What does it say about me that I'm not sure I can provide ten interesting facts about myself? I guess it all depends on your definition of "interesting." Hmm, okay, well...here we go, in no particular order!

1. I collect and read tarot cards. Admittedly, I don't buy the decks very often these days, but I can still give a pretty decent reading with them. In my early 20s, I quite often took a deck along to the pub with me to do readings for friends on a Friday night, and inadvertently ended up becoming the unofficial tarot reader for our local. I got paid in drinks, more often than not!

2. I own two snakes. This definitely interests people, to the point where my manager introduces me to new team members as "...the girl with the snakes." We have a creamsicle corn snake called Ket, and a brown and yellow California King snake called Remic.

Here's a picture of Ket being sulky because we were cleaning his vivarium out and he wasn't ready to get out of bed yet.

And here's a picture of Rem attempting to kill and eat an ornamental skull because he's a ridiculous moron.

3. I'm fascinated by Russian history - Catherine the Great's era and the fall of the Romanovs, particularly.

4. I love true crime - especially if there's an unsolved/mystery element to the case (think Jack the Ripper and the Taman Shud case.

5. I love the smell of coffee, but I hate the taste. Luckily for me I can enjoy it through coffee perfumes.

6. I used to exclusively write poetry. Through my early teens, I filled approximately a billion notebooks with poetry. One of my poems actually won a prize somewhere, although I can't remember where or when or why or anything relevant. I turned to writing novels after falling in love with Tamora Pierce's Immortals Quartet.

7. My first novels were all epic fantasy - I wrote two trilogies (very derivative, but hey, I was fifteen, okay) packed full of dragons, witches, magic, curses, magical swords...you name it. They will never see the light of day, but I would like to return to the genre in the future. I have a plot bunny that's been getting more and more insistent recently...I just don't have time to really do it justice right now!

8. I used to keep tropical fish. I will never do it again. Not just because I became uncomfortable with the practice itself, but because they were a bloody nightmare. Violence and inbreeding, everywhere. Everywhere! 

9. I am the worst at maths and science...But I've worked almost exclusively with mathematicians and scientists since graduating from university (with an English lit degree!) in 2005. I have no idea what anyone around me is doing, ever.

10. I used to write horoscopes for a local magazine. I don't want to give away any trade secrets, but...yeah, they were pretty made-up. I got paid in wine. Wait...there's a pattern here somewhere...

...And Malkin Ridge 2 (now formally retitled Lioness Hunting) is finished and on its way to my publisher. Huzzahs! I feel like this story took me a lot longer than should have, but I'm happy with the end result and hope you'll be able to read Lara, Zane, and Tate's second adventure in the near future.

Now I have to decide what's next. I'm anticipating edits for WOLF'S HUNT soon, and I have three other projects that are in various stages of completion that I'd like to wrap up before much longer. I also have plenty of Naomi Clark projects waiting for me. I'm not sure which direction I'm going in yet, since I'd promised myself I'd spend this weekend making perfume if I got Lioness Hunting done and dusted. It's been four months since my last perfume-making session, and I really have the itch for it. So I don't have to make any decisions about the next writing project until Monday. That's actually pretty soon, I suppose.

Either way, I'm going to keep myself busy and not frantically check my in-box every ten minutes for the next twelve weeks. Probably.

Well, nobody said they had to be consecutive days, right?

Hmm, first kiss. Well, I don't remember exactly how old I was, which means I was probably a bit younger than I should have been...I do remember the boy's name was Wayne and it happened on a school playground. Not exactly a grand romantic moment, but there we are.

First love. Oh. Him. I was in my early twenties, on the summer break between my second and third year of university, and I met a boy in a nightclub. We bonded over tastes in music and we were inseparable until we both went back to university. Then he dumped me by text in the middle of the night. Thanks, guy.

In retrospect, this was a messy, immature relationship, but it felt so real at the time. We fell out a lot, which you can easily mistake for being passionate when you're young and stupid. We made a lot of silly promises to each other, which you can easily believe are totes for real in the early heat of a relationship. And we were suffocatingly close, which honestly is not healthy for me in any way, being the introvert that I am. We were on-and-off for a while, and I put up with some silly shit that I should have known better than to put up with. And then it all just kinda...faded away, thankfully.

I don't harbour any grudges about it. He's now happily married, I found my actual One True Love (date a man who buys you Lovecraft-themed hoodies, ladies), and although we are now Facebook Friends, me and that first love have gone our separate ways, and are easily happier people for it. 

I don't suppose there's a moral to that story, except that First Love can be a pain in the ass and Real Love is worth waiting for and probably never looks how you expect it to.

Hot off the press is Lily Harlem's latest ménage a trois novel based in London, Desk Job. Her London Menage set of books are taking off, the first one Muscling In has received many 5* reviews and Desk Job is set to do the same. Currently working on the third book in this series, Lily says she never believes three is a crowd, and in her opinion more is definitely merrier!

