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Showing posts from April, 2018

#HistFicThursdays - New Year's Resolutions

 Happy New Year, Readers! New Year (only last week) seems like an eternity ago. The reason being that we have been snowed in for almost every single one of those days. For me, this has been amazing. I love winter (it's my favourite season) and we managed to build snowmen, go sledging, and have all kinds of wintry fun and games. Because of this, it seems like ages since I drew up a few ideas for new year resolutions. I'm not very good at sticking to my resolutions, but I'm hopeful that I might manage more than a week with this year's! They are not all to do with writing (I'm determined to get better posture, too), and they are more long-term aims and goals than anything I will slog away at all year round, but here are one or two of them... Firstly, I want to finish writing the first draft of The Nobility of Caledon , which is Book 5 in the Caledon series. Book 3, The Strength of Caledon , will be launched in August this year, so I really need to get a move on with co...

John o' Groats Book Festival

What a weekend it has been! The 1st John o' Groats Book Festival has been in the pipeline for a long time, and it certainly lived up to expectations. It started with a bang on Friday. A cartographer was launching her new set of Northern Scotland maps. Sadly, I was at work during this event but I've heard great things about it from people who were there. The cartographer's name is Val Fry and the publisher is Nicolson. The first event I could attend was on the Friday evening when the authors were introduced, including 8 fabulous local authors who each had a 10 minute slot. It was great to see one of the organisers, Ian Leith , start the evening by showing his books. The next author was Virginia Crow, published by Crowvus, who started her talk by showing the Day's Dying Glory book trailer which had people sitting on the edge of their seats. Virginia Crow, author of Day's Dying Glory It was super to hear so many local authors talk about their books, an...

"Living with Depression" Book Review

Living with Depression by Nick Weatherhogg Blurb from Goodreads : " It has been estimated that almost one in ten adults and teenagers in the United Kingdom are affected by some form of depressive illness. This is a ten-fold increase in the last seventy years. If this growth were to continue unchecked, then about 95 percent of the population would have depression by the year 2100. It is further believed that depression will be the number 1 health problem worldwide by the year 2030. And yet for every three sufferers, less than 5 is spent each year on research. At least a half of all sufferers never seek any form of medical or psychiatric intervention. The origin of depression can be situational or biochemical or a combination of many different factors. People do not choose to become depressed, but they do choose how they are going to deal with it and what they will do. A range of treatments are available as standard, ranging from medication to talking therapies, but vari...