At 7:18pm on 7th March 2018 I sent an email to my friend Heather. It was the first time I had come clean with anyone that I was writing a book. Did I know then what I had let myself in for? Probably not.

And it is odd to look back and see how much has changed. At the start of it all, my heroine was called Elizabeth (I changed it to Sophia because I kept typing Elizabeth wrong), and our hero was Angus (George is so much better!).

In my notes I had written, ‘Angus dies (illness or accident?)’. Well we know now that George drowned, leaving room for James to enter the story. Rather surprisingly the rest of the story remained much the same over the next few months, as it left my head and entered the laptop.

And Heather became my sounding board, my editor and my proof reader without whom I doubt I would have completed and published ‘The Wideawake Hat’. On that day Heather suggested we needed the film and TV rights, even Netflix – that hasn’t happened yet, but you never know when the call may come through!

To celebrate the completion of my first year as a proper author, I give you small taste of Book 2 in the Applecross Saga called ‘Shepherd’s Delight’  – due for publication in mid 2019.

For those of you who care to work it out, you could connect the photo above with the start of book 2, and the choice of title – 3rd September 1859. Go on – google it!

“Red sky at night, shepherd’s delight, red sky in the morning, shepherd’s warning,” Sophia chanted the words in time to the bouncing of baby John James on her knee. The child looked back at her mother as if he understood every word, a wee bubble bursting on his lips as he digested his latest feed of milk.

But what, Sophia wondered, did shepherds do when the sky stayed red all day and night? “