Before going to bed on Tuesday night, I had a play with book covers on Canva. I’m planning Book 7 of the great novella challenge, and I wanted to (a) make sure I’d have a book cover for the finished product, and (b) make sure my descriptions of Lady Mathilda matched the model on the cover. I found 9 images of the model I might end up using, which means up to 9 books, and I added in 7 book titles. The other 2 were just Title Title Title.
Wednesday morning didn’t start as well as Tuesday morning. We were both really tired the night before, probably after all that driving over the past few weeks and then a first day back at work. The poet got up great and was off down to the midlands, no problem at all. I, on the other hand, hit ‘dismiss’ when my alarm went off, instead of ‘snooze’, and, well, you can guess the rest.
While we were away, we both stuck quite well to the 16:8 diet thing. There were a couple of times when tea wasn’t ready in time, due to the nature of the stove in the campervan, and we didn’t eat until 9pm. But generally, we managed our breakfast at 12 to 1-ish, our dinner at 3 to 4-ish, and our tea at 8-ish. The poet put on 2lb while we were away. I stayed the same. After just one day, he lost his extra 2lb and I put an extra pound on! Thankfully, it came off again by yesterday morning.
Also while we were away, on our slight detour to Skye, a motorhome took out our offside wing mirror. Completely. It’s an offence to drive without an offside wing mirror, and it’s an offence to not stop after an accident. We did stop, as soon as we safely could, to assess the damage, adjust the rear camera to use as a rear mirror, and to see if anyone came after us. No one did. And after we arrived safely at the next campsite, we arranged a temporary repair.
I called 3 garages in Inverness, and the earliest any of them could fit us in was 9 May. That’s tomorrow, and we’ve already been back for the best part of a week. I reported the incident, because it’s also an offence not to, and Police Scotland were calling me back yesterday afternoon, on or around 3pm.
Our brand-new replacement offside wing mirror arrived yesterday morning, and we’ll get it fitted as soon as we can.
When I hit my desk, dirty cup of tea in hand, I revisited the Lady Mathilda book covers. I chose 7 as actual book covers, and 1 as an omnibus/boxed set cover. I also filled in 7 book titles as well as the omnibus/boxed set title. Book 1, Lady Mathilda and the Baronet, introduces the Lady Mathilda Investigates series, and it’s this month’s great novella challenge book. The omnibus will just be called Lady Mathilda Investigates with a subtitle the complete series Books 1 – 7. If I only write 5 of them, then I’ll adjust to suit. But I doubt I’ll write more than 7.
I downloaded all of the covers to date into their own folder, and saved a copy of the one I’ll be working on to the great novella challenge folder too.
And then I went and got dressed! I topped up the small bird feeders and filled their baths. I added some more NC500 pictures to BlueSky. And I started today’s blog post.
I joined Day 2 of the study along gothic writing workshop. It’s a good job I didn’t finish the first assignment because I would have fallen over on an apparently fundamental element in a gothic novel: single viewpoint. I apparently planned it using the regular romance novel format = dual viewpoint. See, I learned something!
I went and had a look at their latest Kickstarter, and I’m tempted to pledge for one of their special workshops. There are 2 of them, and they run for 3 weeks, one starting on 10 June and one starting on 24 June. I *do* have Project Management for Writers: Gate 3 scheduled in for those dates but, so far, no editing jobs…
Oh, that reminded me I had an editing request on Reedsy, so I went to have a look at that with a view to declining it…but when I started to read the sample, I thought I’d at least have a punt. I responded with an answer to the potential client’s question, how much it would cost for me to do it, my turnaround time, and how I work. I also did their editing quiz while I was there, and came out with Grade A. Phew!
The client edit author replied with another ETA on his latest revisions (early next week), so I replied to that, thanking him for letting me know.
I had a reply from Kobo about a problem I had with their app while we were away, so I replied to that. And I had another email from Plottr about my tech issues, with detailed instructions on what to do next. I did everything I was asked to do and, so far, I think it worked! On both machines. So all good there.
Police Scotland called me a few minutes before 3pm, took a few more details, assured me that I’d absolutely done the right thing in reporting the incident, and followed up with a text message with the incident and crime reference numbers. Yes, it’s a crime to even take out someone’s wing mirror and not stop, and it’s a crime to not report it. We did stop, and I did report it. So we’re covered if the other party reports it further down the line, for insurance reasons, for instance.
It was almost 6pm by the time the poet got home from work, so I called it a day then too. Oh, and there were no accidental Meta slips yesterday.
I’m glad you followed all the legal steps. Hope it doesn’t cost much to get it repaired/replaced.
Busy time of it! Glad you’re enjoying the gothic workshop. It’s a fun genre.
Settling back in after vacation always takes a few days, I find. I block off the day before and the day after, at the very least, whenever I can. Mind you, I don’t shorten the trip — I lengthen my time “out of office”!
The mirror arrived safely at least, now we just have to fix it!