With all the stresses of the pandemic and life in general, what can be more fun than to sit down and get artistic? As well as being a writer and publisher, I am also a photographer and I thought it would be an interesting experiment to turn some of my images into colouring pages.
Not all images lend themselves to the transformation but I have picked out the ones I think work best. Below is a sample of some of the printable images available via my Etsy store.
They are great for artists or anyone who needs to take their mind away from everyday distractions and who enjoys the scenery Norfolk has to offer.
I am working on a book of these colouring pages so look out for that, I will post via my social media when it is available. I will also add colouring pages to this website so that they can be bought and downloaded directly. Eventually there will be more generic ones such as animals and flowers too. I have a huge number of images to trawl through to convert as I have been a photographer for many many years, so keep coming back for updates.
You can check out some of my photography here via Photo4Me
While I am here, it would be remiss of me to point out that there is a FREE giveaway at the moment here on this very site. If you’d like to be in with a chance of winning a 2022 Daily Planner featuring one of my images on the cover, please hit the subscribe button below. The giveaway deadline date is Friday 7th January and available to UK subscribers only (apologies to my overseas visitors!) Visit the link to see more details.
I try to create a giveaway every month so it is worth subscribing. February may be a good month to do a colouring page giveaway and that would go worldwide as I will create a printable download. Hey, what a good idea! I just thought of that as I was typing. Don’t be shy, subscribe!
Norfolk UK is my home, I live in Norwich by the River Wensum where everyday there is something different to see and learn.
I feel a big affinity with the river as I grew up in Cambridge, another great river city. My childhood and teens involved many walks along the Cam where we would watch 'The Bumps,' raft races and as we grew older we enjoyed adventures on our punting pub crawls.
Growing up in a multi cultural university city definitely influenced my reading choices, I am a big fan of Japanese fiction, love French literature and enjoy Shakespeare. As a young teen I entertained myself with Jilly Cooper and Dick Francis and then became quite obsessed with Henri Charriere's Papillon. At school all I cared about was English, Art and French, in that exact order. When I finished with school I went to live and work in Greece for a wonderful year before returning to study English Literature and Sociology. At this point I read more classics like the Wyf of Bath, Wuthering Heights and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man plus poets such as Wilfred Owen.
My first UK full time job was with Heffer's Paperbacks where I devoured several books at a time, excited by the fact I could borrow what I liked. Bizarrely for me I remember reading The Zurich Axioms, I have no interest in the stock markets but it had me gripped. I can't remember why I picked it up but I have never forgotten it. Heffers introduced me to so many authors, via their books and sometimes in person. It was here I learned about all the genres, it fascinated me that science fiction and horror were so popular, I tried reading it all.
Aside from writing letters, it didn't really ever occur to me to write anything myself for many years as I worked my way through a variety of interesting and varied jobs. Then on a visit to the London Aquarium I became struck by an idea so powerful I sat down and wrote my first novel. It went nowhere as really I wrote it because I wanted to. I wrote another novel and again, didn't have the persistance or determination to take it further, I simply enjoyed the process of writing and my characters.
Then years later another idea struck me and during a severe bout of Pleurisy where I couldn't do anything physical for months, I wrote the Eight of Swords and The Putsi. This time I published them as ebooks and they became pretty popular. When I fully recovered, I had to concentrate on my business and looking after my mother who has various health issues and the writing went adrift again for many years until 2020 when the Coronavirus pandemic hit the world.
March 2020 I moved to my apartment alongside the Wensum to live alone for the first time ever. During the first lockdown I began to write a diary and then the idea for a new set of short stories came to me and in February 2021 they will be published. The Covid-19 Pandemic is not simply a scary virus, it is a historical time and here we are trying to live through it. To many it will feel like a punishment but to me as a writer, in some ways, it came as a gift.
Please stay as safe and as well as you can. I hope to entertain you with my stories as we all try to get through this together, even though we are apart.
Petra
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