Year 2 Good Deeds Week 3

Welcome to my second Year of Good Deeds, a challenge I set myself during April 2013. I decided to do at least one Good Deed a day for a whole year.

This week I’ve been doing the following;

May 4th – There’s a lovely bit of a buzz for my new page on Editing, Publishing and More I hadn’t realised it might be quite popular.

Our bird box with its camera and our Blue-tit family which I began to tell everyone about last week has had several people chatting too.

May 5th – May Bank Holiday today so things are a bit quiet, not helped by having no internet for most of the day. I was able to add book reviewer “A Woman’s Wisdom” to the growing resources for writing as mentioned above. I think I’ll rename the title of the page, I’m still playing with it all. Sent the eldest child off with edible goodies when she met up with friends.

May 6th – Yesterday’s lack of internet went downhill , when within an hour of its return the whole area lost all its electricity. 5 hours later we were connected back up by a huge generator which is parked outside our back gate and is powering the whole estate. It’s noisy but at least we have electric. Finally got my review of Kings and Queens by Terry Tyler written, and it will appear here on the blog early June. Let a gentleman go before me in the supermarket queue as he only had one item. Added 2 more people to the page that I’m now going to call Resources for writers, Editing, publishing and more.

May 7th – Stuck at home today with a sick child, I have agreed to review The Manila Strangler by Steven Donahue it will join a small queue of books that I have at the moment. Today on the blog there was a guest author interview with Jack Croxall click here if you missed it http://wp.me/p2Eu3u-50R

May 8th – Getting back to normal today, picked up litter. WE HAVE BABIES! The blue-tits are starting to hatch this evening. So far we have 3 out of 7.

May 9th – There is a bundle of grey fluff in the blue-tit nest so not sure how many we’ve got to, with the glimpses we’re getting. Lots of activity and mad feeding going on.

Dropped some books off at the charity shop, picked up some litter. Friends came over for a Spring-watch session on the TV. We watched a grainy grey picture of tiny fledglings stumbling about the nest, climbing over each other and the un-hatched eggs, the Dad coming in with caterpillars so huge he didn’t know how to get them into his offspring’s mouths and the mother bird taking them from him and mashing them up for the babies in her own mouth. Nature is so amazing.

May 10th – A bit of IT help for my Mum this morning. Picked up litter on the way home. Finished reading The Hollow Heart by Adreinne Vaughan and sent off my review. Started the second book in the series, A change of Heart. Good deeds received ; Off out for a 50th birthday party tonight and being picked up by friends.

Year 2, Good Deeds, Week 2

Welcome to my second Year of Good Deeds, a challenge I set myself during April 2013. I decided to do at least one Good Deed a day for a whole year.

This week I’ve been doing the following;

April 27th – I’m reading Business as Usual by E.L.Lindley, the first book in the Georgie Connelly series. Fellow blogger John Howell, suggested I call my April A-Z tour, my 26 Good Deeds, not a bad idea! I must tell you about our bird box, we installed a camera recently and we have a Blue-tit sitting on 6 or 7 eggs, it’s like a new TV channel. Nothing to do with Good Deeds, but I thought it might make a few of you smile. E-mailed a friend whose daughter should be quite excited and want to come and have a watch.

April 28th – My morning volunteering at school.

Always on a mission to help others, I’ve set up a page on the top of the blog giving details of fellow bloggers who provide editing, publishing and marketing services for authors and writers. There’s just 3 names at the moment but I’m sure it will grow.

April 29th – We are having a lot of heavy rain showers, but I needed fresh air and exercise after I came home from work, so I set out on a walk to re-energise myself. Picked up loads of wet soggy litter for my days Good Deed.

April 30th – A busy day in social media land. I’ve completed the April A-Z tour and shall be sad to see it go for another year. May editions of the 2 magazines I write book reviews for are both out online today so I’ve been writing a post and letting authors know that their books are being showcased. Here is a link to the post. http://wp.me/p2Eu3u-59A Have also been over to help my Mum out with her latest computer niggles.

