Thanks to Twitter, we’ve been able to organise some terrific visitors in the last few weeks.
Jean Fullerton (@EastLondonGirly) author of No Cure for Love, A Glimpse at Happiness, Perhaps Tomorrow is a friend and colleague from the Romantic Novelists’ Association. She, her husband and three grandchildren came and spent the afternoon with us. Despite being on holiday, in charge of three lively and spirited balls of energy and a working husband, she was maintaining a respectable daily word count towards her next novel.
Apart from her overt helpfulness which is natural to her, Jean epitomised the spirit of the RNA: to help, encourage and foster new writing as well as promote the genre of romantic fiction in all its forms. Let’s say I picked up a few new tips from her and also a generous dollop of encouragement and support. 😉
We celebrated the meeting in typical RNA fashion!
Our second tranche of visitors came for the weekend. Kyla (@CPrincessUK) is a Filofax aficionada, sharing a deep interest in this with my other half Steve1. She and her husband (also Steve!) marvelled at the châteaux of Brézé, Thouars and Saumur, visited vineyards, the Logis de Pompois (a local gastronomic restaurant), had a dip in the pool and generally relaxed.
Kyla and Steve1 discussed the recent (rather mad) sale on the Filofax Germany site, the different offers in the UK and the merits of different sizes and styles and wrote a joint blog post for www.philofaxy.com (the place you have to be if you’re into Filofax). Meanwhile, the other Steve and I discovered we loved books and writing. He described his project to produce a non-fiction book for the general reader answering all those questions that seem simple but aren’t! And, of course, I told him about my alternative history thriller series. He confessed to being a science fiction, fan and we were deep into authors, style, conventions, structure, reader expectations, publishing and films.
Summer’s fading now and it’ll be our turn to be guests of my critique partner @denisebarnesUK in November, so I’d better get writing!
It sounds as if you’ve seen the summer out in style, with lots of visits from friends! That’s the way to do it.
Liz X
Definitely! And writing-related which made it even better.