Sunshine, storms and stories...... or what I read in July....

So, that was July........ a month in which the UK had some unusually good weather with record temperatures over more than a couple of days - so of course we all moaned that it was too hot........ then there were storms......... and, well, yeah, there is still a lot of heavy rain around... which feels much more like the UK summer we are used to!

So whether hiding from the heat or the downpours, there were books read.... Again I am still reading the LHNB stories, but not counting them on here if they are under novella length (which I have decreed is 30,000 words)  That said, some of these stories have been excellent (okay, some haven't, but hey, these are freebies, done by a mixture of new and established authors and kudos to all for taking part).

My favourite this month probably goes to Rick Reed's Caregiver - which I had on the Kindle for ages before I took the plunge to read it - yep, it deals with difficult subjects, doesn't shy away from how terrible the early 1990's were for those with HIV but was overall hopeful, particularly as you read with one eye on your own memories and one eye on the progress we've made since in dealing with the disease.

My biggest let down this month was probably Forever Promised, the last in the Promises series by Amy Lane.  I'd read the first, then got the third in a challenge so read the second as well, all good, okay, there was character torture above what was truly necessary but hey, that was expected.  Then there was the final book...... and yeah.... it was what the author wanted, whether it was needed is another question.  I did find however that by the fourth book I was playing "spot the author" (and or her family) in the characters in the book... I think I found one in every story..........

1. Keeping Promise Rock – Amy Lane (r)
2. Making Promises – Amy Lane
3. Living Promises – Amy Lane
4. Born This Way – Poppy Dennison - cute and different shifter story, but nothing earth shattering

5. Needing You – Alicia Nordwell (LHNB, novella length)
6. The Song – Eric Alan Westfall (LHNB, novella length)
7. Bound by Law – S. E. Jakes
8. Private Eye – S. E. Culpepper - this was my Pick It For Me book this month - really nice read and I will be picking up the rest of the series

9. Fifteen Shades of Gay (for pay) – T. Baggins - very nice well written story with a lot of humour running through it

10. Lionheart – Sharon K Penman (historical) - this author is one of my favourites and has been since my mother took me to a bookshop before going on holiday and instructed me to find the biggest book I could in the shop.... the writing is really nice and the historical facts particularly accurate, plus she writes her historical women as women who did things, not women who were floating around in the edges of society.

11. A Midwinter Prince – Harper Fox
12. Shadows in the Night – M. A. Church
13. Forever Promised – Amy Lane
14. Sacred Hearts – Dev Bentham - I enjoyed this one, but the blurb was misleading as it makes a big point of the MC's alcoholism, which in the end is a tiny teeny part of the whole story and not really that important in the overall scheme of things

15. Caregiver – Rick R Reed
16. Ties that bind – S. E. Jakes
17. Three wrong turns in the desert – Neil Plackay - I tried to read this a couple of months back and failed, I just wasn't in the mood, but this time something clicked.  I like "mainstream" action/adventure type stories and this the same type of thing but with an M/M twist.

18. Without Reservations – J.L. Langley (r)
19. With Caution – J.L. Langley (r)
20. With Abandon – J.L. Langley (r)
21. Hitched – Sean Michael - guilty pleasure :)  but a nice short with the original characters

22. Closure – S. H. Allen (LHNB, novel length +50k words)
23. The Gentleman’s Keeper – Bonnie Dee & Summer Devon
hummmm, only 23... yeah, but there was a weekend away, and a weekend with visitors.... I am sure that the reading rate will be back up to usual next month..... which is August...... and I am still wondering how... cos I am sure five minutes ago it was only Easter!

Some days...

things are out to get you..... well me anyway.....

I went back to work this morning and was pleasantly surprised to find only 2 phone messages, 25 e-mails and no post after my 3 days off........ however, I had to jump straight back in and draft a document that has to be served on a Court deadline by Wednesday.... after which I'm afraid to say my work ethic and motivation both left me.   I managed a bit more work but was hardly a model employee.... and there was serious clock watching from about 2 pm onwards...

