Hello, and welcome to our first February selfie.
This week (as per preceding weeks) we have been busy looking after a stray cat and writing book 3 of our Chumley and Hudson Investigate series. Both have required a lot of TLC but in different ways.
The cat, whom we in the locality have now called Thomas, spends a lot of his sleeping time on our combined doorsteps. He came to our attention some months back, doing what stray cats do: lurking in the background and getting on with life. But when our neighbour became concerned about some blood on his face, which turned out to be a massive burst abscess so big we could see into his teeth and jaw, we had to act quickly.
With swift work, Thomas was lured inside one evening by our neighbour for a bite to eat, and he was then crated up and driven to the vet for emergency attention. Antibiotics and painkillers were administered and the wound trimmed to facilitate healing. Thomas returned to the hood and has seemingly recovered quite well over the last three weeks. The hole has closed enough that we can't see his teeth, but there is a scab/wound area that needs to heal, too. Thankfully, the cold and generally not-so-good weather has kept the flies away and Thomas resting up and eating to pass the hours of the wintery days.
A huge shout out to both George and Sammy for all they have done for Thomas the Cat. Such selfless kindness and prompt action deserves recognition and much good karma.
As to the book, Mrs H and I have been posting chapter progrss updates on Bluesky. We are heading into the final two/three chapters. But as this is the first draft, albeit a pretty complete draft, we know we have additional work to do. For instance, to keep the word count up and to add some extra peril and flavour to the scene, we need to add an additional chapter early on. This, of course, means we need to re-jig the wording of other chapters, before and after, to accommodate the changes. But such is to be expected. Writing Middle-Grade books has its challenges, but once you're in the flow it can be highly rewarding.
If you've ever thought about giving writing a go, do try. Mrs H says that if folks can put together a good blog, and enjoy creative reading, then they can write. Confidence, speed and capability come from doing and not doubting.
And as Mrs H suffers from, amongst other things, a form of dyslexia, thankfully we have an excellent editor and an excellent typesetting publisher to assist. Plus, awesome Beta Readers to point out technical errors and silly mistakes.
There are also some great writing software packages out there. Some are free and others, for a small sum, can do a lot of the editing and set-up work on your book for you. To the point they will even create the file to download straight onto Amazon to print a self publishable book. Such as 'Pro Writing Aid', 'Atticus', or 'Vellum'. Click on the blue text to link to the appropriate websites.
OK, enough of our writing and stray cat updates, let's get on with a selfie!
Till Laters!
ERin