Babies of all sorts!

I have become an auntie again this week for the second time. At 9.15am on Thursday 23rd April (St George's Day) my sister had a baby boy. She had a four hour labour ending with a beautiful 9lbs 7oz bundle of joy. His name is Kian Peter and he is very gorgeous. Mum, Dad and big sister and all doing well. It is strange but wonderful to have a baby in the family again as the last baby was my little lady who is now four and a half. My daughter thinks he is lovely and even my seven year old son was intrigued and enchanted by this little person (maybe because he doesn't have to live with him...he was less enchanted with his sister when she arrived!!!).

I don't know if this new life inspired me or not, but I sat down on Friday evening and wrote for nearly three hours on my new baby. My hubby bought me a 10.2" notebook for me to write on and I had to use it as soon as possible. It came with Windows XP and Microsoft Office 2007 preloaded so I just plugged it in and off I went. I was delighted with my progress and then went to bed happy having done a word count hat has gone up to just over 12,000 words. This is about a quarter of the way through the book, which feels like a milestone for me.

I have also been involved in setting up a new book club at our church, reading and reviewing Christian fiction and biographies. We have finished our first book and have begun on the second. I decided to set up a blog to post the reviews and discussions so if any of you are interested in what sort of books fall into this genre please feel free to visit. I did not know this whole genre existed so it has been a revelation for me! www.thefictionfellowship.blogspot.com

Eggs, Notebooks and SAE's

Pictured is my one of my son's chickens, Gypsy, who has given us our first two eggs. Admittedly they are the size of Cadbury's cream eggs at the moment but it has been a momentous time in our household. Hopefully the others will be following suit in the near future. One thing I would love to capture in words is the expressions on my two children's faces when they discovered the egg nestled in the straw. I am blessed with very facially expressive children and the moment was like a photo you want to memorise and convey on paper. Will try to have a go I think as it is a memory of childhood I hope they will both have of owning and caring for their chickens.

I got an ebay parcel today that contained a lovely purple velvet notebook I had won. It is fab and I am considering what extra special project may grace its pages. The fact I have bought another A4 sized notebook from Woolies this week is neither here nor there. One can never have too many notebooks, or decent writing pens for that matter!

Finally I have my submission printed and ready to go to the post office tomorrow morning, proof reading got delayed by me having to count squillions of leaflets to deliver to Bodmin schools today. One thing about submitting work for consideration by a publisher is the dilemma of what postage do you put on a SAE? If you weigh your manuscript and put the postage on that would enable the publisher to return the whole thing...is that a defeatist message? On the other hand if I only put a first class stamp on the SAE and they do not like it, is it too self assured in its message? I am on the horns of a dilemma (not comfy either!!) however I guess the middle ground is that if they like it and it need revision I will at least get it back.

Feels pretty strange submitting this after talking about it for so long. I need to work on not building up my hopes and watching the letterbox every day for a reply.