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Home Sweet Home - Shamal sandstorm 11/6

Celebrating Five Years of W'Kate'DN with Ben Folds Five

How are you all? We're in the middle of shamal sandstorms here - 72kph winds, mid 40s and humid. On the road, it's like driving in dense white fog. Standing in the garden is like being in the middle of a sandblaster, and the frangipani tree was ripped up by its roots. As a friend joked, it saves on exfoliating cream. 

Housekeeping first: apologies to those of you who subscribe to the blog - Feedburner went bonkers over the weekend and sent out old posts. Everyone has 'challenges' to cope with and WKDN was set up as a global writers' group to be entertaining and help you with your writing. Negative posts are dull (and inadvisable) - the key to surviving as an expat is looking for the positive each day, and the blog is usually edited to reflect this. So, whoops - apologies, a post that was 'cooling off' before editing was automatically published, and one from a year ago. Any advice from the technically minded of you? Feedburner has no customer helpline... (which isn't very helpful). From what I've learnt this is a regular glitch. Maybe we've been lucky before now - hopefully it won't happen again. 

WKDN has - incredibly - just passed it's 5th anniversary. Five years blogging, sixteen years married this week, (happy anniversary, Mr Pilot in Guangzhou ...). The blog tour finishes at Luxury Reading today, and there's a giveaway. Thank you to all of you who have read the posts over the last five years, reviewed the books, and entered the contests. I hope you've all enjoyed the last few months touring the blogosphere. It's been interesting taking some time out to promote 'The Perfume Garden' - a lot of 'firsts': first festival, first book column, first TED video, first time publishing a short ebook (first Amazon #1) ... 

Now, back to work. This is just the beginning. Setting aside the personal, five years ago I was an unpublished writer with two novels under my belt. In those five years, I've signed with a great agent, published two subsequent novels, and I'm writing two more. With six novels behind me, I know what I want to write next, and where I want to be in another five years. Julia Hobsbawm posted this on Twitter today: 

"3 key words for working woman: Ambition, Success and Achievement: no masking with self deprecation or worry that this means She-Devil"

How about you? What do you want to achieve in the next five years? 

It may get a little quiet around here, but there are some great guest posts coming up, and I hope you'll enjoy discovering some new writers. In the meantime, here's a few photos from my own 'perfumed garden' and the last couple of months. 

Thank you. Here's to ambition, success and achievement - and happy writing x