Final round!

Round two has gone well – but now my personal two favourite covers are up for voting on! Remember, this will be the cover that I will be using for Echoes of Winter. Sketch 5 won this round, with 9 votes, sketch three had received 3 votes and sketch four had 2 votes!

Now up for the poll is sketch 2 and sketch 5!

This will be running until Monday, 12pm GMT time.

Round two!

So! Sketch two won, with 16 votes to 7…and now up are the sketches numbering three, four and five! After round two, the highest scoring pictures go head to head!

These are the last three contenders for the poll – next poll change is Thursday, and the final decision as to the cover will be made on Monday…so get voting!

First poll…

Have your say with the cover for Echoes of Winter – the one with the most votes here in three days will go head to head with another image – there are two choices per round!

This isn’t to do with writing…but it made me tearful…

A POEM FROM A POUND DOG…

Today is the day that I shall die
My life was short and I don’t know why
I don’t yet know that this will be my fate
The humans just stood there at my gate

And in their eyes I saw their sorrow
They told me I had no more time to borrow
My seven days have been and gone
And I’m yet to know what I’ve done wrong

I greeted the humans with a waggling tail
But with this their resolve seemed to fail
I did not understand why they cried
They told me again and again they had tried

But rescues are full and I’m on death row
And this meant that I had nowhere to go
Except for that room and the end of the block
It was only then that I took stock

I’ve seen others go in and never come out
And it was at this point that I had no doubt
Today was the day that I would die
And yet still I did not understand why

As they led me kindly into that room
I knew my life would be over soon
And again the humans tears began to flow
Another life to be lost on dog death row

I know I’m not the only one
One dog an hours dies as I have done
The needle comes out and the drug takes effect
The human holds me kindly and with respect

This is the end and I’m going to die
And then suddenly I understood why
I was bred without care, without thought or reason
Only because my mum came into season

I was bred to be sold, bred for the money
At first my new family thought my antics were funny
But as the days past by and the bigger I grew
Left home alone all day I began to chew

Soon they said this is not the place for me
So up went my ad onto Gumtree
Family dog free to good home
Five months old, no fault of her own

This next place was even less fun
Kept in a cage with no hope of a run
Soon came the day of my first season
And now I was the one bred without reason

My pups were soon sold and I was alone
I really hope they all found a loving home
Shut up in a cage, alone and in the dark
For hours on end I would just bark

Once again I became too much trouble
So up went my ad on the double
Work commitments forces reluctant sale
Only ten months old, it’s a familiar tale

The next people seemed nice at first
But it was not too long before the bubble burst
In this place I was to be trained to fight
But they gave up on that as I refused to bite

They spoke me as I was taken back to my crate
‘If you won’t fight we’ll use you as bait’
I was chained to a post by my collar
When the other dogs attacked I would holler

This life went on like this for quite a time
But I was soon told I was past my prime
I thought we might have been going for a walk
Yet in the car there was no talk

And slowly as the car came to a halt
I was thrown out of the door with a jolt
I stood and watched as the car sped away
It was cold and dark and I had nowhere to stay

It was by this road that I was eventually found
And I was taken away to the local dog pound
And here I lie as I take my last breath
I have one thing to ask as accept my death

You can help save others from my fate
Spay or neuter your dog before it’s too late!

First blog post…ever…

So…I’ve discovered just how hard it is to finish a novel you’ve been working on for so long. Echoes of Winter currently has a word count of almost 98,000 words, and I’m approaching the final run now…but I find myself slowing down and now really wanting to write the end. I know that when it’s time to FINISH it, I’m going to cry, want to rewrite it and make it longer – but I’m going to have to resist that temptation and work on something else. I have a few edits I want to make in the book, a few plans for other books that will follow this – but more importantly I have to say goodbye to the characters I’ve killed off after loving them and writing them out of danger, after writing them so vividly that they’ve come alive for me.

The characters which have haunted my dreams for the last five months might be finally laid to rest then, and I can have a break and work on the shorter stories I’ve been thinking about and putting off writing. I’ve worked out that writing Echoes of Winter has been a hard slog of sleepless nights, sore fingers, working through being ill AND up all hours – but I do think it’s worth it. I’ve written characters with flaws, some flaws are my own and I feel a lot more in common with those characters. I’ve killed characters off that have done nothing wrong, kept those alive that should be dead (the villain!). And I’ve written friends personalities into characters, along with everything that they try to hide but I’ve worked out. And even more wonderfully, I’ve found a publisher before it’s even finished who is FULLY prepared to keep Echoes of Winter as the title

Here is a small snippet from Echoes of Winter, and I hope it whets your appetite for when it finally comes out on the shelves!

‘Baker looked betrayed by the wolf, but she soon shook her head and lifted it up high, her chin tucked down over her throat as she ignored the threatening burn of tears to maintain her ‘mean’ reputation. Gaoler whined a soft apology as Draven nuzzled against the Doberman’s shoulder, growling something softly at her before he shrugged, the movement awkward upon his body.
“I‘ll follow the majority – I might as well. The more fighting experience I get, the quicker I can fight my father for leadership.”

The soft voice of Singer stopped them all in their tracks as she rose up and shook the snow off – showing that she hadn’t been sleeping as they may have thought.
“That‘s enough. For now, I have a feeling we should keep moving – we‘ll be needed soon.” A worried crease wrinkled the space between her ears, making her flatten them and look half-confused. The she-wolf sighed soon, her entire body shifting upon the snow as though restless. “We shall run until the moon rises, and then we‘ll hunt and rest. It‘ll be easier to hunt at night, we can stick to the shadows then.”

She turned without waiting for them to agree, and began to lope off as though she was an arrow shot from a bow with a destination firmly in mind. Soft growls slipped from the throats of Baker and Draven, but as one – a shoal of fish chasing the leader – they followed her without a single question. Their paws pummelled the snow, sending up small clouds of snow which obscured part of their tracks and left them unable to really talk. The thrill of running properly was firing up inside all of them, turning them into a constantly running pack that moved effortlessly.’

Aside from the writing, I’ve been having a battle of wills with my pygmy hedgehog, Rosie. She doesn’t want to be handled a lot of the time, so she has a fun habit of spiking me – which makes me bleed. But I’m persevering, and doing my hardest to keep pushing on and on with the taming her down – but unfortunately she prefers her toy mice to me! She’s been showing this lately by hissing at me whenever I get anywhere near her – but she’s my baby, and if I could tame rats, I can tame her!

I’ve also been having fun with the malamute puppy – she’s been trained now to sit reliably, walk to heel occasionally, give a paw every time she’s asked and she’s also learning to beg with both paws at once! She’s also learning (slowly!) to belly-crawl…but she’s so big she sticks her bum up in the air.

So I’m heading back to writing and getting better now, since I need to get EoW finished so it can be edited, so have fun and keep an eye out for it!

Find out the latest happenings here: 
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