Lunch is served

The meal went off OK, but I would love to have a slave running around after me, saying, ‘Don’t forget to heat the dishes,’ and putting out crisps and so on. Reminding me to buy soft drinks like bitter lemon and soda would be helpful too. Alas, the nearest thing to the lowly helper in my household is the other half. Those who know him will know that he is not very domesticated, and on a day of entertaining like today, has to be told every little thing, including that it is time for him to get changed, and which trousers to put on. Nevertheless we had a pleasant lunch and afternoon, and felt too full (after cakes as well as lunch) to eat this evening.

I went on line, this evening, to organise myself a PayPal account for the vast wealth that will be flooding into this account from Bottle of Plonk royalties from Virtual Tales (http://www.virtualtales.com/). Sorry, I’m being ungracious. Virtual Tales have taken me on, and I am delighted with this. But e-publishing is an unknown quantity to me, so I have no idea how well Plonk will do. Now I have several tasks ahead of me, including creating a digital signature to send them, so that the contract can be signed without my posting it via ‘snail mail’. They have also asked me to create links from my website, etc. and to send a photo. There’s an article about them in September’s Writers’ News, but I think I originally read about them in an earlier edition. The fact that they were looking for books that could be chopped up into small episodes made me think that Plonk might be right for them.

Dealing with PayPal took me absolute ages. I hate these sites, where you go round and round in circles while they tell you, you didn’t fill that in or this in. Also it is manned by faceless robots back at the PayPal centre, wherever that might be, that never answer your questions, just send you a bit of prepared jargon. I have a question I need to ask them, and I know what the result will be. Just frustration.

I received the current copy of Writers’ News (http://www.writersnews.co.uk/) this morning and found that I had been shortlisted for their Foster Mother competition. I felt sure I had sent them a SAE, but I didn’t receive my story back, and a subsequent story that did come back to me had no attached letter, as is usually the case. Anne - (http://www.annebrooke.com/) - my writing friend, says that they are going through a period of change at the moment, so perhaps that accounts for it. It’s a while since my last WN short-listing, so I’m pleased about that.