This morning felt like the first day of spring.

I’m not sure why. I don’t think it was entirely the weather—it was sunny and bright when I was out in the park walking Molly, but we’ve had a few sunny and bright days recently. It wasn’t the spring flowers, since I’ve been loving the cheerful yellow swathes of daffodils since late February and, indeed, most of them are past their best. The roads around here are lined with blackthorn and have been a blessing of delicate blossom for the last couple of weeks. Sadly, the blackthorn is already shedding its flowers to drift into the side of the road. Indeed, D and I were driving to do some terribly mundane food shopping at the weekend, and it was petalling madly the whole way as the brisk spring breeze caught all the falling petals. Looked like snow.

This is cherry blossom in the wind, but you get the idea. Petalling, at its best. 

It may have been the wind. Yesterday was very blowy. So blowy that at one point I was up a rickety stepladder trying to stop the polycarb roof panels parting company with my 90-year-old neighbour’s equally rickety conservatory. Memo to self: you don’t like stepladders, you fool! And when Molly and I went out for our teatime stroll, the park had closed its gates, just in case someone was in the wrong place when one of the trees tossed a branch or two.

Today was less blowy, but still invigorating. And maybe that was it. The fugs and smells of winter were blown clean away. All the mugginess of living in a centrally heated house, of living in leggings and big jumpers against the cold, skittered away before a fresh, strong blast of cool air from the northwest. It stuck chill fingers down the back of my neck and laughed as it woke me up. It brought nothing with it but the promise of clear-headedness and energy.

Spring is here at last.

My favourite time of year. I’m happily making new resolutions (I never bother at New Year because I never keep those) and one of them is that I’ll be a good girl and pay more attention to posting here.

It’s quite some time since I wrote a proper blog post, rather than rely on link roundups or other people’s releases to fill the spot. I put the blame roundly on the idiot who had two books published within two days of each other. The work involved in promoting them in blog tours etc has been phenomenal—all while trying to finish writing book four of Shield and get some thoughts in order for the second Rafe and Ned book.

Oh yeah. Right. That idiot was me.

The Gilded Scarab, in particular, is doing very well. More than six weeks after publication and it’s selling steadily enough to be usually in the top 20 of its class on Amazon (LGBT/science fiction) and often in the top ten, and features in the top 100 of the general science fiction categories. Rafe is being loved just as much as I hoped he would.

I’m dizzily delighted because The Gilded Scarab is up for the March Book of the Month award at the Long and Short Review site. This is both stunning and humbling – I never win things! Voting is open today and tomorrow, so if you’d like to go and vote for Rafe, now is your chance. Go here and make Rafe a happy man.

It doesn’t matter if we don’t win, of course. It’s such an honour to be shortlisted in the first place. And no matter what happens, today is the first day of spring. Enjoy it, dear hearts.