A Catch-up on December 2024

Welcome back for my final of three catch-up blog posts after a chaotic last quarter of 2024 meant I couldn’t find the time to write any.

I mentioned in my November 2024 catch-up that I had a plan to finish book 26 before Christmas but, thanks to my struggles with jetlag, the chances of success with that weren’t looking good.

December arrived and I’d only managed 16,000 words. As my books are typically about 100,000 words, that meant I’d need to write roughly 84,000 words in just over three weeks. Eek! That wasn’t going to happen, especially when I needed to write Christmas cards, wrap gifts, put up the tree, celebrate my daughter’s 18thbirthday as well as having various other commitments in the diary.

My monthly writing group met up as usual and we accompanied our chat with a Christmas meal this time. They’re such a lovely group and it’s always great getting together. I managed to indulge my passion for pigs in blankets with a mac and cheese topped with them. Yummy!

The daughter will (hopefully) be off to university in September this year. It’s been tricky fitting in the regular university open days as she works in a garden centre on a Saturday and Sunday and the open days are nearly always Saturdays. She’s had offers from her five chosen universities, one of which is Hull and we’d booked a campus tour with a student in December. There should have been another family but they were no-shows so we had a private tour. I’ve never been to the campus and was really impressed by it and the area around it. Accommodation has come so far since my days as a student staying in the world’s grottiest room! When the daughter starts at uni, I might dig out some of my old photos and share them to show how grim mine was. 

Wicked was released at the cinemas in December, or at least the first part was. I’ve seen the musical twice – once in the West End many years ago and once on a touring production to Leeds – and it’s amazing. I wasn’t really sure what to expect of a musical made into a film and will admit some reluctance at seeing it when it was only half of the story and so incredibly long, but wow! It’s visually spectacular and I could see where the extra time went on showing so much more than is possible on the stage. The time didn’t drag at all and I can’t wait to see the next part. Absolutely brilliant!

My publisher, Boldwood Books, hosted their annual Christmas party on Zoom and sent us a double dose of bubbly to celebrate an incredible five years. We played some party games including Bingo where you complete a box if you can say yes to a particular writing-related statement e.g. mark box five if you’ve ever had to reduce your manuscript by at least 30,000 words, mark box eight if you’ve ever been recognised in public and so on. I’m still kicking myself because I filled a line and was very British about it, putting my hand up instead of knocking myself off mute and saying ‘Bingo’. I realised the host hadn’t spotted me and was about to do that when someone else called ‘Bingo’ and won. You’d think I’d have known better after attending several of these! What a numpty!

Hubby and I are both self-employed and had jokingly said we’d have a joint works party but, when it came down to it, I just didn’t have the time. My word count levels were dire and I needed every spare minute I could find so we decided to take a raincheck and have our work’s do while we were away. We didn’t manage that either!

Our daughter turned eighteen and she went away overnight with a friend to celebrate so it was quite strange not having her around and just an 18 balloon bobbing around in the lounge. Then, before we knew it, Christmas arrived and went in a flash. We visited my parents on Christmas Eve then had a quiet Christmas Day before the in-laws arrived for the evening.

When I was in Stratford Upon Avon, I found a game which looked like hedgehogs being stacked up. The back of the game says porcupines but I still say hedgehogs and we had fun trying to play that on Christmas Day although the three of us possessed very little skill and didn’t manage to stack those hedgies very high.

A couple of days later, we headed down to the Peak District for a week. Originally we’d just booked this as a family week away but, as it neared, I changed it into a research trip. With the release of A Forever Home at Honey Bee Croft, I’m saying goodbye to one of my three settings – the Yorkshire Wolds. I still have lots of stories to tell set in Whitsborough Bay and the Lake District but I thought it might be time to search for a setting to replace the Wolds and I wondered whether the Peak District could be it.

We’ve visited several times before but only for a couple of days so being there for a week gave me much longer to explore. We visited Bakewell, Buxton, Matlock, Castleton, Haversage and, a little further afield, Chesterfield. I found a lovely bookshop in Matlock and was so excited to see three of my books on the shelves.

We also visited Chatsworth House dressed for Christmas and several villages. It’s a lovely area but spending a week there helped me reach the conclusion that it’s not quite right for a series by me. Nowhere really called to me and, as my settings are characters in themselves, I need to feel that strong connection so that my readers can feel it too. I emphasise it’s a lovely area but the creative connection just wasn’t there for me.

The weather was a bit mixed while we were away with some dull and wet days and some very heavy frost. We’re fair weather walkers so going out walking in the cold and wet doesn’t appeal and always presents us with a challenge when we’re away at this time of year as so many of these places are about walking with shops and businesses closed over the New Year. But that was fine because it gave some time in our lovely holiday cottage to relax and time for me to write because I was still way, way off word count. So much for finishing for Christmas! There was a fabulous desk in the lounge which made the perfect space for setting up my laptop.

