Sir Thomas More by Hals Holbein (Accessed via Wikipedia ) During lockdown, we had Time. Remember that? I was in my probationary year of teaching: almost certainly among the most exhausting years for any profession. All my time had been taken up with school work, and I regularly stayed at school until after 6pm, having arrived there at eight in the morning. Now, children, this is not sustainable and, very soon, I decided I didn’t like working where I was. Then I realised that I didn’t like teaching at all. But, in fact, neither was particularly true: I just needed to be true to myself and to say no, which would give me the ability to manage my work/life balance in a more appropriate way. What does this have to do with historical fiction, I hear you say? Well, during March 2020, we went into lockdown and suddenly I went from working ten-hour-days to ten-hour-weeks. I met up with my class on Google Meet, I put work up for them on a meticulously designed Google Classroom, but I just h...
So it's that time of the year again. The time when the internet is flooded with a million and one blog posts about people's crazy new year resolutions. Well, I've got some bad news for you...this is another one of those posts! This New Year is special. It signals the arrival of a new decade as well, and I find it frightening to consider how much might change before the next decade. A year seems much more manageable to think about. There are a lot of things I have committed to for the next year. Firstly, my job as a Primary Teacher. I swing from loving my job to the opposite, and I suppose this is quite normal for any paid work. Another is my Science degree. I have an exam in June - my first exam since I was at High School - so that'll be interesting!!! Thirdly, Crowvus will take up a huge chunk of my time. It's time consuming, exhausting, it sometimes feels like we're banging our heads against brick walls, but I love it!! As well as publishing other people'...