After what felt like a slow start to the year, Spring has raced forward at light speed (with some lovely sunshine along the way).

The past couple of months have been very busy for me as I’ve been working on final book edits, cover design chat, and more proofreads.

I also took part in the Paisley Book Festival Schools programme in April. This meant a lot to me as I lived in Paisley for many years and I wrote lots when I lived in the town. A couple of my flash fiction pieces were inspired by observations around town and I used to love sitting in cafes writing notes and reading and going wanders taking photographs of some of the beautiful buildings. I also wrote my first two books when I lived in Paisley.

Delivering creative writing workshops to a range of S1-S3 pupils was fun and I always love seeing what story ideas they come up with. As part of my sessions I had given the groups real-life news headlines for inspiration and the most popular one by far was ‘Girl finds criminal living in her attic.’ I really wanted to read the finished stories for that prompt!

After my workshops were over my husband and I headed across to the Isle of Arran, one of our favourite places to visit. We lucked out with the weather and it was so relaxing going walks along the beach and sitting outdoors for meals/drinks. I always think there is a real sense of calm on the Island and could happily spend weeks there writing and doing creative things (but sadly had to return home to my day job!!). Sometimes I dream about being successful enough to be a full-time writer and if it meant being able to spend more time hiding away on islands like this that would be the biggest motivator for me!

Later this week I’m going to be doing a Cover Reveal for Young Blood, my new young adult crossover thriller and posting the trailer for this.

It’s always nerve-wracking releasing work out into the world but also exciting to see a project ‘come to life’ and now I can’t wait for the book to be published and story to be read.