Expanding This Writer's Horizons

I finally found a copy of Anna Karenina and it was a free ebook download from Planet ebook. Planet eBook offers free classic literature to download and share.

The list of free ebooks include 1984 by George Orwell, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte and The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy.Visit the web site for the full list of classic books turned into free ebooks. You can even suggest a classic book you'd like them to publish. Looks like I've found another treasure trove to mine:-)

A day in the life

So this week I'm attending South African Sanlam Fashion Week. At least, for a couple of hours , to meet and interview the designers of Kwanda Klothing , check out the clothing range and blog about it.

High fashion is so foreign from my usual milieu it's not funny. I feel like a duck waddling into a flock of swans. I'd feel better attending a workshop on how to develop software for high-powered computing or how to develop communication strategies to reduce HIV infection rates in sub-Saharan Africa. Hang on, I do regularly attend those kinds of workshops, and I never even break a sweat! Seriously though, it'll expand our horizon all round, not that you asked:-)

Yesterday was a good writing day, though it started oddly. Went to the dentist as planned, and after probing around in my seemingly healed mouth, announced that the nerves around the broken tooth were dead. We could extract the whole tooth, or we could do root canal. I opted for the root canal, whereupon which she worked with that little metal drill thing to open my tooth and remove the dead nerves.

Because the nerves are dead, she reckoned I didn't need any anaesthetic. Very scary concept for me, having a dentist work in my mouth without any injection whatsoever. But it was very soothing and I could have fallen asleep right there on her chair if I didn't need to keep my mouth open.

After updating sites, I spent the rest of the day doing a lot of business writing ( aka, media plan for Team Software Process) and a couple of guest-blog posts.

Two fantabulous developments in my writing life:

1. Traffic on the OneLove regional web site has picked up so much I had to ask the client to upgrade their hosting package. We had traffic the same amount of traffic in the past two weeks of September as we had in June, and we'd thought June was not shabby. So wonderful to see the online promotion activities, which are mostly tedious and repetitive, pay off in solid numbers for the client. [ P.S. If you want to republish one of my articles/ blog posts in return for a shortt bio and link to my sites, drop me an email.]

2. This month I did a survey for a publisher, and she assures me that if their proposal for a series of books is approved, I'm going to get a slice of that.

That will mean, finally taking my writing to the next level : Books! Lots of books. My name on book covers! My books in schools! My books in libraries!

He he! Before I get us all carried away, I'll only know at the beginning of 2010 if their proposal is approved, and even then it will be a long hard slog getting the brief/researching/writing/editing/polishing/submitting the manuscripts/ the publishing process. So it could be years before I even hold one of the books in my hand.

If the whole deal pans out.

But, it's a wonderful long-term plan that could take me closer to where I want to go as a writer....

Those who've been hanging around here long enough probably know of the many possibilities, and disappointments I've had trying to break into book publishing in a big way. So you'll know it can work out either way, and that's the nature of the business.