Roll on to home time and I get home to discover I forgot to get the dogs dinner out the freezer.. now it's in my freezer not theirs and after it semi defrosted and then froze again it was absolutely rock solid ... I ended up smashing the bag of beef bits on the concrete outside until enough broke off to feed them ... okay, not as bad as having to jump up and down on the frozen ribcage of a sheep which is what happened last time I forgot to defrost their food, but still....

I was organised and cooked something sensible for tea (pasta) and made lunch for tomorrow...... then went to wash up....... and was viciously attacked by one of my sharp knives which had been lurking unseen under the bubbles in the washing up bowl..... I maintain this is what happened, I didn't just grab a handful of cutlery without looking.. anyway..... the cut isn't that deep along the bottom of my index finger, but it does sting quite a lot....

Unfortunately then the kettle decided to join in and as I went to open the back door to let the dogs out I put my hand on a puddle of water on the work top... which I didn't realise the base unit to the kettle was also sitting in....whilst plugged in.... and with the power on ... I "jumped" a fair distance across the kitchen.... and tripped the fuses on the kitchen circuit. which set the house alarm off........ thankfully the kettle isn't broken though.

I am now sitting carefully out the way of any kitchen equipment for the rest of the evening just in case........

It's oh so quiet........

So, this evening, shortly after Grand Prix watching and tea, my visitors clambered into their car and headed back up north of the border (they'll get in around 2 am - but it's easier this way as the baby will at least sleep in the car for most of the time).....

This means, my house now feels extremely empty and quiet.  I've got the radio on, but the critters are all absolutely shattered so the usual background noise is missing, as well as the noise from the visitors - well the baby anyway.

This shouldn't be a problem, after all it's approaching five years since I lived with someone else, but this evening I am feeling very flat and lonely.  I really enjoyed having these visitors to stay - not least because it's like having family as they don't expect to be entertained or have their time planned out to do things, their idea of a holiday is to relax, chill out and not have to do anything but be lazy.

I am sure the normality (ha!) of my life and house will return shortly, but just for now, I am feeling like I really want someone here all the time............. which I will probably get over quite quickly, but still.......

Beware the streaking woman........

Thus spake my guest to her daughter from the depths of the bed in the spare room this morning as she heard the bathroom door open ..... and both put their e-reader/tablets up over their eyes to avoid the sight of me racing down the hallway post shower to my own room...... the baby didn't object... but then at 3 months old I don't think strange naked people bother her.  This is the trouble with usually living on your own... little things you do with no one about to comment on get done when other people are in the house...

The 19 year old strongly objects to nakedness in any form (unfortunate, as the 4 year old is at that stage where she doesn't do wearing clothes...) but that is part of her Aspergers/Autism... she also doesn't want to see, hear, read or participate in anything to do with sex... Not that her mother and I might occasionally wind her up about this......

Suffice to say I am having a fun time with my visitors.  They came down on Wednesday (a day in which I cleaned for England), but on Thursday I had to abandon them to go to my mother's birthday lunch (which my aunt and uncle gatecrashed... ), but yesterday we had a drive out into Derbyshire, went for ice-cream and visited my mum so she could have half granddaughter cuddles..... I took a photo and sent it to my sister saying that mum obviously needed her own grandchildren... her partner read the text as she was driving and promptly had a panic attack *snicker*

Today the half daughter is going to be a tree surgeon and landscape gardener as she is going to take down a self seeded elderberry tree and cut my lawn.......... hopefully... before it rains.... she's psyching herself up with Iron-bru and lemon biscuits at present.....

We don't intend to do much bar be lazy for the rest of the weekend... but it's very good fun..... there may also be more streaking, just, because....

Monday madness.....

As has been well documented....... I am not fond of Mondays......... or at least, not ones where I have to go to work!  Particularly in weeks like this where I try to fit 5 days of work into 2 so I can have guilt free days off to spend with my visitors...  Usually, by this time on a Monday evening I would be suffering from severe Mondayitis, resulting in me having to relax on the sofa with my Kindle and idly wonder in between chapters how long it is till bed time ....

