This is me, Halloween 2001 in fancy dress obviously! I am at a friend's halls of residence - spot the Beer poster to the left.

I went to a fancy dress party at another halls of residence on Holloway Road in North London. I was going for the goth/new romantic look. Flouncy white shirt, velvet waistcoat, and lots and lots of makeup. It was great fun.

The Tube journey home was an interesting experience as I went back to south east London with smudged makeup.

Until next time,

If you like a bit of dressing up with and some retro fun, Best Friends Perfect Book One, is available from Wilde City Press and Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com Book Two is out 27 August where there's even more fun with Kieran and his friends.

Liam Livings xx

I went to my first RNA conference from 11 – 13 July and had a marvellous time. I ate an inordinate amount of food (all made and grown onsite at Harper Adams University). I drank vats of tea. I spoke to loads of people and made some great friends, and caught up with old friends. I also went to useful sessions that I hope will help improve my writing.

During the week before I’d watched a Channel 4 documentary called The Secret Life Of Students, and it followed three students in their first term at uni in Leicester. It included on-screen messages the students were sharing with their friends through their phones. They asked their friends back home which drinking games to play. They told friends they felt lonely and hadn’t met anyone they clicked with, in real time during the doc.

Going to my first RNA conference felt like this first week at uni once again. I stayed in halls of residence. The sessions were given in lecture theatres, food was served in a canteen.

First time I went to uni in 1998, there was no social media, no smart phones, having a mobile phone was a rarity. I had a shared phone in the corridor I used to call home, and I’d go to the library to *check my emails* on a daily basis. Emails were the only thing I used the internet for at that point. Just think about that for a moment.  

Having the RNA conference at a campus university meant I felt like I was at a university of romance authors, which was fab. Sometimes it felt like I lived in a little village, only populated by romance authors. Again, this was a fab feeling too.

I know how much time and effort goes into making an event like that appear to happen effortlessly, having been on the UK Meet organising team since 2013. Nothing is effortless, it’s all planned very carefully. The RNA Conference was smooth, professional and friendly.  

I had a little sparkly flower on my badge that proclaimed it was my first conference. Jan Jones pointed this out and asked others to make sure we newbies felt included and didn’t look lost. I can honestly say, there wasn’t one single moment at the conference I felt unincluded, or lost. I didn’t just talk the hind legs off a donkey, I talked and laughed all four legs off a herd of donkeys with fellow authors for the whole three days. And it was fabulous.

• Number of panels and workshops attended – 15
• Number of amazing free range, organic, home grown meals eaten – 6
• Number of jackets brought and worn – 2 (one bright red, and one pale blue)
• Number of old friends chatted to – approx 7
• Number of new friends chatted to – too many to count
• Number of people the bed in my room could sleep – 1
• Number of books brought back from the conference - 9
• Number of ‘aah yes, I do that too’ moments shared with other authors – too many to count
• Number of words added to my WIP Glitzy Gay Saga – 5000 (I am a geek and needed to leave the social side for the quiet of my room sometimes and so took this opportunity to write.)
• Number of episodes of Gilmore girls watched in my room – 2 (gotta love a trip to Stars Hollow)
• Number of emails that came through on my phone using Harper Adams University’s wifi – 0
• Number of emails that came through once I arrived at Stafford station – 49

My highlights of the sessions

I heard from Tali Roland and Nick Spalding about the benefits and disadvantages of self-publishing. When someone says ‘I’m not technical and I could do it’ it always fills me with hope. Tali said this so I’ll definitely look into self-pubbing in the future.

Saturday

Nikki Logan gave a fascinating talk about the chemistry of reading. 90mins in a few sentences: the human brain responds in a basic lizard brain way to stimuli by releasing tiny amounts of chemicals into the body. Stories that provoke this reaction in readers will give them the warm fuzzy glow of falling in love, of meeting a new best friend, the endurance feel of having to get to the next page, the pit of the stomach feel of it all going horribly wrong. Nikki gave some great tips of how to write great stories so readers experience the story at a chemical level.

We heard from Waterstones and WH Smith Travel about how they choose which books get into their shops. There was an interesting debate about the different ways readers can buy books, and how they each offered something special to differentiate them:

• Independent book stores – personal service, ordering in unusual titles
• Supermarkets – price advantage and convenience – who doesn’t want to pick up a book to read while they’re buying dinner?
• Airports and other travel hubs – clearly curated to make a buying decision very easy in a stressful environment.

