Entertaining the Delaneys and other delights

Book News:

Entertaining the Delaneys is published today at Amber Allure Press at a first week discount. This is the sequel to erotic bestseller, The Delaneys and Me, so now's your chance to catch up on the various naughty but nice goings-on of Liam, and those tricky twins. Enjoy!

Speaking of which, The Delaneys and Me has gained a 4-star review at Goodreads (thanks, Nene). So I like to think that in some way I'm keeping the British tradition of Carry On type humour alive ... Also this week, The Girl in the Painting received a 4-star review at Amazon US, so thank you to Darlene for that one.

And I'm happy to say that Brady's Choice is now available for the first time at Amazon UK Kindle, and, in terms of ratings, The Hit List reached No 35 in the Amazon UK charts, while Sunday Haiku came in at No 10 in the Amazon UK poetry charts, well gosh.

Meanwhile, the haiku for today is:

My garden of dreams
is sunlight-soft and scented:
lavender and hope.


Life News:

I'm gradually getting rid of my pesky cold and catarrh thing, but slowly slowly. Dammit. Alongside, or perhaps as a result (I'm not really sure), I'm having a bit of a depression moment or two, again. Double dammit, eh. What I really want to do is scream a lot and hit someone very hard, but sadly being a middle-aged woman in UK society doesn't really allow for that kind of behaviour outlet - which is a shame as it's exactly the kind of outlet we middle-aged UK women need. At our time of lives, you know. Sigh. K thinks I should get a punch-bag, and it's certainly a tempting option. Maybe in the new house?...

However, the good news is that our mortgage application has been approved in reality (hurrah!), and the survey for the house was pretty damn good really, and certainly a hell of a lot better than the survey for the flat when we bought it in 1993. I'm really hoping things move along pretty damn swiftly from now on, though I know there are land searches and all sorts of legal stuff to go through first. And the pesky middle neighbours need to sign the lease for the man who's bought our flat etc etc as it's a shared freehold. As they're so damn horrible and really rather selfish, then I doubt they'll be hurrying to do that then, eh. More sighing. Though, on the plus side, we also have to sign to agree the buyer for their flat in turn, and really, my dears, I'm not hurrying on that one either. Maybe we'll even "go on holiday and be unable to do it for a while", as they said to us when we got to exchange date with them last year, the losers. Ha! K and I can foresee a time when all four of us will be eyeball-to-eyeball in an independent solicitor's office handing over the documentation in one concerted and closely-watched move. Because you absolutely can't trust them an inch.

So, as you can see, I am indeed as full of the milk of human kindness and Christian charity as I ever am. Ho ho, as if. And, sadly, today's sermon about loving our enemies and being nice to the neighbours got rather short shrift from me, as well as a knowing snort. Well, I've never pretended to be a good person, at any level, so what can one expect? I might well start to be nice when I'm in the next house but, as St Augustine is reputed to have said: not yet, Lord, not yet. Being a dried up, bitchy, embittered old prune is the new nice, after all.

Finally, I'm sorry to say that my invitation to the Royal Wedding appears, unaccountably, to have gone missing in the post. As a result, I may well delay buying my hat, just in case they've forgotten me (how can that be?!) ...

Anne Brooke