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Dreams and Regrets by Emily Williams, author of Rafferty Lincoln loves.

13th March 2018 by Jax Blunt Leave a Comment

You may or may not be aware that I have an occasional series of posts on the theme of Dreams and Regrets. (If not, follow the link.) Today I’m happy to add to that series as part of the Rafferty Lincoln loves blog tour, with a guest post from author Emily Williams.

Dreams…

When Jax first talked to me about her dreams and regrets series for her blog, I was very excited. There are so many dreams in my head and I think I could talk forever about them! My dreams have evolved over the years but the central core – writing – has always been there.

My dreams during childhood were mainly pony-related. I spent hours fantasising that I owned a horse, buying all the equipment and saving my pocket money for the horse that never was. I read and saved every horse magazine going and grew a good collection of pony related non-fiction books and hundreds of pony stories, which to this day I still have. I guess the pony dream always stuck with me. Despite, in my early twenties, finally getting that pony the dream of horses and ponies is always there and still makes me smile.

I wrote endless pony stories and developed the dream of becoming a writer from an early age. This would be as early as primary school, when I first learnt to write. The stories always had animals in them, and mainly ponies or dogs. It was during secondary school that the dream became more concrete. Another child had had a story published in a magazine and I was jealous. I realised that it was writing that I wanted to do and wanted to become good at. The teachers were a great encouragement.

I continued to write stories, for my eyes only, right up until college, when I knew that I wanted to find an audience for my stories. University and boys took over for a while, but in my head, there were still stories. The dream never went away until the idea for Letters to Eloise (Amazon affiliate link) arrived. Never before had I a whole novel in my head bursting to get out. For once, I planned and developed a strict timeline. I always thought the dream was possible, I just didn’t think I’d ever have the motivation to finish.

When a publisher friend of mine printed me the first proof copy of Letters to Eloise, I knew I’d found my niche in life and the childhood dream of writing had begun.

Regrets…

I don’t have many regrets in life but I do regret not starting to pursue my dream earlier. I regret those wasted years and years spent unhappy at what I was doing with my life. I wasted my twenties. Although Letters to Eloise was already in my head, I didn’t sit down to write the novel until my late twenties/early thirties. I dabbled with short stories, occasionally sending them off to be rejected. But I didn’t properly give writing my full concentration.

I had a full-time job, a career that I was good at. However, the writing dream was always there, always niggling in the background waiting to be heard. I just wish I’d listened sooner and started writing those ideas in my twenties and not my thirties. But who knows, maybe I just wasn’t ready then.

A word from the author…

I wrote Rafferty Lincoln Loves… as I have always wanted to write a horse involving horses. I read many pony stories as a child, but have found that there are very few to read as a young adult/adult so I wanted to fill this void. I have been around horses from a very early age and spent many years saving to afford my own horse. Sadly, due to a road accident and then a fall of a horse, I can no longer ride. However, my passion and love for equines hasn’t diminished. Due to arm injuries from the accidents, I have had to dictate the novel, Rafferty Lincoln Loves… and am donating the proceeds of the novel to the British Thoroughbred Retraining Centre – a charity I have supported since childhood.

Many thanks for supporting the novel and I do hope you enjoy it!

Emily x

Find Rafferty Lincoln loves on Amazon (affiliate link)

The blurb of Rafferty Lincoln Loves…

Rafferty Lincoln doesn’t like horses. Not one bit. But when the popular high school girl of his dreams, Liberty Ashburn, pulls him into a world of lead ropes and horse brushes, who is he to say no?

Except this isn’t any old horse. This is the missing racehorse, Profits Red Ridge. The horse Rafferty and three of his friends are hiding from the world. And Liberty Ashburn isn’t just any ordinary high school girl. How far will Rafferty go to win her over?

An intense, witty and powerful coming of age story with startling consequences.

The proceeds from the novel ‘Rafferty Lincoln Loves…’ will be donated to The British Thoroughbred Retraining Centre.