I made a point that in an age where you can buy any book with a click of an app on your phone, all book shops need to offer some form of specific differentiation to persuade buyers to buy with them. The danger with trying to be everything to everyone is that you do a Woolworths *agast silence*

A great panel discussion about the future of romantic fiction and the role of the RNA. I think membership organisations like the RNA are invaluable to represent their members’ views, connect members and help them learn from one another. Although there are issues the RNA could comment on publically about the industry, lobbying is a specific skill set requiring a lot of time and one that may not be achievable for an organisation staffed by volunteers with day jobs and writing careers.

Alison Sherlock started her talk by saying she was nervous of talking in public. She didn’t come across this way at all. She was very natural, engaging and told theh compelling story of how she’d used her real life experience of trying to get published to write a number of not published romantic fiction books. ‘Find your writing voice and stick with it.’ ‘Write from your heart.’

Philippa Ashley and Nell Dixon gave a very useful talk about the difference between a series and linked books, and the advantages and disadvantages of writing them. I’m thinking about making some of my stand alone stories into series and the savings in not having to rebuild the world and characters must be weighed up with the need for very strict with the timeline and consistency.

Jane Lovering – in a penguin onesie - and Rhoda Baxter gave an amusing and informative session about writing funny. ‘Juxtaposition of thingy’ summed that up nicely. Giving a talk isn’t funny. Giving a talk wearing a onesie is funny. ‘The characters don’t know they’re in a romcom book.’ Some felt it ok to have humour in sex scenes, others didn’t. Jane’s quote of the session, and in my view, the whole conference was about the explicitness of sex scenes: ‘Some people have the full pink bits hitting other pink bits.’

Sunday

Janet Gover talked about the importance of setting. How settings can be a character in the story, how it can reveal strengths and weaknesses of the characters, how to use the internet (not social media, sorry) to research settings the writer hasn’t experienced but wants to use in a story. It’s given me loads of tips to make my WIP Glitzy Gay Saga much more *glitzy* in its locations than it currently is.

Kate Long gave us seventeen questions to ask of one of our characters and I found out so much about one of my characters in And Then That Happened. I will be using that list of questions, and the others we added as a group, when developing my characters in future.

Jean Fullerton used Pride and Prejudice to illustrate how a story should be structured and what to do at each of the stages. It wasn’t a ‘to plan or not to plan’ debate, instead focused on how the action should build, when to introduce which characters, what to do with back story and most importantly how ‘every scene should lead the reader through the story.’ So no ‘it’s a lovely scene let’s keep it’ *rolls eyes* cos I’ve never written any of those, honest...

There was a rough approximation of Kath and Kim’s Wine Time as the last session, including stories of spilt wine and white shirted men, rutting horses, chickens escaping from paper bags, and incontinent cats en-route to the vets. And that was how it ended.

On the train home I re-read my story, And Then That Happened for cover ideas to share with the cover designer. I wrote it in 2012 so needed to remind myself with what it’s about.

The BF and cat greeted me at home, we watched Titanic – and even hearing the ‘my heart will go on’ music started me to well up with tears. I know, it’s shameful isn’t it?

If you enjoyed reading this, you might like some of my books which are – just as I am – borderline shy/wild, serious/funny, colourful/camp with a healthy dose of romance humour and friendship.

Until next time,

Liam Livings xx

Some people would say pet hates, I prefer the car analogy. Today I’m talking about things that grind my gears when I read books.

Bad & unnecessary sex scenes I don’t like a sex scene for the sake of a sex scene; it needs to move the plot forward, it needs to show us something about the characters, so they’ve learned something or are different afterwards. Jordan Castillo Price has a theory that all sex scenes is actually about something other than sex: power, distraction, revenge etc. So I’m not a fan of PWP (plot what plot) books – essentially a string of sex scenes one after another, with very little plot or characterisation to hold it all together. If that's your thing, all power to you, but it doe

Too much description - skip to the dialogue & action I find classic books difficult to read for exactly this reason. I cannot get on with Dickens or Hardy. I don’t want three pages of description about how much of a hovel the house they’re in is, or the bucolic view from the window across the field, with the pub in the background and the light shining on the metal of the horse’s reign. I really couldn’t give a monkeys about that. Get. To. The. Action. What are the characters doing? What are they saying to one another? Move it along please...Tell me the story.

Awful unrealistic dialogue -  'life would be so much better if it weren't for these *conversations*.' That was a bit of dialogue from a popular British soap opera. I dislike reading dialogue that makes me think, either ‘people don’t talk like that’ or ‘men/women don’t say those things’. A couple of female friends from the RNA have either their husband, or a female friend to check their male dialogue is realistic. ‘Would your husband say this?’ If the answer is no, then it has to go. Most men, generally don’t pontificate endlessly about how they feel. They tend to say much less than women.

