fitted in around my writing and not the other way around.
There are a few things I wanted to go through on the post starting with the good news:
There have been quite a lot of things happening since Christmas including signing on to do a Book festival in Newcastle in 2024. Before that my friends at The Book Dragon in Stockton-on-Tees have arranged for me to do a book tour in their store and online starting Monday 13th of February till Saturday 18th February. To join in on the fun and learn more about me as an author check out their website here.
I am still looking for events and book signing opportunities so if anyone knows of any please let me know.
Now on to the negatives:
Before I sign off this blog post I wanted to clarify something that is important to me. When I started this blog I was very honest in writing that these blog posts are about my writings and my journey as an independent author. I do not have a publishing house behind me I like many authors do not have an endless pot of money. I can't speak for other authors but I am under no illusions that I will set the world alight with my books but that I write because I enjoy it and I have stories I want to write. I pay for a wonderful editor to go through my book and ensure that it is clear, concise and the best it can be. I have already written before about having dyslexia so I am sure for Maddy it's not an easy job.
I was upset the other day when I received an email from someone saying that they had visited my website and my blog and found a number of grammatical errors (there was obviously a bit more to their email but that was the point of it). When I started my first blog post I apologised to all my readers and told them that about my dyslexia and how these blog posts will be written by me and not edited in anyway so there may be spelling mistakes and there may be gramatical mistakes. I only have a limited supply of money and I would love to have an administrative assistant to take over all the things that I find difficult to do like writing blog posts, selling myself etc but unfortunately I don't. I do however try my hardest to make sure that I do these difficult things to the best of my ability. Dyslexia is a disability, it is not that I am missing an apostrophe or using the wrong word because I am thick or stupid it is because I have a disability and I am trying my best.
My response to this email was to reply with I apologise that there are some mistakes on my webpage but unfortunately I am dyslexic and despite being let down on various occasions by professionals who said that they would help and then being ghosted by them. I am trying my hardest. I did receive a reply which I will not be sharing as it was not very understanding and in actual fact they totally missed the point.
I guess what I am really saying is I am sure there are a few mistakes on my website and on my blog posts but I am me and I am trying I can not cure my dyslexia and I use as many tools as I can so please bare with me.
Here is a picture of the wonderful Merlin to cheer you all up.