BTRC is dedicated to improving and promoting the welfare of retired race horses through education, retraining and suitable rehoming in order to ensure that our Thoroughbreds have a rewarding and valuable life after their racing careers have ended.

Each year thousands of horses leave racing, some because they reach the natural end of their career and others through injury or lack of ability. Established in 1991, The British Thoroughbred Retraining Centre was the UK’s first charity dedicated to ex-racehorse welfare, retraining, rehoming and protection for life.

‘It is fantastic to see a contemporary novel for young adults embracing passion and love for horses, as well as advocating for their welfare. Emily’s fast-paced novel not only explores the relationship and incredible bond between horse and rider but also delves into darker aspects relevant to today’s challenging world of growing up. Rafferty Lincoln Loves… deserves to be celebrated for bringing an important cause to the forefront of today’s young adults.’ Frankie Dettori MBE

‘I am thrilled to have written this novel for the BTRC and to be donating the proceeds to such an important and dedicated charity for the welfare of retired racehorses.’ Emily Williams

Author Bio

Emily Williams lives by the seaside in West Sussex with her family and a menagerie of small pets, including her own horse Bella, and welsh mountain pony, Lucy. After graduating from Sussex University with a BA in Psychology, Emily trained as a primary school teacher and teaches in a local school.

Rafferty Lincoln Loves… is her first YA novel after the success of her debut adult novel, Letters to Eloise, released in 2017.

You can follow Emily on twitter

Find out more about Emily’s other books on Amazon

Read reviews and find out more on her blog

What I wish I knew before my first camping trip with kids – by Kirsty from Get Kids Outside

10th August 2017 by Jax Blunt 1 Comment

It’s not often I host non book related guest posts on this blog, but I think actually it might be a nice way to introduce my readers to some of my blogging friends – and Kirsty is someone I’ve known since before I started to blog. Yes, we really do go back *that* far. We’ve done a lot together over the years, and had many shared camping holidays, so it seemed like a great topic for Kirsty to write about here. So here you go!

The first time I went camping was actually with Jax over 10 years ago now – we shared a pod in her tent as we attended a home educators festival. I was really nervous camping, I’d not even done it as a kid and I had no idea what it would be like, especially with my own kids to entertain too. Would it be awful? I’d heard stories of how bad camping would be and that it’s what you did when you had no money for a ‘proper’ holiday. I’m glad to say it was a great experience and we’ve since camped lots as a family and had fun each time. We’ve done camping in small tents, big tents and camper vans over the years and all this applies!

Here’s some things I never knew about camping before I started and wished that I did:

It gets cold

*Shiver* I can still remember that cold feeling now – maybe it was just me as I can also picture the kids being fast asleep and laying half in and out of their sleeping bags and in just some normal pyjamas. There was me with about 3 layers on, a wooly hat and blankets and I was still cold!

Even if you’re going camping in the height of summer it can get really cold at night. I always bring wooly hats and blankets nowadays. It’s especially a good idea if you think you’ll be chatting in to the evening while the kids rampage around. Cups of tea help too!

Early means early

Oh my. When someone says to be prepared when your kids get up early while camping they really mean it. I didn’t think it could be worse than them getting up at 6am like they did normally. Could it?

Yes. Yes it could be worse! When the sun begins to rise and the light gets in to your tent you’ll know about it. You might stir, hear the birds singing and think – wow I had such an amazing sleep, it must be really late. Then you see the time and it’s about 5am! Actually, if it happens like that you really are lucky – what normally happens is that the kids see the sunrise and want to be up, playing, fed, toileted all before 5.30am while you’re still dead to the world. Coffee?

You can hear everything

I’m someone who worries all the time what others think of me so when I first started camping and realised that I could hear everything that was going on in the tents around me I realised that that meant they could all hear me. They heard every line of ‘We’re Going on a Bear Hunt’ as I read it before bed, every time the kids woke up crying and every time I got myself stressed.

