Sorry for the lack of blogging. I have been busy busy busy. (Warning: this post brought to you today by the words “wonderful” and “fantastic”!)

The trip to London for the RNA Conference was absolutely wonderful.
I missed the Tube strike and all my transport went very smoothly (I didn’t actually need the vast amount of alternate routes I planned at all). The Conference itself was, as always, wonderful. In fact you can get a flavour of it at the Romaniacs website where they have a lovely videos and will be posting interviews with various authors (including yours truly which I’ll link to when it goes up).

My talk “Finding the Fantastic in Your Fiction” seemed to go down very well although I was desperately nervous beforehand. But people came (at least 35 of them because all my handouts went), and asked questions (Yay!) and even came up to me afterwards to say how much they enjoyed it. Even people I didn’t know!

My highlight was probably Julie Cohen’s excellent (as ever) Re-writing workshop. With All the Post It notes in the universe. Including giant ones and a stack for everyone in the audience. And the panel discussion on Saturday – “The Vision for Writers of Passion and Drama” – Katie Fforde, Eileen Ramsay, Jane Johnstone and Daniel Hahn talked about the challenges facing authors today. It was wildly entertaining and very interesting.

Was that a future Game of Thrones spoiler from Jane? We’ll never know…

Chilling by the canal was also wonderful, a way to escape the heat and Kate Johnson and I discussed Buffy for rather a long time…

And the Gala dinner was just fab! All very glam. It was held in the beautiful Octogon Library which was a bit of a highlight for librarian-me who came over all fangirl. For a building. Yes…

I always end up having a little bit of a downer when I have to leave. I meet so many good friends at the conferences and its a place for writers to be writers. I miss that. But roll on next year in Lancaster (8-10^th July). Can’t wait.

Back in the real world, final edits went back in for A Hollow in the Hills, the sequel to A Crack in Everything, which comes out on the 7^th September.

SO BOOK LAUNCH NEWS!!!!

We will be having a book launch in the Gutter Bookshop at 6.30pm on Wednesday the 9^th September. All welcome. Bring your friends. Bring ALL OF THEM! I will be sourcing cake.

Yesterday was mostly spent working on Book 3 The Darkness at the End, because I had a massive surge of post-conference creativity which saw me write 16 pages in longhand and type up 6000 words. Still more to catch up on. I love it when writing does that.

Last night I went to the Pavilion Theatre to see Judy Blume in conversation with Sinead Gleeson. It was a wonderful evening and the warmth and love of the audience was only matched by the warmth and love which radiated from the woman herself. Many of my YA writing friends were there as a gang, our bookclub being just a little hyper beforehand. And during the Q & A. And after… But she has been such an inspiration to so many people and it really showed. It was fantastic to find out she is as lovely as we always wanted her to be.