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Me and my old friend from the RNA London Chapter, Victoria Connelly, author of Molly's Millions, at the Award's Lunch
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2009 got off to a great start with the launch of No Cure for
Love. I carried on in the party mood when I attended the Romantic Novel of the
year awards lunch on the 10th February in the Kensington Garden Hotel.
No Cure for Love was
long-listed for the award but sadly it was not on the shortlist. This didn’t
dampen my enthusiasm in any way as the lunch was the perfect opportunity to catch
up with some good Romantic Novelist Association friends. I was also thrilled when a fellow Orion author
Julia Gregson won with her novel East of the Sun.
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If the Awards Lunch wasn’t enough excitement for one month,
a week later, on the 18th Feb I was at the Orion Authors’
party.
The
venue was the grand foyer of the Victoria and Albert museum. The
champagne flowed as hundreds of people including editors, agents
publicists and well-known personalities such as Michel
Palin, Kate Moss Miranda Richardson, Lady
Antonia Fraser, June Whitfield and Edna O’Brien.
Here I am in my little black dress, with my good friend and Kate Harrison and Kate Mills, the deputy publishing director for Orion fiction.
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On the 5th March I meet some more lovely readers
when I opened the London Borough of Redbridge’s Big Red Read. No Cure for Love was one of the 25 books
chosen to feature and library members will have a chance through the next few
months to vote for the one they enjoyed most.
I must have behaved myself because they have asked me back for the
literary evening on the 8th October to be on a discussion
panel about popular fiction after which the winner of the Big Red Read will be announced.
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Although it was great to catch upwith friends and fellow
writers my real job as an author is to please my readers. On the 12th February I had a
chance to meet some avid bookworms at Hainalt Library where I had a wonderful
time speaking to the 25+ readers' there.
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The 20th March found me talking to the readers'
group in Harold Wood library Essex to an audience of 25+.
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Then to Waterstone’s
in Romford for a book signing on the 21st and again the following week on the 28th at Waterstones in Chelmsford
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On the 4th April I visited Bargain Books in Chingford
where Bev and her team plied me with tea as I chatted to readers and signed copies of No
Cure for Love.
A BIG thank you to them and I encourage you to visit their website and read the staffs' wacky bio!
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On the 7th April I went to the lovely city of Norwich
to give a workshop to the Norwich Writers' Circle about historical research. the venue was the beautiful 18th century Assembly House. It was a lively evening
with an audience of members and guests of 40+ .
Thankfully,
as you can see, the PowerPoint worked
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| I was back with old friends in July for the annual Romantic
Novelist Association’s conference. This year we were in the Newton Rigg campus of
the University of Cumbria in the beautiful Lake District. A number of us took
part in a readers’ event in Penrith Library and this is me and my good friend Janet
Gover at the event. Janet and I started
on the rock road to publication together almost 9 years ago and her first novel,
The Farmer Needs a Wife, and my No Cure for Love were released within days of
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One of the pleasant side effects of being an author is that I
am asked to be part of both writers’ and readers’ day at local libraries. This is
me talking in September at Togmorden’s Writers’ Day and again at Woodford Libraries
Readers’ Group.
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In September Janet and I teamed up with Victoria Connelly
and Juliet Archer to form the Let’s Talk about Love group and this is us just before an author
event in Uxbridge Waterstones.
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The Let's Talk about Love group were out again on the 12th November signing books in Romford Waterstones.
The staff at Romford Waterstones were very good to us so a BIG thank you to Nick and his team.
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On the 1st December The Norwich Writers Circle invited
me back to judge the 1st competition of their writing year the first
1500 words of an Historical novel. It was a hard choice but the outstanding
winner was The Apothecary’s Niece by Sally Newton.
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On Wednesday 9th and Saturday 12th December i undertook a signing on Pat's Book Stall in Romford Market.
I had a very pleasant surprise on Saturday as I shared the morning with Martina Col, Pat's long standing friend. she was signing copies of her new book, Hard Girls.
She was great and even asked for copies of my books.
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For my last visit of the year I returned to my good friends in Waterstones Romford to sing copies of A Glimpse at Happiness on the last Saturday before Christmas. As you can imagine it was very busy and I am happy to say I sold out of the paperbacks and had only a few hardback left after my 2 hours.
Nick, the manager, and all his team have been a tremendous support to me this year and I hope to be seeing them again in the New Year
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