*dancing around madly* This is the cover for the novella. The BF thinks it looks like I've modelled forHi everyone, just a quick one to let you know I’ve got a publication date of 8 December for my first piece of published writing. It’s a novella called Christmas Serendipity.

Before we continue, I need to confess – I LOVE CHRISTMAS. I love everything about it, I love the TV, the food, the family traditions, the break from work, everything.

To celebrate the publication of the novella, I have a range of things planned, but only during December. I am aware that for most people Christmas only starts in December. I watched most of the big supermarkets' Christmas ads last week between the last episode of Downton Abbey.  Some people on twitter were ranting that it’s far too early for these adverts. Will you indulge me? Thanks! I have ranked them as follows, this is for the adverts, and NOT for how I feel about the shops. These two things bear no relation to one another:

1. Boots – Smalltown Boy soundtrack wins it I’m afraid. I wonder how many people will know how gay and political the song really is. Loving Jimmy Somerville and his alto voice.
2. M&S – Helena Bonham Carter and David Gandy the model – woof, and her little dog too
3. Tesco – home movies through the ages. A nice dollop of nostalgia.
4. Debenhams – like the music and additional points for using ‘fabulous’
5. Waitrose – free range organic turkeys treated to five star treatment, with hot and cold running water and fluffy towels
6. John Lewis – Lilly Allen has done better songs herself, although I do like her voice. The rest was too cartoony I’m afraid
7. Sainsbury’s – meh.
8. Morrisons – Ant & Dec – no, just no. And that’s where it ends.

Glad I’ve got that off my chest – so back to Christmas Serendipity.

On 28 November I am on RJ Scott’s website talking about the novella.

All in December:

I will be blogging here about some topics in the story, including interviews with Cathy and Tony, two of the characters. I’ll also be talking about Christmas traditions.

I will also have some little picture teasers to get you in the Christmas mood.

I’m doing a bit of a zig zagged blog tour, as well as being on some review sites with competitions to win a free copy of the ebook.

I hope to catch up with you in the various comments boxes, or Twitter, during December.

I hope the story and the posts help in some small way to you having a great Christmas.

Right, that’s it for Christmas posts, until December. I promise. No more snowflakes, Christmas trees, presents, reindeer...

Until next time,

Liam Livings xx

I went to my first Festival of Romance at the weekend. It was great chance to meet Charlie Cochrane, JL Merrow and Stevie Caroll, as well as meeting Patrick Darcy for the first time in real life. Here’s some things I learned during the weekend.

1. That it’s really important to ring-fence some time each week to write.
2. That all writers get to a point during the book when they think it’s awful and it can not be finished. You must forge on beyond that point.
3. How differently everyone writes, and how that's absolutely fine, whatever works for you.
   
4. Just write – write straight through to the end of the first draft. Do not pass go, do not collect £200. Do not stop to edit, do not go back. Reach the end.
5. When you reach the end, leave it to rest for a month, and then come back to the story.
6. Something called ‘fast drafting’ is where you draft so quickly it taps into your subconscious creativity and ignores the part of the brain which edits and doubts.
7. It’s important for writers to read different genres of writing...
8. But you must also retain your own voice as a writer. I always struggle with this ‘voice’ thing. I suppose it’s like how you only ever think other people have accents, but you don’t think you have one yourself. I don’t really think about my writing voice, but I’ve been told it’s quite distinctive.
9. To write romance you have to believe in love and romance.
10. Writers should write the books they want to read, because then you’ll love it, and you have to love it if you’re going to work on edits for it over many months/years.
11. That an hour was not enough time to peruse the books and talk to the authors at the book fair. I kept telling myself I’d come back to buy books, and then it was 3pm, we were all thrown out and I hadn’t bought any books. No matter, I have the starts of my Christmas list of some books for my stocking.
    
12. The importance of having your three minute pitch about your novel, and knowing the story iside out.
13. I met some lovely authors who I’ve connected with on social media, which now means I am even more distracted from writing by my twitter fee.
14. That digital first publishing is revolutionising the world of fiction with no genre, word count, restrictions
15. How important it is to ‘have lots of irons in the fire’ with writing projects at different stages, so you’re not waiting for the email to ping from a submission you’ve sent
16. That I need to look into Hootsuite and getting a Facebook page for myself. Rest assured, I will sort this. 
17. Write what your voice fits, or ‘if you have a snappy modern voice, don’t write historials.’
18. I leaned there’s a genre called ‘post chick-lit’ or ‘hen-lit’ which is most definitely NOT the same as ‘mum-lit’ another genre which was a new one on me until a few weeks ago
19. How much I enjoy talking to other writers about their books, their *process* films they enjoy, anything and everything.
    
20. Self publishing is not an easy route to being published, and you learn so many new skills doing it and that it all comes down to the magic three: cover, title and blurb

Were you an author at the Festival of Romance? What did you take away from the weekend? As readers, is any of this news to you? I’d love to hear from you.

Until next time,

Liam Livings xx

This post is about phrases which I use, which help me get through *those* days - you know the ones I mean. Some will, I'm sure, read these phrases and think they're trite. Well that's fine with me. But I take comfort in them and welcome their simplicity. 

It is what it is. This is one of my favourite, and most used phrases. It may sound trite, but actually I find it very useful, when talking about things over which you have no control, over which there is nothing you can do to change it. Example: I went to a friend’s birthday party at a slightly down at the heel pub. It wasn’t a private members club in Soho, it wasn’t exclusive. It was full of friendly people. As I arrived, and was prepared to be fully underwhelmed and disappointed with the whole situation I just repeated to myself, ‘It is what it is’ and got on with it. Example: One of Mum’s cats reached 18 years old earlier this year. She was eating less and less, sleeping more and more, it was only going in one direction. Mum was trying to fight the inevitable, suggesting dosing her up with medication, and I looked at the little cat and said to Mum, ‘It is what it is,’ Mum nodded slowly. She let the cat pass away quietly on her bed.

This too shall pass. This was Claire Raynor’s favourite phrase, and is particularly useful when going through a difficult time in life. It’s helpful to remember, no matter how awful something is, that time will pass, it will not continue like that forever.

What’s the game? This was introduced to me by a friend who’d worked at a research agency. She would receive briefs from clients to carry out huge research projects to tell them all sorts about their customers, reveal what the company should be doing in the next few years, and solve world debt at the same time. Apart from that being unrealistic, the answers to most of those questions could probably be found with a bit of furkling around internally. However, this company was poised, pen above a large cheque, asking if her company could find out the answers to those questions. Was she going to refuse, and tell them to do it themselves? What do you think? The game was that the company wanted this solution to come from another organisation’s work, so that was the game she played. This can be applied to many things. Find the game, and it’s all so much easier to cope with. It’s a bit like being in your own little play. It’s one of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever had.

In every job that must be done, there’s an element of fun; find the fun, and *snap* the job’s a game. *hanging head slightly* OK, hands up, it’s from the film, Mary Poppins, but it’s a pretty good phrase don’t you think? You didn’t expect a blog post from me without at least one reference to a musical did you? Who hasn’t looked at a pile of ironing and groaned. I used the ironing as an excuse to watch TV shows I knew the BF wouldn’t like – and that’s how I discovered Gilmore Girls. Bonus.

What are your phrases which act as little crutches of words during the day? I’d love to hear from you.

Until next time,

Liam Livings xx