Of course, your camping neighbours are probably more worried about their own noise than you, so as long as it’s low noise I don’t worry about it too much now! But be aware – sound carries a long way in a field!

Bad weather means nothing

I used to worry about bad weather and bored kids but really that means nothing when camping. What is more fun than puddle jumping? Especially when you have new found friends to do it with and no wellies because your mum forgot them! Listening and watching thunder and lightning is also fun and never normally lasts that long.

You can never have too many spare clothes (or waterproofs)

And with the previous point in mind – take clothes. Lots of clothes! I’d assumed a couple of spare pairs would be good but you can go through those in a day! A week long holiday can feel like forever when you’re faced with the fact that *all* your kids clothes are dirty.

And if you run out – start being ok with kids in clothes with dried on mud. Seriously – they’ll blend in with the rest of the campsite – no-one expects immaculate kids.

Or you could buy some good waterproofs – they’ll be worth their weight in gold!

Those early mornings are something else

There’s no doubt about it, the early mornings can be stressful. But I wish I’d known how amazingly peaceful they are too. Sat with a cup of tea, the kids pottering about quietly (we can wish), the birds singing, no-one else up on the campsite and watching the world come to life. It’s just amazing.

It really tires them out

Being outside all day long can really tire your kids out. Now this can be great, it might mean naps when you’d given up that thought years ago or it could be slightly worse if your kids just get grouchy when tired. Or you might be lucky and they’ll just be off playing all day, come back in the evening and drop off straight away while reading the bed time story. One thing is for sure, it’s not like a normal day at home so be prepared for it.

It makes memories that last

Finally, I never knew how much camping would create amazing memories. For some it might seem like a compromise because it’s a ‘cheap’ holiday but it’s definitely not second rate. The friends, the moments and the laughter are priceless. We still talk about those trips now. If you’ve not tried it, definitely do.

***

And thank you for that! About time we organised a get together in a field, no? If you want to hear more from Kirsty, maybe check out her tips on camping with kids and toddlers? and if you are in need of a packing list, here’s the original camping with children list I put together all those years ago.

100 ways to home educate – guest post Tammie Griffiths from Aspire Chaos to Calm

16th February 2017 by Jax Blunt Leave a Comment

As yesterday’s blog on different ways to home educate was on fb, I’m reposting it here (with explicit permission!) so that it can be easily found as part of the blog hop 🙂 You can find Tammie on facebook or twitter

My article is in the comments 😉via Ripl.com

Posted by Aspire-Chaos to Calm-Connecting & Reconnecting Families on Tuesday, 14 February 2017

It was when i was carrying my eldest E almost 13 years ago that i started researching education options, i didn’t know about HE then but it didn’t take me long to stumble across it after looking at private schools, Waldorf/Steiner, Montessori, progressive schools and all the rest in between. I knew straight away that that would be the path for us.

What style/philosophy do we follow? Well it has been a bit of a mix, starting with Waldorf/Steiner with my eldest, she didn’t show any signs of wanting to do any formal learning, although well ahead in her speech and comprehension she just had no interest in the more formal stuff, preferring to play, do art, go to classes and socialise (insert a snigger here)

At 7 we introduce formal learning and even then I was up against her battle to not want to do it. It was tough for me to take a step back and trust that it would work out but it did. As she got older we started adding in maths and English as part of a structure (for me more than her) E went to Explore Learning (the tutor centre) for a time and she did well there.

When E was 6 i had K a whole different character, as she grew and developed her own way it became clear that she preferred to learn at a younger age and the Montessori method worked well for her and still does, in some way she has been easy, or is that i have just become more experienced? Probably that.

As time has gone we have got far more structured in our approach, most likely due to me becoming self employed, i feel i need to establish some kind of routine but also K has always needed much more of a routine than E ever did. And that is what i love about HE, that fact that i can tailor the educational style to the child is great! It makes it far more enjoyable for everyone. We still stick with structure in English and maths and the rest of the time being child led, i remember one time E focussing on a Tudor project for 2 YEARS!!!!! Yes 2 years……..what we don’t know about Henry the viii…hahaha.

