Let’s take the dishwasher. I think it’s safe to say that there is a sensible way to fill it and a less than sensible way. For instance, you don’t put plastics in the bottom as they get turned over by the force of the water jets; knives go blade down in case you fall into the washer whilst the door is open and the shelf is out; and if I insist on filling the top left with cups and mugs before the right, it’s only because that way I can put the plastic plates I use for biscuits etc in the most sensible place for them. I’ve thought it all out, you see. A lot.

But the thing that gets me most stressed out is the stilly, slap-dash and totally illogical way people deal with their shopping in the supermarket. I always go up and down the aisles, starting at the magazines and books and keeping on until I reach the booze at the end. It’s sensible, reasonable and because I go along every aisle I often see things that I’ve forgotten to put on my list – come on, you knew I had a list.

When it comes time to put the shopping on the conveyor belt, I have a system. First up go the heavies:bottles of pop, juice, canned goods, etc. Then it’s the frozen goods, followed by chilled foods, veg and fruit. I’d then load up pasta, biscuits, rice and bread. Last but not least come the toiletries and toilet rolls. And Polo mints.

This order is not one I’ve come upon on a whim. Oh no! This system is tried and tested and works brilliantly because when it comes time to pack the bags once you’ve paid for your groceries, everything is in the right order. The heavies are all together to go into the sturdiest bags, the frozen and chilled goods all go into the cool-bags, fruit and veg are packed into a cotton tote kept specifically for the purpose, and everything else gets packed into the remaining bags. The Polo mints are always kept to the end so they don’t taint the fresh food with their mintiness.

See? All total logical sense.

But all too often I watch other shoppers put their food onto the conveyor belt willy-nilly, tinned foods beside toothpaste, apples beside soap. It just does not make sense to me.

But like I said before, I’m not anal. I just like things done logically. And whatever you do, don’t get me started on squint road markings.

The chapters are given names like ‘The Annunciation’, ‘The Flight Into Egypt’ and ‘The Death of John The Baptist’ and each one reads like a short story. It would be quite possible to read any of these chapters and be satisfied with the completeness of the story therein. But when you read them together, what Zurhellen has created is an accessible literary delight. His writing is rich in metaphor and imagery and although the narrating character changes between the chapters, there is a continuity in the story arc that keeps the tale together.

I loved this book. Yes, we all know what the outcome of the story will be, but that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy the journey. And yes, there is an elephant.

Tommy Zurhellen is working on a sequel to this book. I have one thing to say to him: hurry up!

One night, a spam email offers him a solution to all his problems: an offer of a job. Finch replies with one word, “yes”, and the next morning a chauffeured limousine turns up to whisk him away to an entirely new way of life: as an ornamental hermit in the garden of a multi-millionaire.

The story is told from the view point of Finch as an old man, still living in his manufactured cave but under much changed circumstances, and in flashback, detailing how he came to the garden and what happened in the intervening years. When visitors appear in his garden one day, the first people he has seen or heard for years, they force Finch to consider life in his own personal Eden and what the future might hold for him.

Finch is a passive character for most of the book; he does what is asked of him, first in his marketing job and then as the sylvan slave of Mr Crane. He swims when he is told to, he meditates and performs Tai Chi at pre-determined times and from the day he enters the garden utters not another word. Normally, with such a passive main character, I would have given up on the book early on, but there is something about Finch and the oddness of his situation that kept me reading on.

I loved how he adapted to his new life and the challenges it brought him. There were times when the idea of escaping to an almost responsibility-free life in a warm climate was very, very appealing. And this is where the strength of the book lies. Steve Himmer has very skillfully created a character who, although he appears to have lost everything, has gained so much – the idyllic experience of an Eden, albeit without his Eve.

The story is told in the first person and we experience the garden through Finch’s eyes, adapting with him and learning to be grateful for a simple life where everything is provided by his garden and a benevolent dictator. Which of us hasn’t entertained such a thing when we are stressed by the demands and problems of modern life?

The Bee-Loud Glade is whimsical and written with a very light touch, but it has left me    longing for my own hermetic life. But maybe only at weekends.

You can buy The Bee-Loud Glade from Amazon.

And then the little Angel Nettie on my right shoulder cleared her throat and interrupted Devil Nettie’s flow.

“You could always use Pinterest to collect images and inspiration for your WIP.”

“Don’t listen,” said Devil Nettie, digging her heels into my left shoulder. “Think of the puppies!”

“I’m not suggesting you never look at puppies. But you might just have some fun finding images of the characters you should be writing about.” Angel Nettie stroked my hair.”You might enjoy finding pictures of where they live, what the classroom looks like, the sofas they sit onto watch TV.”

Wait a minute, I can have fun using Pinterest AND still class it as research for my novel? I was hooked.

And while I spend time looking for images of my characters and their lives, I am thinking about them, mulling over their conflicts and desires and  working out plot points.

Guilt-free procrastination. To pin is to win!

If you would like an invitation to join the Pinning community, leave your email addy in the comments or write to me using the contact form. You can also just apply to go onto the Pinterest waiting list. www.pinterest.com. If you’d like to see what I’ve been up to, my user name is NettieWriter.

Ms. Romano-Lax’s story takes us though a rural Italy where self-interest and love pull the main characters in conflicting directions. Ernst carries a trauma with him from childhood which is never fully revealed until very near the end of the book. The author very successfully looks at what perfection really is; there static perfection of ancient marble, the fluid perfection of Aryan manhood and how a flawed human like Ernst fits in to the new Germany.

Each of The Detour’s character is flawed in some way – scarred, broken hearted, barren –  yet the way they interact with each other, the love and understanding that they show, indicates that there is much more to life than physical perfection.

