I skipped a whole week of ROW80 updates, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t do anything in the meantime!

It’s the beginning of the month again, and once again my job took over. We’re extremely busy until the 10th of each month, and because we close for Christmas on the 19th, we have to get everything done beforehand. Most days, I don’t really get to eat a proper breakfast, and on busy days often only have biscuits or bananas for lunch at the office. Today, the doorbell rang, and one of my dad’s employees (who had just had lunch with my gran in town) simply handed me a Burger King bag with a long Chili Cheese sandwich and an orange juice inside. All he said was “Your gran thought you hadn’t eaten yet.” Bless her! Now I’ve got a lunch invitation for tomorrow to enjoy gran’s home cooking. Result!!

I’ve kept writing short pieces and I’m actually glad to write by hand. I find I get distracted less often when I write by hand, on computers with internet access are simply too many temptations.

I’m really happy to say that I’ll have three book reviews and two author interviews lined up for the rest of the month!

Two of those stories were written by a fellow NaNoWriMo participant, Ashlyn Forge, and the other by my dear friend and former Karl.-colleague Alex Hofmann! She just confirmed (literally five minutes ago) she’ll be in town and meeting me for coffee as per our annual Christmas tradition.

I’ve also been going through my archive of newspaper and magazine clippings I’ve had published over the years and found a few writing related ones that I continue to showcase on Throwback Thursdays. Tomorrow’s post will be an interview from 2009 with British author Claire Lewis, who published her debut novel A Sick Work of Art with Wild Wolf Publishing.

If you write dark, twisted, wicked, creepy sci-fi stories, horrors or thrillers, you should check Wild Wolf out!

My To Read Pile is getting ever higher, and I’m already planning to read more in 2015. Alas, it looks like it won’t be a very writer-ly, reader-ly or student-y Christmas for me this year. While I’d love pretty much all of the suggested gift ideas I compiled earlier, my big Christmas wish this year is money. Because the fridge blew. And needs replacing. Which I can’t afford all at once, by myself. So I guess those 3 books and 3 audiobooks I’d asked for will have to wait until my birthday. In July. Ah well.

I’ve  had bad days last week, days on which I would rather have stayed in bed. On one of the days, I actually scared myself with how down I was, seemingly without reason. Luckily, it’s our Christmas break soon and I’ll have time reflect on what needs to change and reduce the stress I’m under a bit. It is getting better for now though, thanks to some amazing friends. Now if I could just shake this sore throat and find out where my warm slippers wandered off to without me, I’ll be alright.

Check here how the other ROW80 participants are doing!