My blog feels a bit neglected at the moment, so my apologies for not updating for a couple of weeks. I usually post every Sunday night. Over the last few weeks our family has been rather busy. We’ve had the kids go back to Uni, my sister visit from the UK, Dad had an angiogram and Mum’s just had spinal surgery. The road between the Upper Hunter and Newcastle has been well used. We seem to have been driving here there and everywhere.

I’ve been flat out writing several things at once, and editing another, and trying very hard to make sure that I finally make up my mind about which one of the three things I really want to write that I’ll concentrate on.

I’m currently vacillating between ‘Disease in Space with Conspiracies,’ Slipping Bra Straps and Alien Invasions,’ and ‘Teen Girl Who Survives a Disaster When the Underworld Invades Australia.’ Every now and then I also contemplate ‘Talking Wombat on the Foot of the Bed.’ Can you tell that titles are a secondary consideration at this point? I have quite a lot of two of them written, and both the other two have first chapters because I wanted to play around with the characters and see whether I really like them.

The problem is, I really like them all. As normal, I’ve been running the early drafts of all of them past our daughter, and she tells me she’s leaning towards Disease in Space. I value her input as a reader, because that’s what she is – a voracious reader.

I’m also currently involved in the Freshly Squeezed Reads C1 Blitz, where writers submit the first chapter of their manuscript for critique. The earlybird first chapters went out to a panel of young adult readers recently and they critiqued them as part of the Digital Writers Festival. You can find their (very candid) thoughts here. It’s well worth spending the two hours listening to what they really thought about the strengths and weakness of the first chapters. They were articulate, thoughtful and generally blunt.

In other news, I received an email last week to say that one of my short stories has been accepted for an anthology. I’m really pleased about that. It’s a story that I’ve worked and reworked over a fair few years. Once all the bits and pieces are finalised, I’ll put up all the details.

Next week I plan to get back to less rambling and more focused writing – hopefully life will slow down a bit. It might.