writerlywitterings

For the last couple of weeks I’ve been running short lucky draws for a few items. Last week it was a pocket notepad and pen, which were soon snapped up. There were some 120 people who asked for that. This week it’s been busier – The Keyboard Company had given me a Filco Majestouch Minila keyboard to giveaway, and that generated a lot of interest, with almost 200 entries.

In the past, when I’ve run similar competitions, I’ve taken the names of the entrants, allocated each a number, printed them on squares of paper, and pulled one out of a hat – literally. I usually make use of my Morris dancing top hat for this function.

However, I am going to have to figure out a different approach, I think. The main thing for me is that the draw should be utterly fair, and that means I cannot simply pull names from Twitter. Although it’s easy to run through my feed, I’m petrified that there will be duplicates or I will miss one or two out. With that fear comes problems, because I have to do my best to ensure that the names are checked. And when I also have to look at Instagram and Facebook to see how many times people have entered, it gets more difficult and very time-consuming.

Still, it’s done now, and the winner’s been notified.

Today is a bit of a strange one. It’s the 90th anniversary of my mother’s birth. Dear old Beryl died in 2015, and she’s hugely missed. It seems odd not to be able to phone her up. We used to speak most days, and I loved letting her know what was happening to us down here in Devon. Worst of all, she never met our dogs. She was too frail when our Dalmatian arrived, and the Ridgeback only came to us in 2017.

My mother was mad about her dogs. All her married life, she had a pack of four or five – and even at the end she still had a black labrador. Once she told me that she had calculated how many dogs she had owned, and reached some 40 animals, which isn’t bad. I expect my wife and I will not reach 10!

However, although there is a slightly melancholy aspect to the day, it has not been a bad one. I’ve finished a book, which I intend to review soon on YouTube, I have had confirmation from the Department for Work and Pensions that I am eligible for a grant to give me better hearing systems for when I attend meetings, and I have had a wonderful idea for the first line of a new book I’m writing.

Just now I have one edit which I must finish this weekend, a copy edit which has come back to me, and which I have ten days to work on before I have to get it back, and then I can work on the rewrite of another story. That has to be completed as soon as possible, because then I have to write the next Jack Blackjack/Bloody Mary Tudor story. That has a hard deadline which I cannot miss!

So, as you can see, I have enough work to keep me busy for a while!

I hope you have a wonderful weekend.