Here’s the low down on Desk Job, which, incidentally, can be enjoyed as a standalone read, these books are only very loosely connected.

I know, I know, I missed a day. I don't care. This challenge isn't the boss of me. I got home from work yesterday evening to find Kyle cleaning the house in a fugue state, so I joined in, and that kind of ate up the rest of the night. So no blogging. But today, blogging! And today's prompt is your earliest memory. Cue music.

This is hard, actually. I'm pretty sure some of the things we think are real memories, our brain has invented, and I'm sure this is probably especially true when we look back to our childhood. I would say my earliest memory is of being in a car with our dog, Meg. I don't know where we were living or how old I was, or any salient details. But I know we had a dog called Meg, and I know she didn't move with us to our next house (possibly because it was overseas?). I know this because my parents have told me. So do I really remember Meg, or has my brain just supplied some false details? Tricksy brain.

My earliest memories that I feel confident about saying "yes, that definitely happened" are from our time living in Cyprus. I guess I was around five or six. I remember having a yellow sun dress with tassles. I remember great, noisy, stinky pelicans everywhere, stealing food from your plate. I remember finding lizards in wardrobes, I remember huge, crushing waves sweeping us out of dinghies at Curium beach, and I remember sand so hot you couldn't walk barefoot on it. I have very vivid memories of us finding a snake in the back garden one day, and Mum keeping us kids inside the house until an old man came and killed it. As a snake-keeping adult, that memory rests very uneasily with me now. 

I mean, look at this idiot. This is my king snake, Remic, trying to eat a stone skull. He's literally only a danger to himself.

Still, I have no idea what kind of snake that was back in Cyprus all those years ago, so I suppose it could have been deadly (unlikely, but this was a long time ago so there's no point worrying about it now).

Anyway, those are my earliest definite memories, and we have extensive photo albums to prove it all really happened. Take that, evil, memory-faking brain.

So I really enjoy blogging, but I'm aware that this isn't my diary and I don't want to force my random opinions on the world just for the sake of it. So I like the idea of a blogging challenge that gives me set topics and keeps me regularly blogging and thinking. And here we have just that!

I also like the idea of doing this because, as Amber Morgan, I'm a "new" writer and this seems like a good way for visitors here to get to know me a bit better. So let's begin at the beginning! Number one on the list - five problems with social media.

1. Time Wasting - personally I love social media, but there's no denying it can be a time-sink. Checking Facebook or Twitter can sometimes become a compulsion or a chore, rather than a fun way to connect with people or pass the time on a bus journey. If you get to the point where you're mindlessly scrolling through Facebook instead of doing your job, you may need to step back a bit.

2. Artificial Intimacy - I have a lot of friends that I wouldn't be able to talk to without social media. It's one of things I absolutely love about it - I can speak to people on the other side of the world about Daredevil, food, cocktails, writing...anything. That's amazing! At the same time, being able to read a stranger's innermost thoughts can create an artificial sense of "knowing" that person. People suddenly think they have the right to monitor your behaviour, judge your choices, and police your words because you said it on Twitter. I've had people contact me to ask me why I've unfollowed them, which I find bizarre. Why do I have to explain my decisions to a stranger I'll never meet in real life? Twitter and Facebook, and other forms of social media can lead to incredible friendships...but following someone on social media doesn't automatically make you part of their inner circle. Always worth remembering.

3. Click-bait - Social media is a great way to share news. It's also easy to read a headline someone else has posted, jump to a conclusion, and react accordingly. The fact is, you can't always get the facts (if ever) just from the headline. It's easy to get emotional over politics or human rights, but it's also worth looking critically at the source before you make up your mind about something.

4. Spoiler Alerts! - Generally speaking, I don't stress about getting spoiled on TV, movies, or books. I don't think it's up to other people to protect me from spoilers. If they want to talk about the Red Wedding or the UFC results on their social media accounts, I have absolutely no room to complain. It's their space. On the other hand, places like Facebook have news feeds that often announce things in their headlines. That annoys me. My brother, fiance, and I are planning to get together next weekend and watch Wrestlemania in a good old nostalgia-fest. Thanks to Facebook, I already know the results of two key matches. I didn't go looking for the information, but I had no way to avoid it either, because of the revealing news headlines. That is annoying.

5. Oversharing - I don't think I'm guilty of this. I hope I'm not, anyway. But the temptation to share every thought you have on social media is ever-present. I've seen some really uncomfortable situations unfold on Facebook - issues that ended with people needing professional help. It was hard to read, hard not to comment, and impossible not to wonder why these people felt this was the best forum to discuss their problems. Again, other people's space is their space, and as long as they're not harming anyone, what they post is their choice. But I think some situations need real-world, not virtual, resolution. That's why the majority of my posts on Facebook are cat-related! Everyone can agree when it comes to cats.

What problems do you have with social media?