Goodbye and Hello. (I Hope!)

I've been writing this blog - a companion to my eBay shop of the same name - for some time now. But things change. I'm still collecting antique textiles, still dealing in them, but over the past six months, it has become clear that the balance has shifted and I'm doing far more writing - and publishing under the Wordarts imprint - than antique textile dealing. I don't think I'll ever stop. I'm too passionate about textiles for that and find them well nigh impossible to resist. So I'll still be haunting my local saleroom, still doing a bit of buying, researching and selling.
In fact, I often become so fascinated by my textiles that I find myself writing about them and their history in novels such as The Curiosity Cabinet, and my newest novel, due for publication to Kindle in the next week or so, a Scottish historical novel called The Physic Garden.

Over the past eighteen months, my novels, short stories and plays have been selling well on Amazon's Kindle Store (the handful of traditionally published books aren't doing too badly either) and there are a lot more where these came from, all kinds of backlist titles, as well as new but as yet unpublished work. I plan to publish something, whether it's a trio of short stories, a piece of non-fiction, or more full length fiction, to Kindle, every month for the whole of 2013. I may not manage it, but I certainly have enough good material to do it!
Alongside this, the plan is to put at least some of this work out on Kobo and to publish all the novels, starting with the Physic Garden, which is very dear to my heart, in paperback as well, for those who haven't yet converted to e-readers. It's a tall order, a lot of work, and it will be exciting - but time consuming.
Added to this, I'm a regular contributor to a blog called Authors Electric - you'll find me blogging on the 18th of the month, but there are lots more fascinating and varied posts on there, so do check it out. I'm also serving on the committee of the Society of Authors in Scotland, as well as on various local village committees, I blog regularly about writing on my Wordarts blog AND I have a new venture planned with a handful of other writers for later this year.
All of which has meant that I've been neglecting my Scottish Home blog.
But there's more to it than that. Quite often, I'll write a post about the history of a piece of embroidery, for instance, or an interesting antique - but I won't quite know whether it belongs here, or on the Wordarts blog. My own 'Scottish Home' in rural Scotland, is a big part of what makes me tick as a writer. The Physic Garden, which is set in Glasgow and in the countryside round about, in the very early 1800s, brought that home to me very vividly. And of course, there are textiles and gardens in it.
So, I've taken the difficult decision to amalgamate the two blogs. All the posts from the Scottish Home will be staying where they are. I'm not deleting anything. But in future, I'll be writing - rather more often, I hope - about a mixture of writing, textiles, history, gardening, living in Scotland, more writing - and all kinds of other interesting things, as well as a few reviews of new and old books thrown in for good measure.

If you've been following this blog, it will still be here. But if you want to read new posts, please go to Wordarts, and follow me there. Which is why I've titled this post Goodbye and Hello. See you over on Wordarts, I hope.