Abject apologies to all those who read my earlier posts. There has been a noticeable silence ever since March, as this Old Dog struggled to learn some new tricks. My earlier blogs were all about Hilary Mantel, an author I admire but could never aspire to emulate. But I decided that just reviewing other people’s books, however interesting, was not quite what I wanted to do – there are lots of other bloggers out there doing just that, and some of them are really good. My idea is to link my blogging to my plans to publish, and refer to others’ books where relevant to my thinking. Or where I have been inspired.

This is where the notorious ‘learning curve’ comes in. I need to be able to upload photos and illustrations, and otherwise decorate this blog – and can I manage to do that? Other people do. It can’t be that difficult. But I am clearly a very slow Old Dog.

‘Learning curve”? Nothing curvaceous about it, it rises perpendicularly to spectacular heights, and even bends back, like one of those impossible cliffs that mad mountaineers choose to view as a challenge.

My plan is to write and publish novels – I have five at various stages of preparation – and to publish my husband, John Tyerman Williams’s comic assessment of Bertie Wooster as a first class biographer (more details later). So I have been learning all about Print on Demand and e-book publishing. So far so good. I can cope with preparing text for publication. But it’s the visual bits that throw me.

At last I have found a professional cover designer to set me on the right road with THE AMAZON’S GIRDLE. With a bit of luck and a lot more perspiration, I may even find a way to show the new cover (when ready) on this blog.

Woof. Bye for now.