My, how fast time passes. Everyday I intend to get back here but the day passes and time is gone. Mind you, it is the time of year when family birthdays abound, 2 in May, 2 in June, should be 3 but one granddaughter seems to have gone walk- about, 2 in July, I think it is 3 in August, I am not sure about September will have to check, 4 in October, 3 in November and then it will be christmas. Every year I write down the family birthdays in a notebook and then promptly lose the notebook. Ah well.

It is winter here. I know, my northern hemisphere family laugh at me for being cold but when you spend 9 months of the year in 30-40C when it drops to below 20C I freeze and put on top of that, the wind blowing off the antartic ice and you can see where I am coming from, so I am freezing.
But I do have some good news. I saw my doctor this week, there is no damage done to my body through my last illness. My spine really shows the amount of arthritis but no breaks, bumps or swellings but nothing can help the pain so I will have to put up with it. Now I have to get my body stronger, from all the taking it easy for a long time, I have to strengthen my muscles and bones because I have decided that I am going to visit England again next year, because of my age and strength, it will probably be the last time to go and catch up with the rest of the family and friends. So now the saving starts for the airfare. I shall have to work harder at my writing and get a few more book loaded as e-books and some of my patterns as well and promote them to edge up sale, every penny helps as they say, and apart from some little gifts for birthdays and christmas all other spending is off. I have enough clothes and my one weakeness, buying books, I have forbidden myself, one excuse I keep telling myself is, there is no more room on my book shelves and there is no room for another case in my little unitl, I already have 6, NO MORE. That will save me a few dollars and they say every little helps. So off the England next year. My borther is thrilled to bits. I shall go at the end of April/beginning of May, when it is warmer, I don't think I could take an English winter any more.
Now back to writing.

After I finished here yesterday I took the plunge to load my poetry book into smashwords and create an e-book. I made it. It took me quite a while as I new to this sort of thing and not used to techy stuff and have no one to ask or help but I made it so now I have two e-books on line. I know I have sold a couple of my novel The Celtic Fabler so I will keep my fingers crossed for Book of Dreams.
Gosh, I am feeling clever.

http://www.smashwords.com/books/search?query=Valerie+Stewart+Lewis

I AM A WRITER.
There I have said it out loud.
I am normally a little shy about my writing but after an inspiring week end with the Bundaberg Writers Club WriteFest I have become more bolden.
From now on I want to talk about writing and there is a lot to tell.
I have been writing since I can remember but none of that remains, I won't go into details but it is enough to say that for the last 10 years I have returned to putting pen to paper, so to say, and I have self published one book which is also an e-book, The Celtic Fabler http://www.smashwords.com/books/search?query=Valerie+Stewart+Lewis
which my dear brother Rob fomatted for me and surprise, surprise, it is doing quite well.
I have another small book ready to load up, a book of poetry called Book of Dreams and in a couple of days there will be a novel called Time Again but I will tell about that later.

I love history, always have. Read my first history book when I was 8 years old, a 7 volume Battles of England from 1066 to 1914. I read the set several times and it fascinated me. The next I read was a 3 volume set on The Monachy of England from Victoria to George V. Again read several times but it started me on the road to history and 60+ years later I am still reading history. I am telling you this because most of my stories has a historical setiing.
My first novel, The Celtic Fabler, is set in Briton in 577AD during the Saxon invasion.
I came across a small sentence in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicals for that year, the Saxon boasting about a battle in which they boast they killed three British kings. For some reason this made me very annoyed. how dare this invaders come in and kill my ancestors and boast about it. I know silly of me but there.
What I did though was went straight to google and reseach this battle. Of course there wasn't very much but I did find out the names of the kings and where that battle took place. To my surprise, it was not far from where I have grown up as a child but I had never heard about it, no one seem to know about it. Slowly a story formed in my mind, I would tell this story but from the eyes of a young Bitish girl and her people caught up in the fight and there struggle to rid the island of the invaders.

My next one, which is going through a re-write and edit at this moment, is set in 1704 and again the idea came from a small piece of writng that I found in a book about a royal secret. More of that when I have finished, it will be another e-book

I think I have writen enough for today. I hope to up date thei lot evry week as I am going to be very busy and I must keep up with my face book family as well. So you will hear from me gain soon.