Learning new tricks

Changes for a new, summery feel, done on a day where the temperature in our garden has reached 26 degrees. (I'll see how I feel about it on a cold, rainy day.) Even Tim the dog has laid around, curled up or sprawled out behind me, his back touching mine as I pulled some weeds, which is why I've posted a nice cool picture of the stream that was roaring down the valley in flood not so long ago.

I'm making a determined effort on using social media after attending out training day at Shepherd's Dene on Friday, focussing on on Facebook and Twitter. I've never been very sure of what I was doing with Twitter, but I have a better understanding  of it now. I'm busy searching out hashtags - it took me a long time to realise they existed so that like minded posts could be grouped together - and collecting @addresses. Heaven knows if it will make any difference, but I'll feel as if I've done my bit and made it worth Caroline's time teaching us all.

I'm also editing for the umpteenth time, and still making changes. It is amazing how much I can still sharpen the dialogue and tighten up the plot when I thought I'd "finished it" ages ago. I thought I was editing for typos and silly mistakes only. Of course, I still find quotation marks missing at one end of a sentence, and sometimes there's a full stop instead of a comma. Occasionally predictive text has gone and done something silly, so I've learned to look for that now. But the Dowager Queen is slowly emerging from this edit as a much more active character determined to save the Scots throne for her daughter Mary.

If anyone has comments on the new look of my blog I'd like to hear them. I think some people found the black background difficult. I hung onto it for so long because I always thought it showed off the photographs as nothing else could. I still think that, but recognise it is time for a change.