Cold and grey

Which I suppose makes a nice change from grey, cold and windy but I'm finding it hard to be postive today. By now, my garden should be full of flowering bulbs but only the snowdrops and the ones outside the back door are up, and most of the ones outside the back door are staying stubbornly in bud or not even getting that far. And yes, I know I’m lucky compared to a lot of people who’ve faced war, fire and flood but I’m bored with this weather and want to see signs of spring.

Summer would be nice too so I’ve been focusing on a new project, which is a summer anthology and have just spent the morning with Peter and Amy on long summer days. I’ve had music that makes me think of summer playing and I almost managed to escape from the fact that I’m tucked under one of my quilts and a lot of me hurts.

My tidying and reorganising in our bedroom has gone well though and my new food processor has arrived so I’ll have that to play with. The old one lasted 5 years when I didn’t use most of the attachments. This one has a good big blender that’ll take hot and cold liquids so soup and smoothies and milkshakes here I come! There’s a cream of chicken soup recipe that sounds great and I can already make a good cream of tomato without sugar or nasty additives.

My sun hats arrived today too. They are 2024 sun hats so were reduced (and who knew that sun hats were a fashionable thing?) I like them because they scrunch up small enough to tuck in my bag so I’ll always have one with me and are washable. Best of all, they’ve got an elastic strap on them so they won’t blow away when I’m down on the beach. My summer clothes are sorted, my new sandals are here, and my lovely straw bag and new purse are on their way, so I’m ready to get out there!

Till then, I can read, and I suspect you escape that way too, so here are this week's special offers at 99p in the UK and 99c in the US. If you’re not in either of those places, why not put Tia Brown anthologies into the Kindle search engine and you’ll see sets of 3 books for £2.99 which you can buy at any time because otherwise it’s not fair.

This week’s offers are the first two books in the Lucy Williams series, which are CHILD’S PLAY and A FETE WORSE THAN DEATH. The third book came out at the start of February and thanks to everyone who’s read and enjoyed it. Lucy is a work-from-home widowed mum to daughter Gracie. Once she was a spy with a husband she loved, but then a job went wrong and he died from cancer leaving her living under a fake name and trying not to attract attention. Only then her daughter Gracie is hurt at school and the school aren’t taking bullying seriously and she gets drawn into something she really wasn’t expecting.

There are also the first four books in the Shadows series which I write as Eleanor Neville because they’re darker and a little sexier and more violent. Sort of Midsomer Murders level if you know what I mean? But definitely not as many bodies! These are FALLEN ANGEL, HAUNTED ANGEL, RUNNING HOME AND RUNNING SCARED and I think they’re worth a try at 99p.

So that’s it till we meet again on Sunday, apart from a picture of flying Brent geese and I promise the camera wasn’t on the black and white setting when I took it.