A CHANGE OF PLANS!

Today, I should have been blogging about my launch party.

However, due to a horrible incident, my plans had to be postponed.

Initially, I had a duel evening of celebrations planned. Thursday evening: a meal with some close friends. Friday evening: a buffet for a wider circle of friends and family.

On Thursday evening, just as I, Mr B and our two Mini-me’s arrived at the first night’s venue, Mr B received a phone call to let him know his brother had crashed his motorbike.

Yeah, it was as bad as it sounds.

In fact, it was a whole lot worse.

X-rays and CT scans showed my brother-in-law had fractured his femur, tibia, fibula, collar bone; he’d smashed his hip and pelvis; he’d cracked five ribs, which had resulted in a punctured/collapsed lung; and he had three vertebral fractures.

As you can imagine, Mr B pretty much failed to breathe on hearing the verdict, to the point I thought he was going into shock and I’d be calling an ambulance for him.

On Thursday, I sent my guests home, and made the calls to all who were coming on Friday to explain that the celebration had been called off. Obviously, due to the reason, everyone was very understanding.

But now, a few days have passed. We’ve visited my brother-in-law a couple times in hospital and he appears to be slowly improving. And I have finally found enough peace through all the white noise in my head to update my blog.

So … I thought I’d share what did happen last week that I wasn’t, at the time, emotionally in a position to share.

1)       Cake! Yeah, we had cake. I ordered it for my Friday celebration. It was beautiful. And despite not getting the opportunity to show it off to everyone, it sure did taste delicious. Check it out!

2)       Mr B’s tattoo. Yep. Mr B is a painted man. And now he has a new image to add to his body-art portfolio. Wanna see? It’s right there below:

Whatcha think? It looks familiar, right?

Mr B had to sit still for THREE HOURS for that baby. Maybe I should omit that the tattooist said it’s the most intricate design ever requested of him and if anyone but Mr B had asked for it he would have told them hell, no! But, as that just makes it all the more special, I figured it was worth mentioning after all. 🙂

Personally, I think it was worth the three hours of pain … though I guess that’s easy to say when I was tucked up at home with a book during its creation 😉

3)      Reading Group Visit. I made a booking with a local library in Chelmsley Wood to visit their Reading Group on Thursday 28^th July.

Yeah! I’m very excited about it. If you just happen to be near there at 2:30 pm, why not pop on in to say hi? It would be great to meet you.

4)     Contest to win a signed copy of Darkness & Light. The contest ran for 10 days all throughout last week and ended at midnight last night.

The winner has been chosen, and I have announced them HERE! I shall be contacting them by email at some point today, as well as the three runner’s-up who have each won a signed bookmark.

On top of my news, I’ve received some lovely gifts in relation to my writing that I wanted to share. One of my beta readers, Dawn Whipps, sent me a Good Luck card:

I’ve also received a couple of wolfie gifts from Julie Jones, as now, every time she’s out and sees something with associated with woves, she thinks of me. So far she has gifted me with a wolfie figurine and a holographic 3D bookmark:

I have other gifts–ones that I received early on in my writing journey, also wolf related–and I hope to make a page dedicated to gifts where I can display the generosity of folks … including some pics of my awesome gifts I received way back when from my best friend, Carla Huxley that made me laugh out loud. Then you’ll get to see them all.

So, there’s my news for last week that my distracted head forgot to share with you.

How about you all? What news do you have to share this week?