In no particular order, here are my best bits of the last year. They’re both writing and life related as when I made the list first they flowed better together rather than trying to separate them.
Love and light,
Liam xx
- My birthday in February: afternoon tea at Fortnam & Mason, Tate Modern and Tate Britain with a boat ride in between, Kinky Boots musical.
- Finishing the loft conversion: after talking about doing it since we moved into the house, finally having a spare bedroom permanently set up for guests, and our own loft bedroom with en-suite bathroom is amazing.
- Going to Rome for our anniversary: neither of us had been before and it was a busy 3 days of sightseeing, eating and drinking. Such a beautiful city. Of course I wrote on both flights, which I also loved.
- Going to the RNA Conference in July: this is one of my writing highlights of each year. It’s a great conference full of useful workshops and lectures. It’s a great opportunity to meet up with old author friends and make new ones. And this year I made a lovely bunch of new friends who have been so lovely to chat to online afterwards.
- Organising two budget writing retreats: one was in May which had 4 authors writing furiously, chatting lots, and drinking lots of wine; the second was on October with two caravans and a total of 8 writers which was an absolutely blast. I’m currently reading a book by a friend that was partly written in his caravan, and he thanks us in the dedication at the start!
- Seeing panto twice – once in January for BF’s birthday and then in December with BF’s parents. Julian Clarey was a triumph of course. The evil villains were played by Paul O’Grady and Elaine Paige and the entire night was fabulous.
- Organising, running and getting great feedback from 3 Real People Write Books workshops with my friend and fellow author, Virginia Heath: we had the first in January, then took over the London RNA Chapter meeting in April, and finished the year with another in September which gathered an average of 10/10 rating from delegates.
- Going on holiday abroad with Mum: she wanted to treat us to a holiday so we decided on Portugal as none of us had been before, the village was walkable so Mum could amuse herself if we wanted to loll by the pool and read all day as we’re apt to do on holiday. There were some tense moments because I’d not gone on holiday abroad for a week with Mum since I was a teenager, but overall we got on well, had a right laugh at times, ate lots of food and drank wine and enjoyed the sights of Sesimbra and Lisbon together.
- Signing contracts with Nine Star Press for 5 books to be published in 2018: really looking forward to working with this new publisher to me, and getting these stories out in the world to be enjoyed.
- Writing a non-fiction marketing book: this started as an idea at the Southern RNA chapter meeting where I did a short talk on marketing. A few authors said it was the first time they’d actually understood marketing and what it included and had I thought about writing it into a book. Well, I did, and I’m not receiving some lovely comments from authors I know about it which I’ll be adding to the cover when I publish it later this year.
- Steps: last year I had the luck of going to the Steps musical with my dear friend George and his lovely friends. I also saw Steps live at Wembley with George and his friends too. It was simply joy from start to end. Wonderful.
- Cars: going to the Bromley Pageant of motoring with my MX5 and attending the NEC classic car show with my car-friend James (neither of our other halves are much into cars, so we couple up and tend to do them together in solidarity).
Love and light,
Liam xx
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