www – world wide web. Who’d have thought it, as my dear old Aunt Frances would say if she were here now to see it. Sometimes I have to pinch myself how much has happened with technology in my lifetime. Back when I was seventeen I started work in a bank and two types of account – deposit and savings bank – were in hand-written ledgers. Each new page had to have the customer’s name written in our best copperplate and all debits and credits written in, then taken away or added to the balance – in my head! Then came marriage and the baby years when the only thing to stretch my mind was the instructions on the Calpol bottle, closely followed by the infant/junior school period when I got to read books with only ten words in them all over again, but didn’t struggle with those words this time around. The teenage years I will gloss over, save to say that’s when the grey hairs started to appear in force. I was an avid letter writer – best Basildon Bond, envelopes to match – but it wasn’t long before most of my friends and family were getting their first computers. I resisted – oh, how I resisted. I was getting left out in the cold. I’d swapped my little portable typewriter for an electric one but it wasn’t enough to keep me in ‘the loop’ as it were. My cousin, David (my .com.ca connection) sang the praises of the internet loud and clear, and very often. So I succumbed. Hard copy short story submissions were soon replaced by the attachment icon (well, there are still a few publishers who insist on hard copy but I rarely bother with those these days). Short stories sat on the back burner while I embraced the novel writing world. I signed up for a writing course in Italy and made many friends (and got a few short stories and a novel out of it) along the way.

There was something I found very exhilerating about exploring foreign places, meeting new people, in real time. Corfu, and another writing course, beckoned.

When friends (.com.fr) who lived in the south of France invited me to stay, what’s a girl to do but say, ‘Yes, please.’? And what a great holiday that was, being shown around by people who were locals, if ex-pat ones. I even used it as a setting for my novella, GRAND DESIGNS. Well, why not? It offsets the plane fare and is tax-deductable, non?

My first ever book review (not for GRAND DESIGNS, but TO TURN FULL CIRCLE – both Choc Lit) it was by an American reviewer (my.com connection).

It was a short hop and skip along the keyboard until I found FACEBOOK and TWITTER…..and a whole host of new word wide friends. I’ve guest blogged for some of them, contributed info about evacuees to someone writing a book on same because I have all the photos my mother took of the evacuees she took in. If she were alive I’m sure she’d be amazed that those photos have gone around the world. Every day now, it seems, there is something new for me to learn …..some things more quickly than others, but I’m getting there.

Coastal Romances, run by the lovely Annie Seaton (my  .com.au connection) has asked me to be part of a blog hop with lots of giveaways. Watch this space!