Digging up the year...

I’ve decided that I should no longer be that manic girl… the one chasing her own tail and running herself into the ground with a million and one different projects on top of the normal everyday duties that life brings.  This year is going to be all about growing.  Not personal growth (although I’m sure a bit of that will happen) but vegetable and herbs. 

I was going to give up the allotment – with my little girl too young to not in danger on the plot (there are a lot of poisonous weeds and stinging nettles), and with moving house, I knew I wouldn’t have any time for it anymore.  I was gutted.  The allotment was, ironically, really the only thing that kept me truly rooted in the UK, even in the winter.  But having thought things through (mostly not wanting to dig up our apple trees and relocate our berry plants) it’s staying. 

Last three seasons were horrible to veg – if anyone grows their own vegetables, they’ll know exactly what I mean.  From drought to floods; frost to heat wave and back again, those little plants have a hard time surviving, let alone producing fruit or tubers (my first earlies crop of potatoes were mini and most of my lates had rotted themselves in the ground after having lain in permanent puddles despite the well draining soil).  But the berries… oh, the berries loved it!  They could handle the dry weather and still bring fruits, the heavy rain just made the produce more.  Even the birds couldn’t get their fill of those amazing blueberries and raspberries.  The strawberries did okay… I’ll work on those too.  But for the next season, the allotment is going to be about raspberry canes and blueberry bushes.  I can never get enough of them anyway and being low maintenance and easy to grow, they’ll keep the allotment producing until my little girl is big enough to go to school. Then maybe this horrible extreme weather would have settled a bit and I can get back on to growing the basics.

The new house has got some amazing potential too for a herb garden in one area, a potted veg patch in the other, and space for a cob nut tree and couple of apples.  There will be… a lot of digging going on in the next few months.

That said, I still have been very busy with writing and jewellery.  I’ve been lucky enough to be asked back as a judge for the Paws n’ Claws competition for children’s fiction stories, I still have to edit and complete my fantasy book, Downtrodden (might even have a chance to upload it before the new year), and of course, writing for knowonder.com.  And sending out to agents… but that’s a given rather like breathing.  And I’ll keep it all low key.  Even now that I’m part of a new publishing group, Springbok Publications, I’m staying low key for a while and asked to only be assistant editor due to time constraints.

As for Seadrake Creations, I’ve got my etsy shop all pretty and will be working on new lines casually and adding them when I’ve got a moment to do so.  This year for Seadrake will be less focus on selling and publicity and more time spent on learning new techniques and skills.  Rather like an extended internship.

So, whew!  Bring on those long days so I can get back to digging over the allotment…

January inklets

So much to do and so little time.  I’ve been working on more rings and other jewellery for Seadrake Creations.  My photography has certainly improved, but I’m still struggling to be seen and found on etsy (http://www.etsy.com/shop/SeadrakeCreations?ref=si_shop) as there are so many millions of people selling there.  I do very well at the craft fairs, so this year, I’ll be looking for more fairs to sell at.

I loved doing the bat ring for Berni.  She’s going to wear it to the next Dracula Society meeting – a perfect setting for such a goth ring.  Other jewellery projects have been doing more rings, working with traditional sterling bezels (look at the etsy moonstone ring which blends fine silver with sterling https://www.etsy.com/listing/120699333/beautiful-6mm-moonstone-in-fine-silver).  My wax ring is looking beautiful with celtic spiral and trinity knots, but it’s too expensive to have cast just now. I’ll have to wait until I’ve sold more work.

As for writing… I suppose I needed a break.  I’ve not written anything new for knowonder save for the forward to the next anthology coming out soon.  The ideas seem to be bottlenecked in my head but come out as dark teen fiction – probably because I’m still editing my YA 16+ fantasy book, Downtrodden.  Blood Tide was swept up in the free offers after Christmas – over 400 readers downloaded the book internationally in three days, but only one person left a review.  Thankfully, it was a five star review, and that did make my day.  After years of toil, research and rewrites, it has come to pretty much nothing. Yet I’m happy I wrote it.  It is, in my opinion, my best work – something that I may never top, which is a scary thought.

The days are passed wondering what else I can do to promote my work.  There is always more to be done, but there is danger in just throwing out cash for google-ads only to find your time and efforts would have been better off spent on something else.  So what on earth to do next?  I really want to get this fantasy edited, dusted and kindled.  A wonderfully supportive fellow author has shown me the path to Smashwords – an online resource that allows authors and publishers to upload to most retail outlets for little to no cost.  So I suppose I’ll continue to slog forward, blinded by the icy headwinds, recklessly delusional in the hope that someday, someone will pick up my work and hand it to someone who might send me a good contract.