Unnecessary swearing so it loses its impact – the characters use the c word every page or so. I read a book in which the c word had been used four times in the first three pages. It simply loses its impact. Just like in real life if someone swears with every other word, it becomes background noise. The real impact is when a person who never swears loses their temper and swears – then you know something’s wrong. It’s the same in stories. Swearing should be the exception, not the main part of the text.

Too many similar characters in a short story - who was it again?  I do like a good saga. I’m ok with a list of characters at the start of a book. I enjoy immersing myself into a whole world of the cast of characters. That’s ok for a long book of 80k or more words. A short story of 13k words, not so much. A short story with a cast of thousands detracts from the main point of the short story – which is usually the two main protagonists. Stick to those two, and merge some of the other characters. I did this with my short story, Frangipani Kisses which is out in September from Wilde City Press. I had too many characters from the charity shop where the main character works, so I merged a few into one more rounded character.

What grinds your gears in books? Or if you prefer, what are your pet hates in books? Do these resonate with you?

I’d love to hear from you.

If you want to read more, check out my upcoming releases for the rest of 2014.

Best Friends Perfect Book One, is available from Wilde City Press and Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com Book Two is out 27 August and Book Three arrives on 17 December in time for Christmas - for those of you who'd like the full series to binge-read all together over Christmas.

And Then That Happened will be published by Love Lane Books in August.

Frangipani Kisses will be published by Wilde City Press in September.

Until next time,

Liam Livings xx

I found some boxes of old photos, so thought I'd do some Throwback Thursday posts to amuse everyone. I'm only including pix of me and disguising others to protect the identity of the innocent :-)

This is me in my first term at uni in London September - December 1999. I'm in the shared kitchen of my halls of residence in south east London, near Goldsmith's University of London. I'm with an American student friend of mine.

I'm wearing crushed grey velvet trousers. Let's just let that sink in a moment.

If you're thinking the highlighted hair is very H from Steps - that's *exactly* the look I was going for at the time. I suspect I would be wearing platform Doc Marten boots, but can't confirm that at this stage.

For more nineties retro, you can enter Kieran's world with his friends in Best Friends Perfect Book One, s available from Wilde City Press and Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com

Until next time,

Liam Livings xx

I am a big car geek. Many of my childhood memories are dated by the car my parents owned at the time. So it's not too surprising I thought hard about the cars the characters drove in Best Friends Perfect Book One. I think the car someone drives says a lot about a person - even if it's 'I'm not into cars'.

There follows some stories behind various cars in my life through the years. I realise not everyone's as into cars as I am, but hopefully the stories are interesting for everyone, car geeks or otherwise :-)

Mum and Dad moved into their new home, which they’d had designed and built themselves, at the start of B reg – August 1984. That's how I always dated it, even as a small boy.

I remember, just like it was yesterday, in 1985 when Mum picked up her brand new ‘bread van’ VW Polo in Gambia red, just like the one above, from the VW garage in Salisbury. She stopped at the petrol station to fill up and asked me if I knew what any of the dials and flashing lights meant. It was quite different from the seventies VW Beetle she’d had before that. In this Polo, I learned about the bighting point, how to change gear, hill starts, sat next to Dad, on a disused airfield in the New Forest. Dad also taught me not to hold it on the clutch, or leave it in gear when stationary. His black Golf only used 1 clutch in 200,000 miles. I'll just leave that to sink in :-)

On my first proper driving lesson I got in the teacher’s car – a 1996 N reg Rover 100 in black in case you wondered – and drove home from Southampton to my house in the New Forest.

I wept on the day we said goodbye to Mum's red Polo, as it had been written off from someone driving into it down a windy lane just outside Salisbury. Of course, we were pleased, Mum was OK after the accident. But it felt like saying goodbye to an old friend. I had always hoped I would have the car when it was time for me to learn to drive.

I remember a family holiday in Dad’s brand new 1986 VW Golf from Testwood VW, near Southampton, as we drove through northern France below 56mph to ‘run in’ the engine. The theme music of that holiday was The War of The World. Great stuff.

We used to take Dad's black Golf on family holidays to a static caravan site in Corfe Castle, in Dorset. The *velour* uplostery was much more luxurious for long journeys than Mum's Polo's grey material. I spent most of the holidays buried in the latest Adrian Mole book, or playing with my brother on his skateboard. My brother had it after Dad died, and eventually sold it to a retro Golf enthusiast in the mid noughties.