It is great for them to follow their passion something they would not necessarily have the opportunity to do in school, they are heavily focussed on their swimming and drama and i love them having the opportunity to do these things alongside voluntary work and HE meets.

E now attends Inter High, an online high school which she enrolled in back in September, it seems to be going well, we hope that this will benefit her in working towards some kind of iGCSE or equivalent, She is off to do PGL with them this year too. This gives me more time to focus on K now she turns 7 this year, i can see where her strengths/weaknesses lay.

I also host Aspire an HE meet for families in our borough, that has brought about some great connections with families and some firm friendships made….for more info on any of the things we do please do get in touch, however you choose to HE, no one can tell you it’s your journey.

Today’s post is with Nevine and her purple sheep and tomorrow we’ll be visiting Lydia at a new adventure

Find the rest of the posts here. And if you’d like to join in, drop me an email

Martyn Ford: Dreams and regrets – UKYACX blog tour.

11th September 2016 by Jax Blunt Leave a Comment

As part of the UKYACX blog tour (MG variety), I’m very pleased to welcome author Martyn Ford to the blog today, continuing on the occasional series of Dreams and Regrets guest posts. Over to Martyn

Tasked with writing a blog post on “dreams and regrets”, we first have to define the words. I’m going to interpret the former, dreams, in the aspirational sense – an ambitious goal – and not write, despite the temptation, an account of that time I swapped souls with an old school teacher in order to trick a talking crab called Sesame Jones out of stealing all of my teeth.

And the latter, regrets, I’m largely going to ignore because I’m one of those people who says conceited things like, “Oh, ya, no, I don’t have any regrets”. Not because I’ve perfectly handled the many millions of choices I’ve had so far in my life, heavens no, but because regretting things is a bit like saying you’d change them in a time travel situation. And we don’t need to google chaos theory to know why that’s a bad idea.

So, what is my dream (goal, aspiration, target, whatever)? If I’m completely honest, I actually don’t know. Because every time I achieve something I set out to achieve, the target moves. It’s like running to the horizon.

This is a paradox. It seems to me the kind of people equipped with the necessary discontent, the compelling drive to work hard towards a situation different from their current one, are often the people not satisfied with the result.

I think I have a compelling urge to be creative, that’s all. Any achievements outside of that – which I’ve often mistaken for goals – are simply a nice bonus, a by-product. And, recently, I’ve learned that this is fine.

Almost a decade ago, I was 19 years old and working at an off licence. While it was a wonderful place to work, for all the wrong reasons, it wasn’t what I wanted to do. (Once, and this is true, I was so unstimulated that I stuck cutlery to the ceiling with Blu-Tack. A spoon here, a fork there, not too much. I had to use a ladder. If you don’t believe me, well, good. Making that up is less weird than actually doing it.)

“Ah, well, what do you want to do?” was the common response to my apparent dejection.

I had no real answer, besides a vague desire to write.

“Ah, well, what do you want to write?”

Again, just pouts and shrugs from me.

Fast forward a bit and I was walking past my local newspaper’s office. In the window they were advertising a vacancy for a junior reporter. I wandered in and, despite my lack of experience and (although I lied about this bit) ability, the editor offered me a job. She is one of many kind people who have given me the benefit of the doubt at various milestones in my career.

This was good (it still is, I still work for the company, albeit on a different paper). I was getting warm. This was a well-trodden path. I’d heard successful writers say they started in regional journalism.

(In fact, it’s a job I’d recommend to any aspiring writer. It consists of speaking to people, learning about the world and writing. I can’t think of any three things more beneficial to a would-be storyteller.)

But it wasn’t quite it. I wanted more creativity. I wanted to write things which weren’t true.

