A new toy!

I finally got my Kindle this week. It was a great way of celebrating the end of my Fabulous February theme where I made a promise to do something connected to my writing every day. I had a great month and put a lot of work out so now waiting to see if I get any results.

March the 1st was World Book Day so I decided to buy my Kindle then to celebrate. Of course I have not given up on paper books, in fact I also bought War Horse by Michael Morpurgo in paperback on the same day. I love reading proper books too but this is a great way of having some reading material wherever I am without having to carry too much. I was thrilled to see it even has a dictionary on it which is great as I would not like to carry my huge dictionary/thesaurus around with me everywhere I go.

The second reason for getting one is because I want to publish my own novel in the autumn so I thought it would be useful to see how it reads on a proper Kindle machine. For the next few months I hope to be reading my own novel on my own machine. I hope it will help with the editing process as reading it in a different format may make some obvious problems stand out.

I am also hoping to publish a small non-fiction book shortly which has illustrations so it will be useful to see how they look.

I shall still continue to try and get my work published in the normal way but I see the world of publishing ebooks as an exciting new alternative and I have nothing to lose by trying.

My life in books

I have really been enjoying 'My Life In Books' with Ann Robinson which has been shown over the last couple of weeks. She has interviewed many famous guests talking about which five particular books have made an impact on their lives. It's so interesting to see what other people love about their favourite books.

With the great difficulty at picking only five, I came up with my own list which is in no particular order as I have read them from childhood to present - all of them giving me back something very special.

1) Charlotte's Web - E B White - It taught me that we can find friends in the most unusual places and under so many different circumstances.

2) Nordy Bank - Sheena Porter - My love of history and the fact that this book was set around the beautiful Brown Clee hill which is on my door step fascinates me. I love walking up there and feeling the characters come to life.

3)The Lyonesse Stone - Craig Weatherhill - I love Cornwall and visited some of the sites where he had set this magical book. Again the ancient history of such a magical place captivated me.

4) Skellig - David Almond - I find it hard to choose just one as I love all his books, but to find a scruffy angel with broken wings at the back of your garage is pretty moving, so it go my thumbs up.

5) The Alchemist - Paulo Coehelo - Amazing book, it taught me to follow my dreams and realise that sometimes you do not have to look that far to make them happen.

Happy World Book Day!