It really doesn’t seem that long. I can still remember how nervous I used to be at first. I’m rubbish at public speaking and blogging seemed a bit like that at first. I’m not really given to baring my soul to other people either so it took a while to become comfortable with the whole process.

At first, the aim was to market my book – something I didn’t do very well and hope to do better at this time with Choose Yr Future  – and to talk about culture and anything that interested / annoyed me. Having my novel published was exciting and even though I didn’t sell loads, I have had four and five star ratings and in a lot of ways (although obviously not mortgage paying ways) I’m happy with that state of affairs. I’d hate to make loads of money but have realms and realms of one star reviews. It wouldn’t seem worth it.

Part of the reason I failed miserably in my promotion of Shattered Reflections was I had a lot of family issues and was travelling constantly between Newcastle and Sheffield. I quickly lost track of things that I was supposed to be doing with the book and it seemed less important anyway compared to what I was going through.

The blog helped me then in a new way with various reading challenges. I have always read a lot and at this particular point in my life, I was definitely in need of some escapism. So I started to post book reviews and that was interesting because it made me take in what I was reading a bit more.

It’s too late now to try and rescue Shattered Reflections but when Choose Yr Future is ready to go, hopefully I will have learned enough lessons to make a better go of it.

Finally, I would just like to say thank you to everyone who reads my blog and who likes posts or follows me. It never ceases to amaze me that people might like the words I put down on the page and it always makes me feel a little happier.