Welcome to My New Website

Hello World!

Welcome to my new website!

I’m so glad you’re here. And you’re reading my blog too. Wow. That’s commitment.

Now that I have this shiny new website, I thought it was a great opportunity to sort of re-introduce myself. Is that a thing? Did I just make this awkward? Probably.

So, how can I make a “re-introduction” feel less-weird?

I know!

I’ll ask myself some questions and then I’ll answer them! Yeah, that’s not strange AT ALL.  But it is likely to be entertaining, so let’s do it!

What’s your favourite Doctor Suess book?

Great Question! Suess wrote so many wild and whacky stories but I’d have to say Hop On Pop. It’s a book I read as a little girl and I remember the way it made me laugh. It was so easy to read with its rhyme and repetition and tiny little words. I loved it.  Once I was teaching, Hop On Pop was a wonderful book I could direct little readers to and they would be so surprised and delighted that they could read a ‘real book’ (not just a school-issue reader). Hop On Pop is a gem and a classic.

Where is your favourite place to read?

Speaking of Dr Suess, I will read on a train, on a plane, in a boat and on a goat. I will read books in the air, I will read them on the stair! I will read books anywhere! But my absolute favourite place to read is in bed of an evening, pages lit by my bedside lamp and pillows propped all around me. I also love an early morning read on the weekend, with the curtains opened just a crack.

What are you addicted to?

Gahhh! So many things.  Sugar, mainly. Chocolate. Ice cream. Cake. Bread….

Buying books.

Bringing books home from the Library.

Sometimes I get addicted to my phone and I wish I didn’t. Same with social media.

Favourite word?

This is an interesting question because I love words and I notice them. I notice words my friends and family use. I notice word choices used in the books I’m reading. And one of my favourite books is the Thesaurus. Words matter so much.  There’s such power in words. Look, I don’t think I have a favourite word. I know when I’m writing I overuse particular words and phrases: “felt like”, “realised”, “found herself” are a few that come to mind. Just the other day I heard the word “lopsided” and I thought ‘that’s a word I hardly ever use but it’s such a great word’. I love words that feel like they’ve got a bit of magic to them, like ‘coalesce’ and ‘shimmer’ and ‘liminal’.

What word do you always have trouble spelling?

Manoeuvre and Bureau.

Do you use book marks or do you fold down the page?

I do a bit of both. My preference is for a book mark only because finding a folded page corner is harder than finding a book mark.

I do have a beautiful collection of book marks but I can never find one when I need one so my book marks are usually things like receipts, old shopping lists, prescriptions I need to fill or a random pencil. I recently used a scrap of foil from a chocolate. It made the book smell very nice.

I know some people believe books to be so special that they shouldn’t be dog eared. I certainly believe books are special, but I also believe that we honour them by engaging completely with them. For me, this means cracking the spine, folding corners and spilling crumbs in the pages.

Oh, how I hope the books I have written are loved like that!

What makes you swear?

Another great question! I try hard not to swear because I’m an author and I’m aware of the millions of words at my disposal. I try to use “my words” rather than relying on the dirty dozen. Having said that, I’ll drop a few bombs:

• when I suddenly remember something urgent that needs to be done,
• when I’m frustrated and stuffing something up again and again,
• when our dog tears off down the street and won’t come back when I call,
• when our cats do a hairball on the carpet (or the tiles),
• when an eye-roll doesn’t feel like it’s been satisfying enough.

Describe the last time you laughed.

I love to laugh and I love to make people laugh. I look for opportunities to laugh every single day. I believe laughter is so so so so  good for us. My husband and my kids generally cause me the most laughter, although my bestie Nat always comes up with something great too.

Okay, so last time I laughed… my daughters (teenagers) had bought fake eyelashes.  They attached via magnetic strips. (Youch! I know! Apparently though, they don’t hurt. In fact, the magnets make them easy to apply and remove.) Anyway, youngest daughter – Sophie – wears one for a few minutes and then takes it off.

“Oh my God,” she squealed, batting her real lashes. “It’s like I can still see where the fake lashes were. It’s like I’ve got phantom limb pains. I’ve got phantom lash!”

Last question – where can we find more of your work?

I’m so glad you asked! I’ll be returning here to the blog each month and I’ll be sharing all my tips and tricks for writers. If you’d like to hear from me more regularly, I write weekly about the ongoing shenanigans of my life over on Substack.

And if you found this re-introduction post to be the most fascinating thing you’ve ever read, you’re more than welcome to cruise through the back catalogue of blog posts that I wrote prior to 2018 when my memoir Teacher was published and life became kinda hectic.

If you still can’t get enough (I’m pretty adorable), you could read all my books too. There are links to all of them here.

And that’s how you re-introduce yourself on a blog.

Wasn’t too awkward at all.