YOU LEARN SOMETHING NEW EVERY DAY!

I spent a lot of time online the other day searching for personal experiences of working on sheep or cattle stations in the Australian Outback. I wanted this info for my latest book - the one that started off with an elderly amputee, a younger amputee invalided home from Afghanistan, a dog, a disfunctional family in Liverpool and a writing class, all of which have been ditched except for number one and number four.

(See my post NOBODY SAID IT WAS EASY from 13 October)

Why did I want to know about Australian livestock stations? Don't ask, I may well change the story yet again by next week.

In any case, I couldn't find what I wanted, so I decided to download a novel that I hoped would give me what I need.

I now know all I didn't need to know about the mechanics of gay sex but all I've learned about the Outback is that there's a lot of red dust.

BOOKS FOR EARLY ONSET ALTZHEIMER'S PATIENTS AND THEIR CARERS

I see it's been proposed to make several books freely available to early onset Alzheimer's patients and their carers to enable them to cope with this tragic disease.

One of the books recommended is 'STILL ALICE', which has now been made into a film with Julianne Moore. 

I haven't seen the film but I did read the book, a beautiful and very moving novel by Lisa Genova, based on her own experience with patients.

However, I think it's the last book I personally would recommend, being deeply saddening and offering no hope as it carries the reader towards the inevitable ending.

A far better choice, I think, would be THE MEMORY BOOK by Rowan Coleman, with a similar main character, a teacher in her forties, also married and a mother.  

This equally beautiful novel is full of tips, practical and ingenious, on how to manage the downward spiral, yet at the same time it's full of humour, love and optimism.I recommend it to any readers who find themselves caught in this terrible situation. 

IN PRAISE OF PAINT.NET

I've been having a lot of fun over the past week or two redesigning some of my covers (I've always created my own - some using photographs, others using my own sketches or detail cropped from some of my own paintings). 

It's useful  being able to combine my two main interests, writing and painting, but you don't necessarily need artistic talent to produce a cover that hits the eye and tells part of the story.

And with Paint.net it's easy to experiment, as it uses a system of 'layers' - each section that you add (photograph, text, special effects, colour changes, etc) is on a separate layer - just remember to untick the layers you're not playing around with!

I taught myself the hard way, by trying and failing, but now that I know how to do it (Isn't it always the case?) I've come across a very good tutorial that you can download as a PDF and print out (37 pages). From Lancaster University it's called 'IMAGE MANIPULATION WITH PAINT.NET'.

The even better news is that Paint.net is FREE!