Weekly Round Up 24th April

This weekly round-up is becoming a fortnightly one. Last week was a bank holiday over here so I had a rest. I hope everyone had a lovely Easter and ate as many eggs as you wanted.

I have written some words over the last two weeks – not my target of 5000 a week but around 6-7000. I’m not sure exactly. My WIP is at 84K with a lot more of the story to write. I may have to split it then write a third. I’m not sure yet. I’ve also been collecting ideas for a Christmas story, though I need to get on with it. This will be a May/September story. I’ve also been buy writing blog posts for the releases of next two books. More below.

On the reading front, I’ve read a few books. Trapped by Ruby Moore continues my love for historical romances. I’ve developed a passion for them and wish I could write one. I’ve re-read Widdeshins by Jordan L Hawk. I love this series. Current read and nearly finished is Starting from Scratch by Jay Northcote and next up is NR Walker’s sneaky crossover Red Dirt Heart Imago.

The Supernatural rewatch continues with the completion of season 4. I love this one with the introduction of the angels and Ruby’s machinations. All those long looks and Misha Collins’s non-blinking with those beautiful blue eyes.

Current watch is Fargo Season 1 which is as dark and quirky as the film. Sometimes, I think I’m supposed to like the bad guy and at other times not. I really have no idea how the people of Minnesota live with all that snow. Supernatural season 5 will be next up. We’ve also watched Fantastic Beasts and Rogue One and enjoyed both. Star Trek Beyond will be next. It’s tough being behind everyone else because I can’t get to the cinema.

This week again I’m hoping to get some words done, get over the last story plot point, and decide how far to go with the end to see if there is another book in this. I’ve blog posts to write for both books. While You See a Chance, my older MC story set in my home area is on

general release on 1^st May. There will be a release blitz and a Q&A held by Manifold Press the week after. My Highland Cowboy is up for pre-order from tomorrow with Pride Publishing.

In this story, Duncan owns a ranch where you can go on round-ups or learn cowboy skills, but this ranch is in the Highlands of Scotland. Into his life walks the challenging Drew who turns his expectations upside down.

That’s it for me. As well as the writing, I’m busy do some family history research for myself and another person. It’s always fun finding out about people, and you never know when you’re going to get an idea for a story.

You can preorder While You See a Chance on Amazon here and My Highland Cowboy from tomorrow here

Have a good week everyone.

Weekly Round Up 10th April.

Author’s log. It’s been two weeks since my last post and after an almost hot day yesterday, Lancashire has plunged back into its usual gloom with a few drops of rain.

I decided not to do a weekly post last week as I took part in the autism awareness month set up by R J Scott - see previous post below. Pop over to her blog and have a look. Thanks to all who commented. It will be there all month and I’ll pick a winner on 1^st May, the day While You See a Chance comes out.

Writing has been especially slow going. I’m always like this getting near to one of my books coming out and this time I have two in quick succession. I get into the rut of wondering if it’s all worth it and if this story is any good and if anything I’ve ever written is any good. I’m sure some of you know what I mean. I’ll add some links for While You See a Chance below.

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve added around seven thousand words to my WIP, Half Full, which now stands at over 75K words. I’m trying to decide whether to make something more sensational or not. I have blog posts to write to go with the releases of While You See a Chance and My Highland Cowboy so I hope to get some of them done this week.

In news from home, my brother is having a new form of chemo with an experimental tablet so we’ll see how that goes. If you missed it, I blogged about my home town and the area where I was born in the newsletter for Manifold Press with some others who have books out 1^st May.

On the reading front, I’ve read Bonfires by Amy Lane which I enjoyed. I loved having a couple of older characters with families. Now I’m reading In the Spotlight by Charlie Cochrane and next will by N R Walker’s Imagines which I downloaded yesterday. We’ve been continuing our rewatches, or new to you watches, with Supernatural S3 and now onto Lonesome Dove. We also watched the whole of the original Norwegian with English subtitles version of Eyewitness. There were some differences and I think I enjoyed the US version more as I felt more connection with the characters. That may have been because of the language, or that the US version had more episodes giving more backstory. Next will be Supernatural S4 bringing on Castiel and the other angels.

Black Sails also finished this week. No spoilers if you haven’t watched it but I was happy with the ending. I can recommend it to anyone who loves pirates. I am so behind on everything else. Oh, and we watched, and enjoyed, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.

Hopefully, I’ll get some writing done this week and not be totally distracted by family tree research. I’ve discovered this ability on ancestry to link events to people so have been working through all my ancestors and it becomes rather compulsive.

That’s it for now. Have a good week everyone and happy sales to those with new releases. This post will also appear on my blog.

While You See a Chance can be preordered on Amazon here and can be marked to read on Goodreads here. I hope you'll give this story of love over many years a try.

Autism Awareness Month 2017

Hello – and thanks for coming along to my blog post to support autism awareness month. As you can see from the banner, this year’s theme is animals. I have two cats, and there is nothing like sitting with a cat in your lap, hearing it purr as you stroke its fur or scritch its ears. Animals can make such a difference to your life.

A couple of years ago, we decided to cut down on the number of things we bought each other for Christmas and birthday. Looking around for ideas, I discovered The Donkey Sanctuary. We had visited the headquarters in Sidmouth while on holiday and sponsoring a donkey seemed like a great idea.

This is a photograph of Henry, the donkey I have sponsored for two years and a link to his page. He lives at the Manchester Sanctuary.

You may ask what has this to do with autism. From the regular updates I receive, I discovered that The Donkey sanctuary does a lot of work with both adults and children with physical and learning disabilities through their assisted therapy work and offer a chance for people to work with specially chosen donkeys. It has been found the people on the autistic spectrum can benefit from working with these special animals. Here is a link to the story of a boy called Alexander and a donkey called William. I hope they won’t mind me including it here.

The Donkey Sanctuary are changing how they work with autistic children so they can continue to work with the donkeys as adults. The story above shows just how donkeys help and there are many other examples.

You can find more about the work the charity does here.

And more about the National Autistic society here

There are lots of authors taking part in this autism awareness month. You can find the master page of their blog posts on RJ Scott’s blog.

Finally, I’ve decided to have a little giveaway. I’ll put the names of anyone who comments on this post into random.org and you can choose from an ecopy of either of my new books, While You See a Chance out 1^st May or My Highland Cowboy out 6^th June.

Thank you for visiting my page.

Alexa Milne