Hi

After emailing a query letter to Robert Hale (in London) I was asked to submit my entire manuscript to them. Last Friday I went down to the post office and sent it off. I don't get that excited apprehensive feeling any more when I'm posting off my manuscript. But I do hope they like my Stephanie story and offer to publish it.

I did a dumb thing last week. I spent part of Friday morning (knowing that I had to get my story off to Robert Hale) creating a poem (of 4 lines only) to submit to a Byron Bay Writer's Festival which I found online. After I had submitted the poem, I decided to investigate the rest of the web site and found other submitted poems which were dated 2007. The competition was closed. Enough said, huh.

I hope you had a great Christmas. I did. Very busy though. I had 18 family and relatives over for late lunch. The next day I went to my sister's for lunch (another opportunity to catch up with my niece Kathy here from London for 3 weeks). Then I came home and packed and my husband and I left late that evening and drove up the coast to The Entrance for a week. Fortunately I didn't forget anything important that we might have had to turn back home for otherwise my husband would have had a fit. Why do men always go mad when a woman forgets something and says "Can we go back. I've forgotten ....." (Only just around the corner from home anyway) The husband will say something like..."It's going to add another 10...do you hear 10 minutes to our trip." Yeah as if. Then when they pull up in the driveway the man says "Just get my xyz as well will you." But will they admit that they forgot something as well? Neeeever. Enough of the rant.

I hope this year bring you peace, good health and happiness.

Olga:)