On New Year’s Eve, hubby was feeling a bit under the weather so the daughter and I went out. Our first stop was at Sainsbury’s in Matlock to stock up on food for the next few days and then we planned to go on to Matlock Bath and a couple of other places. Except when we returned to the car after our supermarket shop, it wouldn’t start. It’s an automatic and the engine was turning over but the knob that comes up and allows you to move from park into drive/reverse etc. wouldn’t budge meaning we couldn’t move. How typical was that when I was out for the day in hubby’s car – a car I don’t usually drive (I have a smaller manual car)? 

We phoned hubby for ideas and tried all sorts of things but nothing would work. Thankfully we have AA membership so I called them and they said they’d be with us in fifty minutes. I sent the daughter back into Sainsbury’s to get us a drink and snack to keep us going but, while she was gone, an elderly woman drove towards us looking for a parking space. She spotted the one next to me which I had hoped would stay empty for the AA van… and promptly conked out before she could move into it. She tried starting her engine but with no success and evidently spotted me sitting there so she got out and asked me if I was trying to get out of the space as her car had just broken down. I told her I’d broken down myself and was waiting for the AA. ‘Perhaps he can sort me out when he arrives,’ she said. Erm, not sure it quite works like that!

It was late morning and the small-ish car park was getting very busy and I was conscious that the woman’s car was right in the middle of the lane so nobody could get past. I suggested we’d need to push it out the way but I wouldn’t be able to do that on my own. In the meantime, the driver of the car in the space on the other side of her wanted to be out and clearly wasn’t going to offer to help. A man in a truck wanted to be past so she explained the situation to him and he said he’d reverse and park and help. He never appeared. Cheers for that! Three woman loading a mountain of shopping into their car nearby thought the car had been abandoned and when I explained the problem, they said they’d help push. Before doing that, I suggested to the woman that she try her car one more time now that it had been sitting for a while and it started so she pulled off into a space and everyone got on their way. I just hope that it started again after she’d done her shopping.

Shortly after, the AA arrived and it turned out what had gone wrong is a very common problem with Land Rovers where there’s a switch that should pull back to allow the knob to be turned but it gets stuck. The temporary fix seemed very Blue Peter-ish as it involved him folding some of that really strong black tape and creating a hook from that to pull the switch back. He said I would need to get it fixed properly but the temporary fix would last a long time and we’d have no problem at all getting around on our holiday and getting home. He was right. We’ve had no problems since then and the car is going to the dealer next week to get the knob replaced for an eyewatering amount that I don’t want to think about.

I didn’t want to travel far on my own after that but definitely deserved cake so the daughter and I stopped off at the Peak Shopping Village. It was on the way and had been one of the places we’d planned to visit that day anyway. I’m so grateful to the AA man who was speedy and got us on our way, and very relieved it happened somewhere safe and easily accessible. But why did it have to happen to me when I was out in the husband’s car without him?

While we were away, I made great progress with my word count and also with a jigsaw I’d taken with me. I haven’t done a jigsaw for seven years (I know that because it came up on my Facebook memories) and I hadn’t done one for maybe thirty years before that but I remembered finding it relaxing then and hoped it would give me a break from research and writing.

It was a lovely Alex Clark Art jigsaw with three cats in front of a fire but it turned out to really difficult as the colours are all very similar. The light in the cottage came mainly from lamps or low wattage ceiling lights - lovely for relaxing but shockingly bad for doing anything in and I had to construct a lot of the jigsaw using the torch on my phone. My poor eyes! 

I’d made brilliant progress, assisted a bit by the daughter and hubby, but I had to accept on the last night that it wasn’t going to get finished. Hubby suggested we separate it into sections to put in the box and carefully transport home flat. We did that, wrapped the spare pieces in kitchen foil, and laid my folded scarf on top of the jigsaw layers to stop them moving. He then re-constructed it for me on the dining table in the conservatory when we got home where the light during the day is excellent.

I know I’m dipping into January here but, once my book was done, I finished the jigsaw… only to discover there was a piece missing. Argh! I don’t know what to do about it. We carefully checked the table, chairs and floor before we left the holiday cottage to make sure we had all pieces but one must have dropped off at some point or got hooked on my cardigan and I carried it somewhere else. Or there was one missing from the pack. Is this possible? Answers on a postcard please. So frustrating!

So, that’s me up to date. I’ll be back soon with a publication day announcement but I’ll leave you with the title for Escape to the Lakes Book 4 which I’ve just had confirmed and is now showing on Amazon. It’s called Sunshine After the Rain, which I absolutely love. It’s perfect for the story being told and fits really well with the other titles in the series. I can’t wait to see what the cover designer comes up with.

Happy New Year hugs

Jessica xx