I have heard that the UK has had some rather good weather this summer, although not consistent blue sky and sunshine like we get in Spain. Though our summer has been a bit strange, more cloud than normal and some bouts of rain. Recently we had a thunderstorm where the rain was lashing down, and the thunder was really loud. However, we did not have it as badly as Caravaca and Murcia, which are to the north of us, they had severe rainfall and flooding. Perhaps global warming is affecting our weather.

Our pet and house sitter Joan arrived on Thursday 4th July to give her time to get to know Luca's routine and to find how everything works in the house. John arrived home from work at about 10pm, and we three sat outside on the back patio with a bottle of wine and chatted until it was time for bed.

As I sit here writing this blog, we are just three days away from our holiday.

When I sat down to write this blog I could not think of one theme to base it on, so I decided to tell you about what is going on in my life this month.

When we started the kitchen extension at the end of March, we knew it was going to be a lengthy process. The main reason being that John was building and fitting the cabinets himself, and he only had weekends to do it.

It was an ordinary sunny day in Spain, the 28th of April. A Monday, so it was John’s day off. We were working on our kitchen extension, when suddenly the lights went out. As John was working on the new electrics in the extension, I asked him if we should check the fuse box. We did, no problem. Then he looked at his mobile phone and saw a WhatsApp message that had been sent before, which said that there was a major power outage all over Spain, parts of Portugal, and the south of France.

John and I were sat relaxing one day, looking at our mobiles and I commented that, I thought it was easier for authors who write in English if they live in England or the US, Canada etc. My reasoning was based on the fact that, for instance, a famous author would organise a nationwide tour, with events in all the major cities. A less well-known author could organise events in all the towns nearby. However, living here in Spain it is not so easy, as the towns with English speaking inhabitants can be a bit sparser. His reply was, well organise an event yourself, perhaps one in Mojácar and one in Arboleas. Each of these towns have a high ex-pat population.

There are always disruptions that happen in our lives, life never runs completely smoothly, does it? However, the important thing is how we deal with these disruptions.

So, finally I had translated into Spanish and published the first two books of my murder mystery series, what next? … a presentation.

Whenever I told anyone Spanish that I was a writer, the first thing they asked me was whether my books were available in Spanish. Every time I had to sadly shake my head and say that no, at the moment they were only available in English but that I hoped, sometime in the future, that they would be translated.

These last six months have been quite eventful. In September, I finally published book two 'O What a Tangled Web! '. Then it was onwards, or perhaps backwards depending how you look at it, getting the first two books translated into Spanish. The process was quite arduous and complicated, but well worth the effort, I hope.

January started, for us, with cava and ended with a woohoo!