Last Friday, as part of the Church Stretton Arts Festival, I went to a talk by Phil Rickman, author of the Merrily Watkins series of novels. As writers we’re frequently told to write for a specific genre, such as crime, romance, horror, thriller, mystery, fantasy, sci fi etc. But Phil’s Merrily Watkins novels don’t quite fit into one genre. Although Merrily is the Diocesan Exorcist for the Diocese of Hereford, and the books clearly draw on the Church of England…
A day trip to Witley Court in Worcestershire led to Snapper Simon’s latest WeatherWatcher photo … of the fountain at this English Heritage property in full spout .. or flow!
Once a year, authors receive their PLR statements. For those of you who don’t know, PLR stands for Public Lending Right and is a payment to authors in recompense for the loss of sales due to people borrowing their books from a library. While we receive a royalty for each copy of our book bought by the library service (as we would from any other book buyer), PLR recognises the fact that that single copy is then borrowed many times…
Here in the Welsh Borders, we’ve had a lot of weather, recently. Well, I say a lot of weather, but, of course, what I really mean is a change in the weather. Just before I moved to Shropshire from the London suburbs, my urban neighbours would say, “Shropshire? Ooh, you’ll get a lot of weather up there!” And they were right, sort of. We do get a lot of weather up here. But we get just as much as…
It’s a dangerous game coming to the Welsh Borders to give an author talk. If you don’t believe me, ask archaeologist and historian Dr Alex Langlands, who’s a friend of this area thanks to the popular BBC2 Victorian Farm television series.
The world of writing is a bit like busses. Nothing for a ages and then three things come along all at once. Or sometimes four.
I love the way some projects take on a life of their own. Today, in St Martin’s in the Bullring (Birmingham) the third edition of the Crossing the Threshold toolkit was launched. In 2007 I wrote a book entitled , which explains to community groups in a clear and easy-to-understand way, how to apply for grant money from various funding organisations.
Writing may be a solitary occupation at times, but not all of the time. Today, I was part of Wellington Festival’s Meet The Author event. A group of us (what is the collective noun for a group of writers?) gathered in the library and set out our stalls.
Publishing is a numbers game. When a book is published, nobody really knows how many copies it will sell. They might be able to guess a rough figure during its first six months of sales, especially if the author has a track record. (Dan Brown will probably sell one or two copies when his new one comes out next month.)
If there’s one thing that Ludlow does well, it’s food. Local food. Well, food from the immediate environs of Shropshire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire, Gloucestershire and the neighbouring Welsh counties (Powys, Monmouthshire, et al).