Now, Elizabeth mentioned a few weeks back that she liked Irish Green, so that's the one I'm going to tell you about. 

It started as an experiment. I'd been watching Notting Hill - have you ever seen it? Well, there's a scene where Hugh Grant's character is walking along a street as the seasons change to denote the passing of time. It's very effective, and I wondered how easy that would be to do in a short story. 

Ta-da! Irish Green was born. Sometimes my brain is stupidly simple.

Gypsy is the person I could have turned into if I hadn't had some wonderful friends in my life. She's a loner, she likes to be alone because she's not keen on the way other people treat each other, but she also recognises she's missing out. She goes to the student union bar just to have contact with people and she lives in hope that the next kind word will be genuine.

Fun fact: I haven't given the other character in this story a name. This happens quite a lot, I've noticed - I either have the name straight away, or they don't get one at all. Names can be quite cumbersome sometimes.

SPOILER ALERT: This is probably one of my most traditional love stories, because everyone is still alive at the end of the story.


Another fun fact: I only realised when I was taking this photo of the original story, that it started life as a flash piece... Those two pages, with the very generous margins, were the entire story!








About Annalisa
I live in Cornwall, with a good supply of beaches and moorland right on my doorstep. I live with my husband, two boys, a dog and a cat. Despite my location. I neither surf nor sail, and have never had any inclination to try. I much prefer walking along the beach and listening to the waves crashing over rocks. For this reason, I really love the beach in the winter!

Buy That Sadie Thing here (this link should take you direct to your local Amazon)
Follow Annalisa here, or Like her here
Read her blog here

"Cat and the Dreamer" is one of my favorite books. It's the sort of story I will gladly read again. It's the sort of book that if Annalisa Crawford was a really horrid person, I'd still have to say, "Yeah, she's a baby kicking bimbo, but she still wrote a pretty good book."

Fortunately...Annalisa is as nice as she is talented, so when THIS book is available in print, I will happily buy a copy. I already have the spot picked...right between, "The Bell Jar" by Sylvia Plath (suicidal, lovable teens) and "Jonathon Livingston Seagull"  by Richard Bach (they're both novellas). 

What you sort books by alphabet? How odd...

While I try to figure you out, let's turn this white space over to Annalisa!!!



It's been a year since my novella Cat and The Dreamer was published! There have been lots of changes in my own life in that time, and I started to wonder what else had changed...

Thank you Elizabeth for inviting me over today!

My pleasure chick!!! :)

Today's topic: Manchester City winning the Premiership!

I know that won't mean much to a lot of you. Firstly, you have to understand I'm talking about the English football premier league (soccer), and I'm not talking about the red half of the city... pah! So I'll try to put this is terms that you'll understand even if you don't care about the specifics.

Before I was born Manchester City were a big football club, a fantastic club - they won trophies and everything. Then I was born and at the same time they seemed to fall away from the top clubs, bouncing up and down the leagues, but never being much of a threat either in the English leagues or in Europe.

In 2008 the club was bought by a company from Abu Dhabi, and became the richest club in the world. I don't like to boast about this too much - even after everything that's happened in the last year, I think there's far too much money in football. However, the money brought players, the players won the FA Cup in 2011, and they looked like they were heading towards winning the Premier League in 2012... And then they didn't... And then they did again... And then they had a really bad spell... Then they picked up.

The nearest rivals in the league - the only team who could beat us in the last few matches - was also the geographically closest, Manchester United... pah! (Sorry, it's an involuntary response.) They've called City 'the noisy neighbours' for ever - getting in the way, but never really amounting to anything. Hahaha... ahem!

Through sheer fluke/bad luck it came down to the last game of the season. We had to win our game; it would have been helpful if they lost or drew theirs.

We were losing, they were winning. Argh, no... then we came back level, in injury time, United won, we scored another slightly beyond when the whistle should have blown for full-time (commonly known in England as Fergie time). And...

WE WON! WE WON THE GAME AND WE WON THE LEAGUE AFTER 44 YEARS!

Of course, there was a lot more to it than that, it was the most rollercoaster 90 minutes I've ever spent in a pub. In fact, we ended up in two pubs - the first showed the first half of City's game, then switched to the Utd game. We jumped in the car, kids in tow (it was an afternoon game), and found another pub, and luckily everyone was backing City. When the final whistle went cheers rang out, I think I cried. In fact, there's a bit of a tear in my eye now.

We're not doing so well at the moment, Utd ahead of us, again... But at the moment, I don't care - I saw City win when I never imagined I ever would! This clip is the last five minutes of both games, in split screen - if you're eagle-eyed you'll notice how the emotions switch between the left and right screens! Best day ever!


About Cat and The Dreamer
As a teenager, Julia survived a suicide pact, while her best friend Rachel died. Julia’s only escape from her guilt, and her mother’s over-protection, is her imagination. When Adam arrives in the office, Julia’s world takes a startling turn as she realises reality can be much more fun than fantasy. Finally she has someone who can help her make the most of her life. But can she allow herself to be truly happy?

Cat and The Dreamer is available on Kindle UK, Kindle US, Kobo, Nook, iTunes/iBooks, and via Vagabondage Press.

Annalisa Crawford lives and writes in Cornwall with a good supply of beaches and moorland to keep her inspired. She finds endless possibilities in the relationships between people. Several new projects are on the cards for 2013.
Find her on her blog, Twitter, Facebook and Goodreads.