And so I founded my very own rejection letter factory. It’s quite simple, you can make one yourself. First, write a bad screenplay or a bad novel. Then, pitch it to every literary agent/ publisher/ producer you can find.

It got to a very strange point where if there wasn’t a rejection letter in the post/ email inbox, I felt a pang of disappointment. What kind of next level, masochistic psychology is that?

In the interest of brevity – let’s leap forward in time a few more years. Finally, I sat down and started writing a draft of what would later become The Imagination Box, an idea I had been stewing since the age of about eight and, more importantly, the first thing I finished that I felt positive about. That, alone, was a triumph for me.

Thankfully it secured me a brilliant agent and, about five years after my first draft, was published by Faber & Faber. It has since become a trilogy – I’ve recently finished the third.

It’s about a machine that creates anything you imagine. So themes of desire and the overblown virtues of getting what you want are prevalent.

It seems so trite to say something like, “it’s the journey, not the destination”. But it’s true. It’s about the whole ritual, the hard work, the knowing smile. Each and every rung.

The utterly bewildered frown on your colleague’s face the following day when they look up and notice that spoon – that’s just a lovely bonus.

Maybe, just maybe, I “regret” taking most of my twenties to figure that out.

***

So who else is now checking the ceiling for cutlery? Or contemplating sticking some up there? Great post from Martyn, and you can catch him in action at UKYACX next week – all details here.

Martyn Ford is a journalist and author of The Imagination Box trilogy (Faber & Faber in the UK, Delacorte in the US). Follow him on twitter at @Martyn87 or check out his website here

Disclosure: amazon links are affiliate links.

Squeezing the pennies – tracking day to day spending with #SagaSpendingDiary

2nd August 2016 by Jax Blunt 5 Comments

Recently I was asked to take part in a #SagaSpendingDiary challenge and sent some items to help me with this task.

So, in the kit, there’s a copy of The Wealth Chef: Recipes to Make Your Money Work Hard, So You Don’t Have To at Amazon uk (affiliate link), a budget diary, and a joint meal plan/shopping list pad. Oh, and one of those funky four colour pens 😉

The book looks pretty interesting actually, claims I’ll learn how the author went from zero to becoming a financially-free multimillionaire in just 8 years, with tips on how to become debt-free in 3 to 7 years, including mortgage, while creating wealth at the same time. I don’t think I have to say how attractive that sounds. With four kids, I’m looking in a future that just wracks up debt, particularly if any of them want to go to university. It’s a whole bunch of no fun.

Now, I already meal plan, and budget pretty hard – I don’t know many people who don’t. But I’ve got out of the habit of tracking every penny spent. I did used to do that by getting the weekly budget out in cash and splitting it into different envelopes but somehow I’ve fallen out of the habit. So I thought it would be interesting to track my spend, and I have to say, just this week has been pretty painful so far.

I’ve paid out nearly £270 in the last two days. How?? Quite easy really. Smallest has a weekly home education guitar group, and that needs paying first Monday of the month. Then Big is signed up on a lifeguarding course in a couple of weeks, and that was due for payment yesterday. I do think of that as a fairly direct investment – it will qualify her to work as a lifeguard, and that’s a pretty good job for a 16 year old (a quick scan of job related sites makes it appear that she could get £6 an hour as opposed to minimum wage for a 16 year old of £3.87). It’s still a fairly steep payment though. On top of all of that, I went grocery shopping (with my meal plan) and that came to £47.65

The budget diary has some well laid out pages for keeping track of all this stuff. I’ve a feeling it’s all going to get a lot scarier before the end of the two week challenge though. Why not subscribe to my newsletter (handy sign up box in the sidebar) so that you can get the update post on how it all went? Go on, you know you want to.

Oh, and if you’ve got any hints and tips on how to keep the spend down while managing a family with four children gratefully accepted!

Disclosure: I was sent the items above to take part in the challenge with Saga Equity release.