A Wednesday kind of newsletter on a Friday
Also: free audiobooks!
It’s the second last week of school before the Christmas holidays, and yesterday I sent my child to school in his Wednesday uniform even though it was blatantly Thursday — a fact that only occurred to me as we walked to school, by which point it was too late to go back and change — so that’s a handy bit of foreshadowing for you there about the direction this week’s newsletter is about to go in, folks. A Wednesday kind of direction on a Thursday — no, wait, isn’t this Friday? — for sure.
( He has P.E. on Mondays and Thursdays, which means he gets to wear joggers on those days, as opposed to the tailored trousers he wears the rest of the week, with the exception of the last Friday of every month, when it’s ‘Dress Down Day’, except this month, when it may-or-may not be dress down day this Friday rather than next Friday, because even though next Friday is the last Friday of term, it’s also Christmas jumper day, which is different from Dress Down Day for … reasons.)
(Part of the fun of this is that we never really know for sure which days are Dress Down Days, until half the school turns up in uniform, and half are dressed down. Which half will Max be in? Who knows!1)
(He also has to wear a Christmas jumper on Monday, even though it’s neither Dress Down Day or Christmas Jumper Day, but Santa Dash Day. Apparently.)
(And party clothes on Thursday, which is Christmas Party Day.)
(Oh, and a plain black t-shirt on Wednesday, when he’ll be reprising his acclaimed role as ‘Innkeeper # 1’ in the school nativity play, only this year, in a surprising but no-doubt delightful plot twist, it turns out Innkeeper #1 is pretty much the Main Character; a turn of events which has left Max feeling both thrilled and terrified in equal measure. No idea who the director is this year, but whoever it is, they obviously wanted to shake things up a bit. Well, when you think about it, why HAS no one ever attempted to show the innkeeper's perspective until now? Like, that must have been one wild night for him, especially once the three kings started to arrive. I bet the innkeeper dined out on that story for the rest of his life… )
Other random events from this week:
We lost Max’s little Squishmallow spider somewhere between my parents’ house and our house, in the car, in the dark. We don’t know how or where it happened, but Max was predictably distraught, so my mum ended up buying a new one on eBay, and we’re planning to tell Max that Spidey’s been on an amazing adventure but he’s back now. And some people think Elf on the Shelf is bad!
Right after that, we got Max’s Christmas stocking down from the loft, so I could fill it, and I immediately lost that too. I’ve turned the house upside down and there’s no trace of it, so I’ve had to buy a new one of those in addition to the new spider toy, and will now forever wonder how on earth I managed to lose a Christmas stocking in my own house? I wonder if it’s run off with the Squishmallow?
Terry tried to do the online shop last night, but the website crashed while he was right in the middle of it, so Tesco have just delivered the single bag of sunflower seeds he’d added to reserve the slot, and I guess that’s what we’re eating this week.
The Ghostwriter of Christmas Past was released in audiobook format, and I have some free review copies to give away here, to anyone who enjoys listening to romance books, and is able to review by December 24th. (I know, I know, it’s pretty tight, and I’ve no idea why: I promise I only got the link myself yesterday!)
Speaking of Ghostwriter, I’m feeling a little despondent about it, not least because another author chose to release a book with exactly the same title, on exactly the same day (Even though my pre-order had been up for months at that point, and they must have seen it…) … and, of course, their book already has more reviews than mine does, which means Amazon will likely show it first in the search results. There’s obviously nothing much to be said or done about this — I know I don’t ‘own’ the title, and, in fact, there was already another book using it when mine was released — but if you’ve read the book and enjoyed it, it would really mean a lot to me if you would take a few seconds to leave a review or even just a rating; even a couple of sentences is enough, and would really, really help pick my ego up off the floor this week.
I’ve just hit 52,738 words on Book # 8 (Which I’m now definitely not going to be putting up for pre-order given the above scenario with Ghostwriter’s title…)… It’s still the easiest book I’ve written so far, which either means it’s going to be my best one yet, or that it will read like some kind of crazed fever dream. Can’t wait to find out which it is!
Finally, and somewhat bizarrely, I was idly scrolling Pinterest yesterday afternoon, in search of outfit inspiration for some of the many Christmas parties we have coming up, and I came across a photo of myself. Here it is:
“That’s it,” I said to Terry, rubbing my eyes. “I really need to make that appointment to get my eyes checked. I hardly even recognised myself here even though I’ve seen that photo hundreds of times now!”
But, actually, no, it turns out my eyes are just fine,2 and it’s the photo that’s wrong. This is me, back in my fashion blogging days:
It seems that someone took my photo and stuck their face on my body, before uploading the resulting franken-photo to Pinterest, and pretending it was them. So, almost as if they were wearing me as a costume, then. Yes.
Closer investigation revealed that the person’s entire account was filled with stuff like this — photos of other people which they’d stuck their face on and were claiming as ‘theirs’ — so, yes, that was an unexpectedly creepy end to the week, for sure. I reported the image to Pinterest, who took it down right away, but, honestly, just when I think I’ve seen it all when it comes to stolen photos (At the height of my blogging career, I used to have people taking my photos all the time: it happened so often I had an entire category on my blog dedicated to it…), something comes along to prove me wrong. And lo, a new depth was reached!
It was quite funny, though, tbf.
Until next week, folks,
Update: I sent him in wearing a Christmas jumper, just to cover all bases. Feeling quite smug about it, tbh
They’re actually not, and I do need to get them tested, but I have a crippling fear of the optician — yes, really — so that’s going to have to be next year’s project
I can't believe someone would do that....
Speaking of stolen content, I googled the title of your book (and by the way yours appears way more in the links than the other one) and found a website where you can apparently read the book in its entirety. Don't know if you gave your approval, or if I'm allowed to post the link, but here it is, just in case: https://www.lokepub.com/book/the-ghostwriter-of-christmas-past/
If I’d just scrolled past that photo somewhere I doubt I would have noticed that the face had been changed. What a strange thing to do. Do they confine themselves to people with long red hair only or does “their” hairstyle keep changing?