Cathie Dunn writes...

No, not saying goodbye to my lovely followers, but to my grandmother. At the wonderful age of 91, with nearly all her faculties intact - apart from unstable feet - my grandmother has decided to depart this world for a better place. It would have been lovely for her to see me published but she knew it was close. Well, I'm sure she's already busy keeping an eye on us. After all, now she's not 1,000 miles away but, well, everywhere she fancies. She waited until Lent, a few days after a visit from the local priest bringing her the Communion. The time was right. So of course, the Resurrection is a poignant topic for her funeral. She would approve! :-) Hubby and I are going to head across to Germany to help my mother co-ordinate the funeral, give my grandmother a proper sending off, and remember the good times over a glass of bubbly after coffee and cakes. We'll be surrounded by our lovely friends. 'Oma' will be much missed. Sundays just won't be the same withou...

Finally it's done - the trailer/teaser for Highland Arms is finished, uploaded and ready to go! I'm still waiting for my release date, but I'm going to add that later. Please have a peek and let me know what you think. I'm soooo excited! ;-) Hugs, Cathie xxx

... or how to put together a book trailer. Over the last few weeks, I've been raking through our hundreds of Highland landscape photographs to find the most atmospheric ones. And those without any sign of modern trappings. Sadly there are often houses, power cables, telephone poles, and other daily signs of present day. As I'm not about to embark on editing photos, I had to dig deep. But I was lucky. I found a few stunning sunrises & sunsets, glistening lochs and gloomy mountain scenes. Then the search was on for the main characters, and a few choice 'items' of historical use. I browsed a number of stock photo sites, all with different - sometimes extortionate - price scales. Of course the 'free' pics were never suitable. Funny that! Finally I decided to go with Dreamstime where I spotted a couple of excellent shots - one of a pistol, the other of a 'Highland' shield & sword, a hut, dagger, and two characters that 'fairly' resemble Rory a...

This morning, after completing a couple of critiques in the living room, I took my Macbook to my home office (aka our spare bedroom), plugged it in, started off my writing programme and clicked on Spotify, the volume on low. Medieval music to go with my medieval WIP. Perfect! It worked before. But not today. After my 3rd attempt at reading through the last scene I'd written I gave up. I closed Spotify. Fact was I simply couldn't focus on the words. Not that I listened to the lyrics instead - I don't know them. I just found the sound distracting. So what do you prefer when writing? Music? With or without lyrics? Or complete silence? Well, apart from cats meowing, that is... ;-)