A huge thank you to all the readers who have bought my new novel, One Last Summer. It’s been an exciting week which has seen it enter Amazon’s Top 100 in both the UK and Australia, and it’s currently Number 14 in the UK chart.
Amazon has chosen it for a special spring promotion and UK readers can buy it for just £1 and Australian readers for $2. This is a limited time only price, though, so grab a bargain while it lasts!
And thank you to everyone who has left a review. This was an emotional story to write and I’m so thrilled that readers are responding to it so well.
Portia is a Buff Orpinton – the breed made famous by the late Queen Mother. She’s the most timid in the flock at the moment and is very vocal whenever I pick her up!
Phoebe is a Black Orpington. She likes jumping up on things and was the first to discover the back door into our house!
And Perdita is a Blue Partridge Brahma. She’s the most dominant of the little flock and was the first to climb up and down the ladder into the coop and the first to eat from my hand. She’s very curious and alert.
The girls are enjoying free-ranging in the autumn garden, but are sticking closely together at the moment as they get to know their new environment! They’re such gorgeous girls and I can’t wait to get to know their personalities and enjoy plenty of hen cuddles with them.
But what a state she was in! We’ve never seen a hen look quite as rough. Her comb was overlarge, floppy and pale, her wings looked like chopsticks and she was missing so many feathers that she looked almost oven-ready.
However, appearances can be deceptive and she soon proved to be a feisty little girl, marching up and down the run of the coop, asking to be let out to free-range for the first time.
And how she loved to free-range! So much so that she was soon laying eggs in the hedge and venturing through the hedge into our neighbours’ gardens! She also loved sneaking into the house whenever the door was open, leaping onto our chair in the conservatory and sticking her head in any bags of food around. She really was an adventurer!
Winter weather didn’t faze her even though she was a sun-worshipper at heart. In fact, I’ve never seen a hen enjoy sunbathing so much and, in the early days of her release, we had to put sun lotion on all those bare bits of hers!
I loved looking out of the kitchen window to see her leaping on to pots and bins and sneaking around the oil tank. One never quite knew where she’d appear next.
Darling Vi. You were such a special girl and I hope you loved your retirement with us as much as we loved having you as a part of our family. You’ll be missed so much.
A huge thank you to Anne-Marie who made us all feel so at home in her special world. Do follow her wonderful 
Which is why we took a much-deserved day off recently and headed to the north Norfolk coast.
We didn’t write and we didn’t paint; we simply walked, paddled, sat and watched. It was heaven!
When you’re self-employed and when your head is full of stories all the time, it’s easy to work right around the clock, but taking time off is so important. I’m learning that now.