Seven Books from the Decade that Made Me an Author

Dave Cousins

Dave Cousins, over at the Fifteen Days Without a Head blog, is listing his best reads for 2010. It's a great list, do have a look!

I've been working on another sort of book list - New Year's Eve will complete the first decade of the 21st century and it's a significant decade for me because it was during this time that I discovered a burning desire to become a children's author.

One of the odd things about becoming an author after years of trying is when you first do your taxes, you can claim expenses to do with trying to get published from seven years previous to publication.

Winners of Our Tall Story Blog Competition

It's time to announce the winner of my blog competition which ended on the 15th.  I think I learned something about blog competitions .

1. Run it for only a short period of time. 

I announced my raffle back on the 10th of November with an end date of the 15th of December - too long!

At first I was energetically blogging and then I got so busy I had no time to update the blog. I actually forgot that I had a competition going on! But never mind, I had a lot of entries anyway. So I wrote out all the names on little slips of paper and put them in a Chinese hat.