Sunday, March 04, 2012

Rain, roofs and the joy of the garden

Book News:

I'm happy to announce that for the whole of March, you will find 30% off all my books at Untreed Reads, plus for TOMORROW (Monday 5 March) only, literary romance How To Eat Fruit will be totally FREE. So the ideal opportunity to pick up a bargain, or even two - enjoy!

Meanwhile, gay erotic short story For One Night Only gained two reviews, one at QMO Books and one at Pants Off Reviews, the latter as part of my Author Week there. Speaking of which, there's still time to enter the Pants Off Reviews competition to win one ebook from my backlist - good luck! The competition will end on 6 March.

Gay short story Dating the Delaneys gained a 4-star review at Pants Off Reviews and, not to be outdone, comic fantasy Creative Accountancy for Beginners was my most popular book at Amazon UK, and is currently No 89 in science fiction short stories. Well, gosh.

Keeping to the writing front, the planning for the short film about writing psychologies and stereotyping from Milletti Films is continuing, with most of the filming taking place later next week. It should be fun, so I'm certainly looking forward to it.

The Sunday haiku is:

The warm earth quivers
beneath my searching fingers:
something rich and strange.


Life News:

A rocky ride this week through the roofing alterations. We discovered on Thursday night that the scaffolding means we have no TV as our satellite dish is now pointing towards the wooden walkway instead of the satellite. So no "proper" TV for the next two weeks, sadly, but we've tuned the computer to pick up the live channels and it's a good temporary alternative, hurrah.

Rather more drastically - and which has ruined our lovely weekend (see below ...) - we returned home today at about 5pm only to discover that the rain has come in through an unprotected part of the roof, flooded the loft, K's study and the living room. Sound of wailing and wild gnashing of teeth from Elstead ... We rang the roofers at once, and they were with us within 5 minutes, full of apologies and making good the hole. As they should. They're really very sweet and I can't fault their general loveliness but, really, I would have preferred them to leave the roof in a decent state when they left on Friday, ah well. So, once the roofers left, K and I have spent most of the evening laying down all our towels and 6 rolls of kitchen towel across the floor before moving the books, the bookcases, and various furniture items out of K's study, then taking up the carpet and the underlay, and laying it in various parts of the house and garage to try to dry it out before mould sets in. I've put the portable heaters on and opened the windows to help speed the process, so fingers crossed. However, K suspect that some of the water is gathered above the living room ceiling as it's still dripping into the bucket and bowls in the living room. So tomorrow (we really can't bear the thought of it tonight!) K is going to take the study floorboards up to assess the damage.

The roofers have agreed to pay for any damage - quite right too - but we hope to minimise it as much as possible. Really, the whole thing is giving me something of a headache and severely challenging my Lenten vow not to worry about stuff. But, hey, surely the good Lord will understand just this once.

On a happier note (literally!), I'm delighted to see that Engelbert Humperdinck - my first crush when I was 11 years old, happy sigh! - will be representing the UK in the Eurovision Song Contest this year. Bliss! I've always loved his songs, though I gather his voice is not so good now. Still, as he's about 180 years old, it's good news for the more mature amongst us, and I shall be glued, that's for sure.

And we've had a totally wonderful weekend at Wisley on our Learn to Garden course. It's been amazing, and we can't wait to put it in to practice tomorrow. Hell, it'll probably be drier outside anyway, so we have nothing to lose. I suppose you've got to laugh, eh, through the tears.

Anne Brooke
The Gathandrian Trilogy
Gay Reads UK
Biblical Fiction UK

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