So Far, So Busy

Thank you for the kind wishes - gratefully received.

I wish I was a better cook. Or, rather, I wish I cared more about cooking. I've just dumped some chicken in a jar of sweet and sour sauce and bunged it in the oven (okay, added some onion and frozen peas, but not exactly cooking), and set some rice in the rice cooker. I have a bought apple pie for dessert. It is a fail. 

If I could make myself interested, I'm sure I'd be able to make something nicer, and less expensive! Instead I feel very inadequate and overwhelmed. Bear and DH seem happy enough, but I wonder how hard it can be to make my own sweet and sour sauce. Then I start wondering if I can make sweet and sour sauce for under 80p, or the cost of the Tesco own brand sauce, and then I wonder if mine would be significantly healthier, and then I consider breaded chicken and oven baked potato products for dinner next time. Or possibly beans on toast.

The recurring trouble is that if I try to make any sort of plan for dinner, something happens. I've found I have a much better chance of success if I don't mention what I am cooking until the last minute. The men usually enjoy it thoroughly. Of course, random stuff happens, like backing cars into other cars in car parks, or unexpected phone calls from physios that I took today in the middle of the supermarket. I ended up coming home with an even more random assortment than usual. I also forgot the polenta, which I had hoped to use in a cake. 

I've got a lot of writing stuff going on. While I was struggling with various programmes, I had some herbs delivered. I had ordered plants online and they came today. I'm not sure to water them in when I plant them or hope that they don't float away by themselves in all the rain that we've been having. I was very disappointed in the coriander plants, although I'm not as worried about slugs eating them. They'd have to find them first, and that would be a challenge. 

And I can't find my phone. 

And Microsoft bounced the story I sent to a magazine and I didn't get the notification until after submissions closed. 

And I may have had too much caffeine.

Writing stuff - this may be the reason I have had too much caffeine. As I may have mentioned a gazillion times, I have a novel coming out on 23 July, Out of the London Mist. Today I've been interviewed by the Three Furies Press, and you can read the interview here. 

I've also been working on publicity for the book. One of the ideas is to publish the short(ish) story that started all the steampunk writing, Deepest Desire, and use it as a teaser. So far today I have designed a cover, tried to remember what to put about copyright, and I've uploaded it to Amazon for 99c, or around 85p. It isn't showing yet, and there may be snags, but hopefully it will turn up. However I should be able to make it a giveawy later, with Booksprout. Booksprout is a site where you can follow authors who will often give away advanced copies of their books in exchange for a review. If you have a favourite author, it may be worth following them on there. It's no use looking for me at this moment, though, as I'm still working it out. I should be able to give away Deepest Desire, the prequel to Out of the London Mist, free to anyone who would like it as a promotion. Reviews would be kind, but I'm just grateful that anyone would like to read what I write. 

Part of the rising stress levels here is that I need to convert the files from doc to other types of file like epub and mobi. I have been here before. It is apparently incredibly easy to do this using a number of different programmes. I fail at these programmes. I have consumed my own considerable bodyweight in caffeine. It isn't becoming clearer. I'll share when I have more.

Hugs and good health to all.