The Dutch Bulbfields

This weekend I'll be writing about flowers in the Netherlands, having claimed two articles from a Constant Content writer pool. This is a fairly new feature at CC, for which they have set some categories for groups (or pools) of authors to be involved in. Authors have to meet certain criteria to be eligible to apply for them, and submit some content to be vetted before they are accepted. I applied for a few categories and was accepted for all of them. It means that, along with the other writers in each of my pools, I am fed the article requests in those categories. As soon as an author claims an article, the request is taken down, and the author must submit the article to meet the deadline. We can claim up to three articles at a time. Good idea, don't you think?

You have to be quick to claim them though. I was lucky that some interesting ones were available when I was close to finishing my commissioned work for this month. Although I'll have to work the weekend, I'm hoping to be able to take a couple of days off writing before I start my February jobs next week.

This article research reminds me of the very first holiday I took with the man who was eventually to become my second husband. We took a coach tour of the bulbfields and some of the other sights of the country in April. There weren't many bulbfields left in evidence on the roadside, but we chose to abandon the coach in Amsterdam one day, as I wanted to visit the Rijksmuseum. After that we had to take a train to Leiden and a bus back to Noordvijk and out hotel. From the train we had an endless vista of unharvested bulbfields, so we did better than our companions on the coach.

Pic is by Deepak from Wikimedia Commons

Wordless Wednesday: Colours of Spring

Another Book Launch

Today I'm taking part in a web splash for another author. I'm actually writing this ahead of time and unfortunately won't be able to join in the celebrations because I'll be on my way north for a funeral that takes place fairly early tomorrow morning.

Today is the date of the official publication by Grimoire Books of New Beginnings by Rebecca Emin.

Join her and her friends over on Rebecca’s blog Ramblings of a Rusty Writer to find all of the details of how she is planning to celebrate today, or you can read some reviews of the book itself on Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com.

You may like to visit some of the other blogs helping Rebecca to celebrate today too.

About New Beginnings

Sam Hendry is not looking forward to starting at her new school. Things go from bad to worse as the day of truth arrives and all of her fears come true... and then some.

When Sam meets a different group of people who immediately accept her as a friend, she begins to feel more positive.

With her new friends and interests, will Sam finally feel able to face the bully who taunts her, and to summon up the courage to perform on stage?

About Rebecca

Rebecca Emin lives in Oxfordshire, with her husband and three small children. New Beginnings is her debut novel, but she has finished writing her second novel When Dreams Come True, which is also for older children.

Rebecca also enjoys writing flash fiction and short stories and has had several flash fiction stories included in fundraising anthologies. A Knowing Look and Other Stories is a collection of her short stories which was published in November 2011.

She is also an author for Ether Books who publish short stories and essays to mobile devices via the Ether app.

Trevor Belshaw's Books

I've just bought my copy of Tracy's Hotmail.  I've read snippets of it before and know it's good for a laugh. These grey days we need something to cheer us up. 

I've been meaning to buy it for ages as it's by Trevor Belshaw, one of the authors I met at Writelink, and a brilliant writer to boot. Today is a good day top buy it though, because it was recently snapped up by the Crooked Cat publishing company, and the book launch is today. You can read Trevor's hilarious take on that in his blog, and judge his writing ability from that. I bet you'll want to read his book.

If you're quick, you could win a copy from the publishers, who are holding a competition. Get an entry in before midnight UK time and you could be one of three lucky winners. Go to the Crooked Cat site for the details.

Incidentally, Trevor also writes children's books under the nom de plume, Trevor Forest. I recently got three signed copies for my grandaughter and I'm going to visit her next week, so she'll get them then. I read them all to make sure they'd be right for her, and I'm sure she's going to love them. No doubt you'll read more about them here when I get her reactions.

George Clooney for President?

Some Wednesday mornings I take time off for a cheap visit to the local senior screen at Tower Park's cinema. It only costs £3 and we oldies get a hot drink and a biscuit before the film. I usually meet a friend or two there and we go somewhere for lunch before heading home, so it almost makes a complete day off for me.

The film today was The Ides of March, in which George Clooney is campaigning to become the American Democrat's Presidential candidate. he also co-wrote and directed this great film about the backsniping and winners and losers of such a campaign, with small but tragic personal stories fitting into an enormous jigsaw with an overall theme of disillusionment.

The gorgeous Clooney appears whiter than white, while his flunkies (mostly less than gorgeous, although his deputy campaign manager, Stephen Meyers, is played by a younger and very personable Ryan Gosling) sort out the dirty tricks that will get him into pole position without harming his image. I won't tell you all the story as it would spoil it for anyone who wants to see it, but for anyone wondering, the female interest is played by Evan Rachel Wood.

Go and see it if you have the opportunity. It's very well done.

MLK Day Today

Today is Martin Luther King Day and a holiday in the US. If I wasn’t a blogger, I probably wouldn’t have known about this, since I am not a resident of that country.  But I do know about MLK and the importance of his life works, the results of which have permeated around the world, as well as making a difference to the lives of people in America.  Although I am British and white, I have the most delightful mixed-race granddaughter who is the light of my life, so it seems appropriate to mark the day here.

The pic shows MLK on the left, with civil rights leaders Whitney Young and James Farmer at a meeting with President Lyndon Johnson on 18 January 1964, four years and three months before MLK was brutally assassinated.

Haiku Diary for Today

Wind pushes us on
along the noisy shoreline,
as waves crash and splash.

We find some shelter
up the steps to Ham Common
and walk back that way.