my journey as a civil war novel writer

Hi there, going to use this post to plug myself. :) I have entered a photo competition. WIth it I can win some nic e prices but I need more votes! I entered three photo's but this one has the best chance of a good spot. and it is my favori te as well. This is the link you can use to vote. Click here. On the page point your mouse over the symbols next to rating. the more you give the better the rating. and the click, the vote count should go up if you have done it right. You can vote only once. Thank yo in advance!!!!

I am having difficulty finishing a historical novel. Not even that it is badly written, the style is good and I have read books by this writer before and liked them. But I am not enjoying child of the phoenix by Barbara Erskine. The plot is sooooo ridiculous that I have to force myself to keep reading. It centers around Ellen, the daughter of Llewelyn the great. I have stated before that her parents are badly depicted and I disliked that already. But the plot!!!! Ellen married twice, first to the earl of Chester, a man she did not marry, second with Robert de Quincy, a poor knight, the second was a marriage of love that lasted untill her death. In this book they have de Quincy die before her, besides he is depicted as a monster and it is not a happy marriage. And then she has an affair with the kind of Scotland and is later abducted and forced to marry another scottish nobleman. It is absurd!!!! I mean if you want to write nonsense, just invent characters and then you can do what you w...

Sorry for being so slow at the moment. I have to warm you that this can continue for a while. April and May are not my best months. I always feel the ending of winter and haven't built enough new reserves with sun hours yet. It means I tire easier, have to cut down my out of the house activities and grind my teeth about it because in my head i want it all. :) At the moment I have an additional problem. After about 8 months on the laptop I switched back to using the computer. it has a lot of advantages, more space, more applications and I can concentrate better on my work for the practice as I can read my notes next to me and am not hampered with having the laptop on my lap all the time. But... strangely enough I am having way more pain in my arms and shoulders working on the laptop. They always say laptops are an ulhealthy way to work, yet the last 8 months I had less pain [not headaches but certainly arms and shoulders] how can this be. Everything is set up according to ergnomical...

It's been an up and down week healthwise. Loads of headaches, maybe that was to be expected after everything that happened last week. Workwise I have been busy with my coach on wednesday and ITC specialist today. Both meetings were very usefull and gave me a good feeling. Tomorrow I start going over the texts of my website again and my logo designer is working on the new logo for safe haven coaching. On the reading front I finished men of the otherworld, other books had to wait and that doesn't happen to me often. They don't get much better then this. Also started in another Anne Bishop novel. I really love that series, very strong characters, lots of brooding and romance but not so high on sex. Just what I like.

Settling down a bit and making time to write about books! I did read some in April, some good some not so good. Falling i n the not so good category. Kiss of a demon king - Kresley Cole. I don't know what it is is with this writer, the series is so uneven. Some of them I really enjoyed, about half of them. Those have a good story and interresting characters. But this one fal ls into the category of hardly any story and way to o much sex scenes. I like the romance with an occasional sex scenes [only a few writers are exceptions here like laurel hamilton] for the rest my imagination can do that trick itself, thank you very much. There was hardly any story in this one and it was pretty boring. Not sure I will go for the next one. Then I start in men of the otherworld, by Kelley Armstrong. Now I love her otherworld series, especially if the books are about the werewolves or Paige and Lucas. This one tells the backstory of Jeremy and Clayton. Now so far, half way through, no woman has ...

Now I was going to blog about books today, but... yesterday's events have put my mind on completely different matters. Doing something create now as I find it very hard to think and concentrate right now. Still not feeling well and... well let's start at the beginning. First there was a festive day yesterday, queensday in the netherlands. Always a festive day with whole families having fun. The queen always visits one or two cities with her whole family and joins in the fun. Yesterday she went to Apeldoorn, which has a long connection with the royal family. They would visit the town in the morning and then in the afternoon people would file past the royal family like they used to do in the times of her mother queen Juliana. I remember that from my youth and was looking forward to seeing it. Usually I don't want the festivities on tv but yesterday I was. And then 11.49 a huge crash and on tv we watch a car crash into a momunent along the route just missing the royal bus. I s...

Saturday 25th april Finally it was the elf weekend. Especially saturday started with glorious sunshine. I was going by public transport with the train letting me down a little by being late so it was already 9.50 when I came to Breukelen station to get the shuttlebus. Huge crowds there, in luck to get sitting room in one of the 3 busses, but it took forever for them to lea ve. Coming to the castle g ate was another shock, the queu even for people with tickets started on the public road and it was another half hour before I was through the gates and only at eleven was I o n the grounds! Glad I will be going by car the second day. First stop were booksignings. Robyn Young who writes about the templars and Adam Greenwood, who writes a bout Robin Hood and faeries. Him I had already 'met' on facebook and he is a really, really nice guy. Also Raven Dane, who writes novels about vampires. I decide d against buying her book already as they are really heavy Trade paperbacks, but we ch...