A little stitching, a little knitting and meeting a favourite author

One of my aims this year was to keep up with blogging once a week, I was aiming for the same day each week, I'm afraid I'm failing at that already, but I have been stitching, crocheting and knitting more so I suppose that's ok.

I found this little Christmas freebie on FB and liked the simplicity of it,

Just a little bit more stitching to do so i'm hoping to get this made up before the end of the month.

I've also been working on a February design for my mantle but as we are so close to February i will save that for another post.

My little pink blanket just needs the other side boarder knitted up.

Actually, i'm not too keen on this moss stitch boarder, I wish I had done something other than moss stitch, it looks a bit loose compared to the rest of the blanket to me, perhaps it will be better when it's washed?

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Reading...

This weekend was our first reading group meeting of the year.  I was really looking forward to it because we had an author visit.  The author was Angela Marsons, she lives locally and writes crime novels set in the Black Country.  Rachel the librarian who runs our reading group recommended her some time ago and it was a month or so before i remembered and went in search of her books and, of course her name kept cropping up at each meeting, soon between us we had got everyone else in the group interested!

It has taken over 20 years for Angela to get her work noticed, time after time her work was rejected as being 'ok,' but not quite good enough.  She had more or less given up when Bookouture contacted her and said they wanted to publish her books, she was then signed up for a 4 book deal, (that is now turned into an 8 book deal).

  She has also recently secured a print deal for the first 3 books, so they will be hitting the shops latter in the year, but she is still staying with Bookouture as well.

Her books are here on Amazon, if you are interested, and where you can read a bit more about her too.

She also has two other books which are stand alone books, nothing to do with the Kim Stone novels, these are also on Amazon, I haven't read them, but they are on my reading list for this year. 

She is such a lovely person, unassuming and totally blown away with the success and attention she is getting now and from hearing her speak on Saturday she will remain loyal to Bookouture and her feet will stay firmly on the ground, her words were, her family will always come first, in particular her partner, for whom she is also the main carerer.   But now she is living her dream of being able to write full time.

Her sales for Silent Scream have already hit over one million and it has been released in Italy and due to be released in Germany too!

Don't you just love it when something like this happens to a nice person?

And....It's one in the eye for all those who rejected her writing for all these years...Like Julia Roberts said in Pretty Woman...Big mistake.  Big.  Huge.

Have a great week all!

-X-