My first car, Priscilla, the red 1989 VW Polo (below). Door bins full of mix tapes, seats full of friends, I went all over Hampshire, up to London, to Brighton in search of *the perfect night out*. I drove myself to school in the upper sixth form, dropping my brother at his school in Romsey, on the way. That summer, Dad helped me choose Priscilla from a selection of other Polos. Mum borrowed the car and someone drove into the back of it on the way to Salisbury, writing it off in 2001. I cried. My brother bought it off me, and it sat in his garage awaiting a super charged engine and rebuild, for a long time. He eventually ebayed it in 2012 to a retro Polo enthusiast.  

We had an orange VW campervan and I remember lots of family holidays sleeping in the elevated roof section.

Before Mum’s new Polo, we had a blue VW Beetle on its last legs, with broken reverse gear and tatty bodywork. She used to always drop us off driving up the hill at primary school in Salisbury, so she could roll down if she needed to let someone pass. When Mum stopped at Tesco on the outskirts of Salisbury, she filled the inside with shopping as the boot at the front, where most other cars have their engine, wasn’t big enough for the shopping.

In 2001 one of Dad’s friends from work sold me a mark 1 VW Golf. It was X reg, when the new X reg had just come out, but this was X reg, *the first time round*. I used to tell everyone I had an X reg car *pause* then add from 1981 not 2001. Maybe you had to be there for that one *gets coat and leaves*. 

The year Dad died, in 2001, he helped me plan to tour England in Clara, staying in YHA youth hostels. Once I'd reassembled myself after his funeral Mum agreed he would have wanted me to still do the tour, so I zig zagged across the country from Cardiff, Ipswich, Manchester, the Lake District and more, in Clara. 

I’m a member of the Mazda MX5 Owners Club and the Gay Classic Car Group – for gay people who are into classic cars. I go to MX5 Club events, and have chatted to the GCCG stand people at classic car shows. 

In Best Friends Perfect Book One there are two important cars

Citroen 2CV6 – Kieran’s car is called Priscilla. My first car was called Priscilla too, but it wasn’t a Citroen 2CV6, it was a much more prosaic VW Polo ‘breadvan’ like Mum’s but it was red though.

Vauxhall Astra mark 1 – Kev’s not really into cars, it’s just a way of getting from A to B. If it stops and goes, Kev’s happy. Kev’s is much rustier than this one below. In the late nineties, this wouldn’t have been a classic car, it would just have been a cheap banger. Cars have to be lucky enough to pass through *cheap banger* missing the scrap yard and then get to *classic* status. As you’d expect many just get to the scrap yard and that’s it, making those left more rare and more *classic*.   

If you'd like to read about Kieran's adventures in Priscilla, Kieran's dad's horror at the state of Kev's Vauxhall Astra, how they get to *the perfect night out* and Pride festivals in one piece, Best Friends Perfect Book One is available from Wilde City Press and Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com

Until next time,

Liam Livings

Hi,
I had another lovely review in which Amos said:

'Livings has something to say about friendship and there is more to this book than a fascinating cast of characters. Indeed it is the characters that make this a special read—they are very real and very relatable.'

'Try to think back to what you can remember about your coming-out and self-acceptance process—we all have something in common there and the ways that Kieran’s is related to us via Liam Livings makes for a delightful read.'

'Livings uses humor in just the right way—there are several laugh out loud moments and yet there is also a good deal of subtle humor.'

'You really do not want to miss this one.'

For the full review, check out Amos Lassen's review website.

Best Friends Perfect Book One is available from Wilde City Press and Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com

Until next time,

Liam Livings xx

I had a wonderful review from Marc at Rainbow Gold Reviews, in which he said:

'The book is like a road trip into another time with wonderful characters and a unique style.'

'It is about friendship, growing up in the 90′s, being in and out of love and finding oneself.'

'There is a lot of subtle humor in the book that comes from the unique interaction between the characters and the main protagonists analysis of the events unfolding in front of his eyes.'

'Generally, this book was just a completely unexpected breath of fresh air and while it took me a bit to get into the author’s very different style, for me it was completely worth it.'

'I have set out to find pots of gold at the end of the rainbow and I think I have found a treasure in this book.'

Thank you so much to Marc, I am still blushing! :-)

Marc's full review is on his review website.

Best Friends Perfect Book One is available from Wilde City Press and Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com

Until next time,

Liam Livings xxx