Postal fairy
Tricksie little beasties that must be
handled with care

Not today though *grins*

Some time early last week I had notification through the power of the interwebs that a friend had captured a

postal fairy and after some negotiation with the pixies who run the folklore delivery service, persuaded her to carry a parcel across central Europe and up to the north of England... a terribly difficult, dangerous journey as treacherous mountain passes have to be crossed, dense bear infested forests must be traveled through, there is the perils of big cities where the domestic cat is the biggest peril faced... and on top of that there is the busiest stretch of water in the world to be crossed....... Added to that, the poor fairy had to lug her heavy package all this way in temperatures not usually seen....

But today she made it!  And whilst I wasn't in, my very nice (if slightly eccentric) neighbour spotted her flitting around the front door, lured her into their house with the promise of a refreshing lemon and lavendar infusion.

By the time I got home there was a note through the door and no sign of the fairy.... but I got my parcel....

Goodies!!  

Which contained some very nice goodies, including hand made natural soaps, chocolate thins (now in the fridge for fear of melting), some very special hand made cherry jam from the senders own garden, a bookmark and some nice little fishes that suction onto the bottom of the bath to stop me slipping (what can I say, my friend knows my accident prone ways!)

I am now feeling very loved.... and all that remains to say is.... THANK YOU!! to my friend :)

LHNB Story reviews.........

So, my story has been up for a month and, being as I had nothing exciting planned for this evening, I had a small drink to steel my nerves and decided that I would be brave and look at the comments that it's been getting - not on the thread itself but on the main site...

This was quite a bit step as it took me over six months to look at the reviews last year - yup, coward!

So I took a deep breath and looked........ now I had seen the star ratings my GR friends had given it so I knew that some people had liked it, but wow... I am kind of blown away by some of the comments, and not a little amused.

It's odd for an M/M story a lot of the major comments I've had have been praise for the way that Michelle was written.  Which as I am not a fan of the "evil female" that so many authors seem to think is the only person of the opposite sex a gay man knows I was really pleased about.

There are some negative comments about Nick, and the way he dealt with the whole thing.  Totally valid points, but it's hard to get how he was feeling across as it all in first person from Simon's point of view.  I knew there would be some people who wouldn't like the cheating aspect of the story but there hasn't been as much negativity about this as I thought there might be.

My favourite comment was the reviewer that said that other readers who enjoyed J.L. Merrow's work might enjoy the story - which given as I am rather a fan of this author made my evening.

Quite a few seem to want a sequel of some sort..... and I am contemplating re-visiting the characters at Christmas to see how they are getting on..... and most importantly whether Nick and Roger the Cat are getting on any better or whether an armed truce has been called :)

Who knows, I may manage to feel a bit more positive about my writing.... that said, please, next year.... remind me how stressful the whole procedure was and stop me from getting over excited and picking  photo!!

Roll on the weekend.........

Given that I've only been at work for 4 days this week (actually only 3 so far) this week has really dragged....  Okay, so it's probably the after effects of the come down after a good weekend, the fact that it is unusually warm (hell we've got a heatwave warning... yes... in Britain... it's virtually unheard of) and that I am not sleeping because of the heat.... but really, I'd swear this week has been at least a month long.

But, there is only one more day to go till we get to the weekend.... though I am sure that tomorrow night will be as much of a wash out as every evening has been this week - the side effect of work locking all the windows in the office to make us rely on the not fully functioning air con has been to give me the headache from hell by the time I get home.

This weekend there are plans for a major clean, tidy, sort out the spare room and generally get organised for on Wednesday I have visitors coming to stay... now these visitors know me well, and accept that my house is home to the critters so don't expect hotel standard accommodation.... but I am not entirely sure that Hugo hasn't sequestered something revolting under the bed in the spare room and these things must be investigated!

I am really looking forward to this visit... I haven't seen my friend and the half daughter since last May, their visit in October had to be cancelled as they were moving into the graveyard.... and since then the latest half daughter has arrived... she's coming to stay too.... though at 3 months of age I am not expecting scintillating conversation or anything :)

The older half daughter I have plans for....... I intend to bribe her with birthday cake (it's the day they come down) in the hope that she'll strim the front and back lawns of the hip high grass.......

Mum and my sister arrive home the same day my visitors arrive... and on the Thursday we are taking mum out for lunch for her birthday..... it's all go round here!

Other than that I am really looking forward to four and a bit days of sitting around and putting the world to rights.....