Planning the fifth Stonewylde book (with help from Magus)

Now before anyone says anything, yes I know that two of these images are blurred! They’re meant to be – I can’t give away any secrets, can I? I used the “soft focus” tool on Picasa and I’m hoping that nobody will be able to actually read any of the planning notes. 

Thank you so much for all the good wishes to get better, both on here, the forum, Twitter, and FB. That’s so kind and I feel a bit fraudulent. I just have a silly virus thing that’s making my head hurt and causing me to fall asleep a lot (sounds like the effects of alcohol but it’s not!) and sneeze violently every few minutes. Today I feel a great deal better and thank you everyone. As a consequence of the virus thing, I spent yesterday in bed and resisted doing any of the other stuff such as hoovering the house, going to the shops, going for a walk, my keep fit class in the evening etc etc. Which is good news for writing the book of course, though not for my New Year’s Resolutions about losing weight and keeping our new house clean. Maybe I should just stay in bed until the end of March and write?

Yesterday, despite falling asleep at regular intervals, I achieved quite a lot and *whispers* I actually started writing book 5! I’ve been doing the planning so far, and that’s just so complicated. During the rest of this week I’ll be blogging about how I’m planning. I told you about the A2 sketchpad with its 50 sheets of cartridge paper – I’ve used about 10 of them so far. The pics are of two of my planning pages and it occurred to me last night that they look horribly like some of my planning for teaching! Once a teacher, always a teacher I guess.

I’ll explain tomorrow – and I hope you like the photo of Magus too! He’s a beautiful cat but really not very photogenic. He always comes out as just a big dark blob as he’s pure black. He’s a Burmese type – of the Bombay variety which aren’t very common apparently. He has on occasions been mistaken for an ordinary black moggie but don’t tell him that. His eyes are a very deep amber and he’s gorgeous. He loves me being ill so he has the perfect excuse to stay on my bed all day. He ended up with green glitter sparkling his fur where it rubbed off the cover of my sketchpad and looked even more beautiful.

I’m off to continue Chapter 1 now. I’ve written the prologue and the opening pages – doesn’t sound much but really, this is the very hardest part. It’s all plain sailing from now on (ha ha ha). It was strange last night writing about the Dark Moon when in fact it was the Wolf Moon in reality – not that I saw anything as it was so cloudy, but I could feel it and the sky was a strange colour. Leveret is calling me impatiently so I’m going. Thanks again for the well wishes and I’m glad you enjoyed the wildlife in my garden too. I’m looking out for red patches on the woodpeckers’ heads now!