Daffodils, Tulips and Roses

As I said yesterday, it is the start of spring here in North East Victoria, Australia and our daffodils have been fantastic. They are huge and yellow and for some reason full of little spiders (which we only noticed at the dinner table).

And then yesterday I saw our first tulip come out for a peak. It will be a lovely pink one. Tulips of course are what made Holland famous, or Holland made the Tulip famous?

Next it will be the roses, my favourite flowers.

This time of the year brings such beauty and inspiration with it. In fact I have been so inspired that I finally managed to finish formatting my book of short stories "Briefs" into an ebook format. After I had nearly given up hope, I did it. The publish button has been clicked and I am told it should be available in the next twenty four hours.

There are some fantastic resources on the great wide web which helped me solve most of my problems. Thank you to all those who have gone before and decided to share with the rest of us.

We are so lucky to have this wealth of information at our fingertips. Whatever we do not know anything about we can simply look it up on a search engine, or google it as people say.

For all those budding authors who are not sure if this self publishing is really worth it, I say go for it. It has taken me over two months to edit, re-edit and re-edit again to finally see my book in print, but it has been so worth it. Not to mention the countless hours of learning a whole new formatting technique for the ebook. Again, well worth it. Of course I realise I may never sell one of my books, but I am hopeful. After all the Quadrant Magazine published one of my stories and others have won awards at writing competitions. And if not I have leaned some great skills over the last few months and know that the next book will not nearly take as long to publish (in both formats).

Onwards and upwards to the next book.

As I leave you tonight I hope you enjoy our tulips.