Emma Munday - First Impressions

When my daughter Jemma was about 5 and I was reading her a bed time story, probably a Roald Dahl book, I thought to myself. 

"Wouldn't it be cool if I wrote her a book myself."

And so, every year I picked up Emma Munday's first story and added a bit. And changed the bit that I'd already written.

The trouble is that most of my free time was spent writing comic book stories or colouring in pages of artwork for comic books I'd written.

The years passed.

This year I am determined to finish it and commissioned Ian Ashcroft to do me a wraparound cover image.

I'm very happy with the result.

Yes, it's a science fiction story.

Yes, although it took me years to write Book 1 I have the next 3 books already planned in my head.

The next step is to get my go-to designer Andy Bloor to work out the title fonts etc.

Oh, and for me to finish the book of course.

And my editor, my daughter Jemma (and no, I didn't hold this up until she was old enough to edit the book I wrote for her... I really don't plan that far ahead) will then make it better 😆

It never rains but it pours.

An interesting start to the year, not in a good way.

When I got back from my Mum's after XMas I was confronted with a damp patch on the ceiling in the dining room.

The dining room that Jemma and I had decorated only last year.

The position of the leak pointed at the loo in the bathroom above.

Turns out that my cistern had fractured due to the cold weather,, it happens apparently.

To make matters even worse the previous owner of the house had boxed the cistern in, so to replace it would require breaking the tiles.

The plumber was pretty good though and took all of this in his stride.

It's amazing seeing someone work who knows what he's doing and has all the right tools. 

It took him all morning, he had to pop out and get some wood at one point in order to put the new tiles in to replace the ones he had had to destroy. The only bit of good news was that we found some spare tiles under the bath.

Yep.

Not a great start to the year.

An unexpected expense.

But great to have the bathroom back and working again.

I just need to let everything dry out thoroughly now and then I'll paint the ceiling downstairs.