A Second Night of Insomnia

I am on my second night of insomnia in a row. Now long term readers will know that I go in phases with my insomnia and have frequently posted in the middle of the night. (When I've got fed up reading The Daily Mail.) However, my insomnia hasn't been too bad for a while but the last two nights it has come back with a vengeance and tonight I also can't stop sneezing for no apparent reason and instead of reading The Daily Mail I have been forced to run numerous virus checks on my PC because of a potential threat. As we say in the UK:

It never rains but it pours.

So no doubt tomorrow I will get run over by a bus.

I just pray to God that this perimenopausal phase I am in doesn't prevent me from forgetting to change my knickers as if I am going to die, I want to die wearing clean undies.

Mind you, if I get splattered by a bus it probably wouldn't matter too much: I guess it would be kinda messy.

Well, that's a happy thought for 4 am in the morning. Truly. I don't have to worry now if, in my mad perimenopausal state, I forget to change my knickers and get run over by a bus. You see you can find a positive side of things if you want to.

Now you may be wondering what I have been doing lately. I have been wondering this myself. The life of a Housewife Extraordinaire/tennis mum/author is somewhat peculiar. This has all been complicated by the fact that the good Mr T has been out of work since last May which has rather interrupted my daily routines of doing just what the hell I like.

If there is a God, I pray he releases me from the agony of the Good Mr T invading my kitchen. A job for him too would be pretty good but, most importantly, I need him the hell out of my kitchen. In the last two days he has sliced up his finger with a one of those razor sharp vegetable slicers and (worse) served up LIVER to the kids.

They were not impressed. Luckily, I avoided the liver as I am on a diet so eating my own concoctions. (Which don't involve liver in way, shape or form.)

In fact, my diet is a particularly awewsome one which allows me to have chocolate when stressed.

So not much of  a diet really. But hey it's the thought that counts!

So what news do I have apart from the one that I am being driven close to insanity. Well, I am editing a book at the moment. It is my first "official" edit. Obviously, my edit won't include proofreading as most of you will know that where grammar is concerned (especially on this blog) it is not a top priority. Quite bizarrely, having done a few beta reads (that sort of morphed into edits) I think editing is something I am really rather good at. (Which makes a change.) What's more, this book I am editing is really rather unique. In all likelihood, it's going to be totally different to anything you've read before. It is going to be very interesting indeed to see the reaction to it.

Anyway, it's 5 am now so I am going to have some breakfast and see if I can lull myself into sleep with some carbs. If I am lucky I won't dream about the no 72 bus.

New Year, New Me

Thank goodness last year is over. It was not one of my best. (And that's putting it mildly.) I've also a feeling that the rotten phase I'm in at the moment has not yet reached its nadir. Humph. However, as you know, I don't like to whinge too much so instead of an in-depth, knee-deep whinge I shall simply sum up my present state of mind and my 2015 with the picture below.

Okay so as 2015 didn't go all that well for me, I think it's important I start 2016 in a positive mindset.

So my positive mindset begins with the news my short story Fantasia is free (yes FREE!) on Amazon Kindle until the 6th January and, at the time of posting this blog, it is 379 in the US Kindle free charts and no 1 in two children's categories. They are only small categories but, nevertheless, I am pretty pleased as Fantasia is only a short unillustrated story. You can pick up a free copy HERE.

Right, so my diet starts tomorrow. The boys are back at school on Tuesday when I also start my new yoga class.

Roll on 2016.

Inspirational Music and Books

Since we're on a countdown to Christmas I am throwing into the mix some of my favourite songs and books of the year. The first song is Let It Go by James Bay who is from Hitchin in the UK. Hitchin is a place I travel through quite often so it's rather a nice surprise to discover that such fine musical talent is emerging from somewhere which I have only ever thought of as a thoroughfare.



My first book choice is a contemporary comedy set in the UK and New York about a underachieving British thirty-something man who gets drawn into a bizarre competition, requiring him to run the NY marathon, in order to win a place on a trip to the moon. There are some real laugh-out-loud moments in 26 Miles to the Moon, particularly in the early chapters. I think it would especially appeal to male readers looking for something a little different and to those who are interested in competitive sports. It's not often I come across a contemporary comedy striving to be a little different so kudos to the author, Andrew Males, for daring to be different.

Bored of your life? Find some inspiration in 26 Miles to the Moon.

Inspirational quotes or just bullshit?

I was reading an article in the Daily Mail today about a Canadian study which suggested that people who post lots of inspirational quotes and messages on social media might have less cognitive abilities. The study also suggested that many of these inspirational messages may be just pure meaningless bullshit. In other words - gullible people are prey to believing in any old crap.

This may or may not be true. I am not casting any judgement. (Yet.) However, I thought I'd conduct my own experiment and make up a few inspirational messages of my own and post them on social media and see what effect they have. I'll be reporting back in due course.

Here's my first inspirational message. I'll be testing it out tomorrow.

