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Thank heavens it’s over! New Zealand has just had a General Election – delayed an extra month because of Covid-19. Things seemed to drag on forever.

Predictably Prime Minister Jacinda Adern was re-elected, but no-one expected the extent of the voting swing in the direction of her Labour party. Old National faces have vanished. New faces will be appearing. Politicians who had ‘a job for life’ haven’t got one any longer. Some who possibly took part in the experience to ‘get ready for next time’ have been voted in and find themselves with much larger jobs than they expected. Real fun!

I sat here ignoring most of it, happily stealing time to search the stock photo sites so I could put new covers on my South & Sexy books.

What stops you in your tracks when it comes to book covers? I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about this lately. Scrolling through the sites like Bookbub and Freebooksy I’m finding my eyes drawn to all sorts of unlikely things. Old bicycles parked in English country lanes (is it a cozy mystery or women’s fiction?)  Jetties and sunsets with no-one in sight (nostalgia with older characters, or a teen beach holiday story?) Bunches of daisies (wildflowers from a vacation, or a wedding bouquet?) Pieces of jewellery (billionaires or family history?) Good designers pair appropriate fonts with the pictures as an extra clue to what’s inside. And a good title can tell you a lot.

I’ve been reading about book covers; about how absolutely top authors have their covers changed annually to spark more sales. Really? And the differing fashions in covers, too. Have you noticed this? A lot of my romances have had couples in passionate clinches. Well, many others do, too! That or headless near-naked male torsos. But it seems there’s quite a change going on. Lots more scenery. Lots more flowers. Lots more of 'what might be happening here?’ 

And a single person, even though it’s a romance. Or is it? Might it be women’s fiction? Are authors snagging extra readers this way?

We had a shocker of a storm this weekend. Gales and lashing rain… thunder and lightning all around the hills where we live. I couldn’t get out in the garden, but why not search the photo sites and have a play with some of the covers? That’s the ultimate fun as far as I’m concerned.

The Sheikhs and the Scarlet Bay books will remain the same, but I’ve found two more great photos for sheikhs so I’d better write the novels to go with them.

The South & Sexy series is definitely getting a facelift. These are my older books, and to my alarm they tend to do better than my new ones. Oh dear. So let’s see if we can make them even more successful. Shall we have some muscles? Yes, why not. Resisting Nick will soon have muscles. 

Ravishing Rose is going fine with the party pair and bare chest, but the title is going rosier. 

I pretty much gave up painting to write. Philip and I worked six full days a week for years. You only have time for a few other big passions on the extra day, and for me it was writing and gardening. My poor old paints had to take a back seat.

I enjoyed the curtain work… adored being out on the road… loved meeting all the people we were installing tracks and rods and curtains and blinds for. Had some great conversations. Saw beautiful houses, gardens, cats and dogs. Might have stolen some bits for the books, too!

But Covid and a new knee joint have altered my life and given me more time by myself. Philip came home from a job this week and found me like this.

 I’m going to need some new paints, for sure. Some of them are very dry and unsqeezable. But I’m finding it a great time to think – and what I’m thinking about is the two Sheikh novels I started ages ago. They wouldn’t hang together the way I wanted them to, but maybe now they will? I’ll keep thinking as I stroke the paint onto the canvas.

You’d think it would be easy enough to gather up six retired friends for lunch. There’s a nice café over the road from where I live, so not even any cooking required.

But they’re busy. Goodness, this has taken some doing, and I’m really quite pleased about it. These are not little old ladies who have drifted away from full-time employment to sit by the fire knitting.  They’re all past or present members of Soroptimist International of Wellington - a lovely service club I’ve belonged to for more than thirty years now. We raise money for local, national and international projects – and our next effort is on behalf of the new Wellington Children’s Hospital. It's an after-hours get-together at a huge garden centre, with product discounts and a good interesting speaker.  (Quick poster by me - there's always a job to be done.)

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“But I’m on holiday down the South Island for a while,” Paulette said when lunch was mentioned.

“I’ll have to work it around my Dress for Success days,” Bernice informed me.

“Croquet on Thursday, although it’s mahjong through winter.”  That was Wendy.

“I look after my grandson after Pilates that day.”