And of course I’ve been watching our own Springwatch channel and keeping an eye on Mummy Blue-tit (Daddy might be helping too, but the picture is a grainy black and white so we can’t tell) and her eggs. We have considered naming the identical  eggs just for the sake of it and have come up with Shell-y, Shell-by, Shell-don, Shell-enka, Shell-et. Shell-wah and Shell-om, not that we can tell them apart! The eggs are also moved and turned several times a day as part of their incubation, so it’s all good fun watching. Can’t wait for them to hatch I’m sure there will be some right little characters. Have friends coming over on Friday to sit and watch out new TV channel too. It’s lovely to see teenagers mad keen on nature.

May 1st – Happy May Day! So what’s it doing? Raining! Another cricket match has been cancelled, we’re not having a lot of luck. I’m reading the new Terry Tyler book Kings and Queens, a modern day interpretation of the life of Henry VIII. I love all the names she drops in such as Harry Lanchester (our main man), Cathy Ferdinand (first wife), Tom Morely (advisor), Wolsey has just turned up and I’m on to the lady whose role echoes Anne Boleyn, absolutely brilliant so far. If you know anything about Henry VIII, but you love contemporary fiction it’s well worth a read.

I feel the need…..to go out for a lunchtime walk and pick up some more litter, after I’ve checked the Blue-tits….

I’m back and I’m wet, but I filled a bag with litter, I’ve recycled the drinks cans and the glass bottle and thrown the rest in the bin I have a request to all my readers; Every-time you go out please pick up 1 piece of litter. Thanks.

Good Deeds received; Thank you to the lovely Lizzie Lamb who got my blog a mention on Thursday on Look 4 Books , The UK’s Premier Independent Book Site, run by Gary Walker, it’s a FREE promotional book site for Indie authors http://www.look4books.co.uk/

May 2nd – Have baked a Tea bread and some fairy cakes as we have friends coming over this afternoon to watch the new Bird Channel on TV, no sign of the eggs hatching yet! Good Deeds received, our friends brought around cakes for us and some information about University for my daughter.

May 3rd – Fascinating! We spent an hour and a half just watching the bird channel last night, the Mummy bird is hardly ever still. We saw the Dad come in a feed the mother for the first time. Today my Mum came over to view the new channel, we’ll have to start selling tickets soon!

I have changed my book gallery on the side of the blog to advertise new books for authors, there are just so many new books I want to tell people about.

That wraps it up for this week.

Good Deeds week 26th May – 1st June.

May 26th – Doing the rounds of blogs and Tweets. Proud to support Harula who has taken up the challenge to do a Good Deed a day with me. http://wordsthatserve.wordpress.com/2013/05/26/a-week-of-good-deeds/

May 27th – Spring Bank Holiday here in the UK today, it’s been a pretty lazy day filled with book reading! (My perfect type of day!) Just e-mailed a friend to offer to be the driver on our night out at a show on Tuesday.

May 28th – Bit of a strange day today. Tried to make the girls at work tea or coffee before I left, but they declined my offer. Was able to give away some of my rice that I had won to a friend as payment for a dress alteration, but then she felt unqualified to alter the dress, left her the rice anyway. Took another friend out to see a show, but she became ill and left half way through. Stayed up until 2am with my son as he had a bad cold and couldn’t settle. I think the universe was testing my resolve today.

May 29th – Had a good clean and tidy up around the house today. Emptied out all my copper coins from pots and purses and added to my jam jar. Set up a book review and posted to Goodreads and Amazon.

May 30th – Started reading a new book ready to review for an author. The children are on half term school holiday so my usual routine is different. I’m not out and about so much this week. Days at home mean that I need to search out different ways to do Good deeds. A late trip to the supermarket allowed me to have a friendly chat with the lady at the till.

May 31st – Editing, editing, editing, Oh I hate editing! Ploughing my way through painful editing of my second book. Popped out for an hour to drop off some items to my Mum. The June issue of Fleet Life dropped through the door today, so I scanned it in to my blog and set up a post ready to publish when the on line version goes live. Hopefully tomorrow! 5 more authors get a bit of free publicity.

June 1st –  Publication day for the on line version of Fleet Life. Was eager to get my post out, but they hit an upload problem which wasn’t sorted until this afternoon, featured authors were Jean Fullerton with “Call Nurse Millie”, Julia Hughes with “The Griffin Cryer”, Dan and Sean Campbell with “Can’t Sell, Won’t Sell”, Alan Titchmarsh with “The Haunting” and Judith O’Reilly with the book which inspired these weekly posts “A Year of Doing Good”.