They're on their way...

Just had an e-mail from lulu.com - the books are printed and on their way! This is the scary part: waiting for them to arrive and hoping (praying!) they are fine! The traumas of last week's sending seem a lifetime ago and real 'work' has taken over. The house is still a tip and the cleaning just keeps getting put back and back! It's too hot to do anything -that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it! Not much on the cake front this week - hoping to make up for it this weekend! Wonder when the parcel will arrive...?

And then it all went pear-shaped for a while...

It was all going so well. Too well. All I had to do was upload the file to the lulu site and then it was done. That was on Friday...

Today - two days AFTER the launch date, SCOTCH PINE finally reached lulu! It's been unbelievably difficult to transfer the text to PDF this time. The recommended route - using Open Office - introduced a number of annoying little glitches and I realised that I'd have to completely re-check the entire text. So instead I downloaded a free trial of Adobe Acrobat - only to discover that my beloved and antiquated lap top didn't have anything like enough memory to run it! Two computers and a different lap-top later I finally managed at 6.45pm tonight to create a lulu acceptable PDF! The cover was a doddle by comparison.

And now, it's there - I keep going to the website and looking at it!!! Can't quite believe it's actually FINISHED! By the way,for the next 30 days you can get a 10% discount on the cover price by quoting JOANNADUNCANXMM3 in the coupon box at the checkout, thanks to lulu. And you can have a look at the free preview as well - just go to http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/scotch-pine/3169764

BEST CAKE? without a doubt, fruit tart in Druckers in the Bullring on Sunday just before I got the train home from a mad ballet weekend. Delicious. The tart was good too...

IT'S DONE!!!!!

For better or for worse, I've put the final touches to SCOTCH PINE and it is all ready to upload to lulu.com...Scary! Equally scary is the vast amount of Malteasers which I seem to have consumed this week! Just hoping my PDF maker works now... See you on LAUNCH DAY!!!!

Dotting the eyes...

I have dots in front of my eyes. I'm in the final stages of the final FINAL edit of Scotch Pine and I'm combing all 390 pages pulling out rogue full stops and renegade question marks which have invaded my prose and have evaded the eagle eyes of me and the Editor! Still keeping to schedule, but terrified I'll leave in some whopping mistake which will effectively ruin the whole thing! I have two days effectively to get things finished... Watch this space for launch on Monday! There'll be serious cake, I promise.

In the wee small hours of the morning...

This is a knitted squirrel from Jane Bolsover's knitted garden project - which inspired one element of the book. Visit www.bhkc.co.uk/data/the_knitted_garden_jbol.htm to see more of it!

Just 16 days to go...I'm not sure this countdown thing was such a good idea now!! It's scary! I was on holiday last week and spent a vast part of it slashing the wordcount of Scotch Pine and trying to make all my subplots join up. I'm now in the middle of the final typo-hunt and still on track to publish on Midsummer's Day. This is the exciting part - this and the moment the first book arrives from lulu.

It's going to be a chunky book (tho' hopefully it is all muscle!) at 390 pages - my longest so far - and I was worried that people might be reluctant to part with their hard-earned cash during these rather trying times just to find out what happens to Grouse, Partridge, Marmalade and the others. But, so far, I've racked up quite a few pre-orders from readers of the last two books - handing out promotional postcards was a good way of alerting people that it was almost ready to read. I'm not very good at the whole self-promotion thing, though: I get very embarrassed!

Best Cake? Although we loved Kings Lynn, it wasn't that hot in the cake-stakes (at least, not in the places we visited!) so my best cake this week is another Durham one: very fresh almond croissant in Cafe Nero - delicious! They were playing Vivaldi as well, so they get extra brownie points!