My hands are usually the same colour as Chris's!

It’s been like March or November most of this week – cold and wet. But I girded my loins and went for quick dip in the pool today. I can’t bear to not use it since we’re so lucky to have our own pool, and it’s useable for such a relatively short time, late May to mid September if we’re lucky. Anyway, it was chilly, about 20 degrees. I only did about 30 lengths before my fingers went this rather scary shade of white so I figured it was time to get out! I feel the cold, being on the skinny side, but my fingers and toes take it to extremes at times. It took me an hour or so to warm up, but it was worth it to have a swim.

We’re having the usual problems with llama visitors this year. All our publicité specifies that you have to make a rendez-vous, but, as in previous years, people just turn up anyway. It’s annoying, because we obviously need an appointment system to keep things running smoothly, and make sure we don’t have too many people coming at once. And they do insist on turning up every time we sit down to eat! We seem to be fighting a losing battle. Anyway, Caiti has taken over the business of giving guided visits this year, so she’s happy to have extra folk show up if it means she makes more money! However, we will be locking the gates on Sunday afternoon. Nothing, but nothing, will tear us away from watching the last day of the Tour de France live. We’re a little bit cycling obsessed in this household.

Cover as it will appear on the Kindle itself

Well, I’ve uploaded my first Kindle ebook to Amazon today. Big cheer! It should be up for sale within 48 hours. It’s Oh Auntie which was originally published in 2005 by Mentor. After Mentor stopped its children’s publishing programme, the rights for the book reverted to me, so I’ve updated slightly, got a new cover drawn and re-released it. I’ll be doing the same with all my other Mentor titles since they never achieved the level of sales that I feel they should have.  I formatted the book using Mobicreator, and then checked its appearance using Kindle Preview, both excellent – and free – tools that I downloaded off the Net. I’ll be describing the process in more detail on my Books Are Cool blog imminently, so if self-publishing is something that appeals to you, do keep an eye open for that.

Here are a couple of photos of what Oh Auntie’s going to look like on the Kindle, using Kindle Preview on my laptop.

 

First page

 

 

And to finish this slight mish-mash of a blog, a cute and silly photo. Here’s Wendy listening to music on Caiti’s smartphone! Wendy misses her twin brother a lot less than we do. (The twins were named after the gun Smith and Wesson, what with Chris, Benj, Caits and Rors being gun club members! But Smith turned into Mr Smith, and Wesson into Wendy Wuss. Who knows why!)