Life, Love and the Everyday

I have been up since 4am, fuelled by coffee and a vanilla slice and sent the final edits to my editor - along with second thoughts I had about my author photo. There have been a few changes since I last blogged. Alan and I moved into our first home and adopted a little grey tabby called Enid. Alan and I binge-watched Wednesday on Netflix last year and Alan thought it was a lovely name, I loved the idea of it because I had a great aunt called Enid who passed away a few years ago, she was a sensational woman and is dearly missed - when I was fourteen and going through that phrase when I didn't like the way I looked, she told me I was beautiful and that I could be an actress when I grew up. You couldn't help but light up around Aunt Enid, she had eyes that promised kindness and magic and that is what drew people to her. She had this adorable gap between her teeth. I used to have one too waaaay back in grade eight...like I don't don't even want to say how many years it

At the beginning of this year, my husband and I booked our tickets to Singapore and Brunei with no thought of real estate, packing boxes, solicitors and a fuck-load of paperwork. Three weeks ago we started looking around at real estate thinking we were just getting thoughts and ideas. Over the course of two days we looked at six places. I got really giddy thinking about one of them because it is a two bedroom town house with a goregous shelving nook for my books beneath the stairs. Alan's first thought when he first saw it was less than enthusiastic. "Uh, the highway is like...right there." He had a good point. Three years ago construction began on extending the high way in the area we were looking in, two years ago when I stayed over at Sumi's place of a weekend you could hear the sounds of persistent drilling. Two years on the high way is still being built but construction has been moved on a bit further. "But you can't hear it from the inside." I p

It has been a looooong time since I have written anything here, most of the writing I am doing these days is for my books. I have released my third novel and have started writing submission emails to book stores asking if they would like to order a few copies. Sometimes I get radio silence, other times I get a polite decline and best wishes and every now and then, I get a yes and in those moments it feels like I am living the dream. One of my biggest challenges as an indie writer is not letting fear, doubt or anxiety get the better of me. There are times when I run a horror movie in my head which begins and ends with boxes of unsold books in my living room and then I remind myself that I do not like horror movies and I'm tuning into something more hopeful and uplifting. But most of all,I think about how I want the right people to find my books and fall in love with the plots and charaters, that the universe is taking care of when, where, how and why. Inspiration to write has b

Each day brings it's own joys and sorrows, acheivements, challenges and failures. On those days when we are tested, challenged and fail - the important thing is to see it through eyes that are wiser, kinder than the day before and begin afresh. Sometimes that is really hard, espeically when there is a melacholic part of human nature that likes to wallow in what cannot be changed. Crawling out of the mud of self-blame and pity is a tough slog but once we stand up tall and let the promise of a new day fill us with hope and faith that we can do better, will do better, then it's all right. Because with failure comes the blessing of awareness, of knowledge and with awareness and knowledge comes resilience and strength. And with that, the opportunity to be tested and challenged again, to succeed where we have failed. That's what life is about, being tested, challenged, failing and succeeding, then being proud of what we can do. - Sarah x

So...does anyone else think Mercury Retrograde sucked? I knew the exact moment that Mercury Retrograde started for me, it made a dramatic entrance with a feathery beaked pheasant shitting on me one drizzly Tuesday morning as I was about to cross the road to work. I can't even talk about the second thing that happend. It was that bad. It was like Glee and Gossip Girl combined without the added flair of a crowd pleasing hit song. And I was a nervous wreck during my first radio interview, I'm pretty sure I could make a drinking game out of how many times I said, "yeah, exactly!" And I finished my interview with "Amen, amen..." I mean, I guess there are worse ways to end your first public debut but because I was so nervous I wasn't myself. To be fair, it was a live interview. My very first one. And because of Mercury Retrograde being an asshole, I wasn't feeling particuarily sparkly... I don't think it will be my last live interview, the next on

Blog inspiration dried up after my last entry. I think it was just a little bit of everything. Dealing with the move, Covid-19, then there was this heavy exhaustion which made me go nigh-nighs on my days off work. For awhile there I just wanted to sleep every chance I had, which I guess is only natural when you are low on iron and I would wake up in the early morning, around 2:00am and not be able to fall back to sleep until 3:30-4:00am. It was really rough and the best sleep I had was during and after an operation. Sleep apnea is a real drag... Fortunately things are better now. Most nights are restful (for me, anyway!) But it wasn't all doom and gloom. In these past two years I have published two books and the third is in the works. It took a year to feel at home in what I like to think of my little writer garret. Alan is ever the same, ever as kind, ever as loving, ever as good. I normally say that I don't have time for cooking, but the truth is I don't make