More often than not Hitler is referred to as Der Kunstsammler – the collector, almost in the way that most of JK Rowling’s characters refer to Voldemort as You Know Who; as if by naming him they give him more power or make the threat of disobeying him more real.

I loved this book. The characters are sympathetically drawn and I quickly began to care what happened to Ernst. I travelled in the truck with him, Enzo and Cosimo seeing and smelling what they did and wishing I could do something to mend the hurt Ernst suffered in his youth. Ms. Romano-Lax gives us in The Detour a great story peopled by engaging characters at a time of great unrest in Europe. I hated having to put it down each night and found myself trying to stay awake longer in order to read more.

I couldn’t recommend this fabulous book more highly.

The Detour is published on 14th Feb 2012 and can be pre-ordered from Amazon.

Sadly, it told me nothing new. The advice about creating playlists for different purposes is something I would have done anyway and the passages about brain waves and their functions is, for me, neither here nor there.

I can’t argue with anything the writers have said, it’s just that I came to the same conclusions by instinct.

Read this if you feel you’d like some advice on using music to heal. There is nothing wrong with it, just nothing new for me.

“A maths teacher with OCD fantasises about one of his students while dealing with a series of prophecies and trying to take more control of his life.”

This is the twenty-five word synopsis of my WIP, The Maths Man Prophecies. Well, it’s actually twenty-seven words, but trust me, if I hadn’t read Write A Great Synopsis – An Expert Guide by the inimitable Nicola Morgan, I’d never have got it down to this succinct sentence.

In this new book – a fitting companion to Write To Be Published – Nicola takes us through exactly what we need to do in order to create the type of synopsis that will grab the attention of agents and publishers. This is not a theoretical book. Nicola provides examples of what a good synopsis should be and offers two methods for setting about the task. By the time you have finished this book you should be able to write a two-page outline, a synopsis in a paragraph as well as the twenty-five word pitch.

Nicola also generously shares the synopsis she would have written for her award-winning novel Wasted. While Write A Great Synopsis isn’t a long book, each page is stuffed full with practical advice and examples as well as what we shouldn’t be doing in our synopses.

If you are still in the process of writing your book, read Write To Be Published. If you are ready to start submitting, you can’t go wrong with Write A Great Synopsis. I’m off to read the book again and see if I can’t improve on my own 25 word pitch. I think we all know I could do better, and with Nicola’s help, I know I will.

For a chance to win a critique of your synopsis from the Crabbit Old Bat herself, read this message from Nicola:

“Surrounding publication on January 20th of Write a Great Synopsis – An Expert Guide, I will be visiting a number of blogs for a guest post, review or interview. If you’d like the chance of winning help with your synopsis, simply leave a relevant comment on any of the guest posts. (This could be a deep and meaningful comment or a plea to the gods of fortune to pick you!) One comment per post – but comment on each post if you wish. On February 15th, each blog host will send me the names of valid commenters and I will do a random selection, using a random number generator.”

All commentators to this post are eligible for entry to the competition. Good Luck!

Nicola Morgan is on Twitter  and is the owner of the very successful blog providing advice to writers, Help, I Need a Publisher. She has published over 90 books and you can find out more about her on her Author Website.

The story is told from three different viewpoints, 30 years apart. The main character, Andy, narrates part of the story in the present and his younger self, Andrew narrates from the past. The third POV is that of Andy’s mother and, unusually, is told in the second person. I found the switch between child and adult Andy confusing at first until I worked out that each chapter was headed by an illustration of a knot, a different one for each narrator. But after a few chapters, the voices of the characters were very clear to me and I no longer needed to check the knots.

All the main characters in this book are brilliantly drawn and totally believable. By the end they had become real people and I cared what happened to them.

The rope and knots metaphor was expertly weaved throughout the story – the writer has told a tale of families who although they have drifted apart over the years, are still inextricably connected both to each other, and to a tragic event that happened on the beach one summer’s day.

I’m not going to tell you about the plot, I’m not going to quote from the blurb. But I am going to recommend that you purchase a copy and read it for yourselves. Highly recommended. The Devil’s Music is a wonderful book.

You can purchase The Devil’sMusic from Amazon and Waterstone’s.

Mum: …

Me: Mum, please, pass me the prescription?

Mum: …

Me: MUM!

Mum: What? Were you speaking to me? I’m wearing a hat.

Me: …

*****

Mum: What are you looking for? Gingerbread?

Me: I don’t eat gingerbread. Haven’t had that for years.

Mum: Och, you do. That Jamaican stuff.

Me: Really, I never.. wait, do you mean Soreen?

Mum: That’s it!

*****

Mum: I’ll have to get yours and George’s birthday cards.

Me: Oh, you’ve got plenty of time. It’s not til March.

Mum: That’s right, we’ve got to get past Vampire’s day first.

Me: Yes, Mum, love sucks.

*****

Mum: What was wrong with that woman on the till? Why did we have to move?

Me: Her till wasn’t working properly.

Mum: She might have told us.

Me: She did!

Mum: Did she? Oh, see this hat!

Me: Mum, you weren’t wearing your hat in Tesco.

Mum: No, neither I was.

Me: …

Me: Ok, what kind?

Mum: Peach.

Me: Peach?

Mum: Yes.

Me: Do you mean apricot?

Mum: Yes

*****

I was looking at notebooks.

Mum: That’s got a nice batter.

Me: Batter?

Mum: Aye, batter.

Me: Batter? What’s a batter?

Mum: Batter! It’s the batter! That bit there (pointing)

Me: Cover? DO you mean the cover?

Mum: Aye, that’s what I said, the cover.

Me: …