A Lesson for The Housewife Extraordinaire

As you all know I am a Housewife Extraordinaire. Essentially, this means I'm an expert at household cleaning. However, since Young Sam returned home (bringing the total number of males in the household back to four) and I acquired a new pussy cat called Shand The Shitter (the name is self-explanatory) I have been struggling with my excessive cleaning duties.

Therefore, I decided that in order to improve on my cleaning skills I needed to take a household cleaning refresher course. I found exactly what I needed on YouTube. I am now feeling far more comfortable about my cleaning abilities - I know exactly what I am going to do the next time I need to unblock the loo or find a stack of unwashed dishes left by the sink!

I'm not a celebrity, but I know how to become one!

So one of the reasons I've been silent is I have become to addicted to the TV show I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here! I've occasionally dipped into it over the years, but this year I've become intrigued by it due to the presence of the indomitable Lady C, otherwise known as Lady Colin Campbell.

Yep, I've become fascinated by Lady C and her epic rants which make Hitler's tirades look amateurish. The bizarre thing is that by being completely rude and obnoxious Lady C is getting loads of publicity which seems a tad unfair on the other celebs who are far more polite.

But there is a lesson to be learnt from Lady C and I've worked it out...

If I turn myself into a vile, ranting witch I will get way more visibility for my books!

However, I have a problem: How do I make myself as mean and nasty as Lady C when I'm such a fluffy bunny rabbit type of person?

I finally figured it out today that there is only one method - I must inflict on myself the ultimate torture. A torture so severe that all the suffering I will endure will turn me into a bad-tempered, vile, monstrous creature and, therefore, propel me to celebrity superstardom.

What is this torture?

I think most women out there will know what it is...

I must shave off all my pubic hair and suffer the pain of spiky regrowth. 

Pubic hair re-growth - guaranteed to make any sane women insane.

Thoughts on Book Clubs and Women's Fiction

For many years I’ve been a member of a ladies’ book club. We’re all middle-aged with one or more aspects of our lives in common: teenagers or young adult children, jobs varying in pressures and fulfilment, husbands facing redundancy or career changes, and increasing responsibilities for our parents. At the same time, we're also facing the joint onslaughts of the loss of youth and age-related health problems. We’re a strong, supportive group with individual and yet universal problems that unite us beyond our mutual love of books. Our meetings are filled with lively, vocal discussions that sometimes go on until the early hours of the morning on just about any topic.

Except the books that brought us together in the first place.

It’s not that we never discuss our chosen books; it’s just that we so rarely discover a book that all of us have read and enjoyed to the very end that it warrants discussing it for any length of time. And forcing ourselves to read a novel to impress or to satisfy some quasi-intellectual need isn't necessary: We know each other too well. So, by the time we’ve got past the excuses: “I was too exhausted to read it,” (any lengthy literary novel); “It was too depressing,” (any novel featuring a child killer); “It was so predictable I watched a rerun of The Professionals instead," (any book with “teashop” in the title); and “How did this get on the Man Booker shortlist? My navel fluff is more interesting,” usually we're left with very few books that meet all our expectations.

Now I don’t want to make my friends sound uneducated or overly fussy because they’re neither. We have occasionally talked at length about some great books: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, The Help and so on. But what these particular books have in common, despite their literary statuses, is that they're easy to pick up and put down but are still absorbing enough to be entertaining and informative.

There is, of course, a lot of “women’s fiction” that is worthy of discussion which never grabs the headlines like the more literary novels. Anything by Jodi Picoult ticks that box, as would undercover successes like The Memory Book or Me Before You. These are the type of books that many women enjoy. They're books which don't require a degree or in-depth analysis to appreciate. They're emotive, engaging and frequently explore situations or moral dilemmas that create food for thought and conversation. To women with busy, exhausting lives these easy-to-read but captivating books are a gift because, after a harrowing day, not many of us want to face the challenges of Hilary Mantel or David Mitchell.


It was with these thoughts that I set about writing The Changing Room. But I also wanted to factor in one further element and write not just an easy-to-read and thought-provoking novel that would be appreciated by the ladies of my book club, but a humorous one. It would have an older heroine that readers would empathise with but who also did things they’ve wanted to do but haven’t quite had the courage or opportunity. A woman who would make them laugh and cry and, hopefully, inspire them.

I'm not sure why there is so little meaningful comedy fiction available for older women, but certainly finding any agent or publisher actively looking for any humorous writing that isn't a Christmas coffee table book, chick lit or dry literary humour is like finding the proverbial needle in a haystack. Nevertheless, I was determined that it shouldn’t just be girls or academics who have fun in literature, but mature women too.

And so I created 45-year-old Sandy Lovett: mother, wife, carer and sex-chat expert. A resilient woman with a sense of humour and a strong moral, social and political conscience who was changing direction in her life.  A woman, I hoped, whose character and story would appeal to the ladies of my book club long enough to make it through several bottles of wine and a selection of exotic nuts.

Only time will tell if I have succeeded in my mission. But whatever the reception for Sandy Lovett, I will always hold the same affection for her as I do my book club ladies. All of them ordinary women, just like you and me, living their own extraordinary lives.

This article originally appeared on Random Things Through My Letterbox .