What a difference a week makes. Having bemoaned my solitary industry, I seem to have been blessed with writer activities of all different sorts over the past five days to cheer my soul and send me on my way to more writing this weekend.
Today I have enjoyed being part of Nicola Morgan's blogging coffee morning, over on Help! I Need A Publisher. I met several new people remotely, and read other fascinating blogs. This has all been done to raise funds for Macmillan Cancer Support, but also to bind together an Internet community of writers and readers. I don't know how Nicola does half of what she does. Can she sleep, I wonder?
Earlier in the week, I received a copy of the Danish edition of the Sisters of the Sword book that I contributed to under the pseudonym of Maya Snow. What a great edition and lovely surprise. Here it is, photographed out in my back garden. (I need good light for the little camera on my mobile phone.) I rather love this highly dramatic cover! That poor girl is suffering.
My sister, Mandy, also came over to take a new author photo of me. Mandy is a teacher, but has also self-trained as a digital photographer. You can see her work at www.amandaherbert.com. I am so proud of my sister. She is almost completely self-taught, and a real lesson in that great truism that craft can be learned, but you're born with talent. She has a great eye. If the two of us take a photo of the same subject I end up with a snapshot and Mandy ends up with art. I am flattered that she agreed to take some photos of me and we had a lovely time, laughing in the back garden as we behaved in a fairly silly manner. Below is one of the end results. Now, all I need to do is persuade my boyfriend, Ian, to help me update the website with the new photos. Are you reading this, Ian? Remember that curry I bought you? Wasn't that kind of me? Do you want to return the favour?
I also met up with two old publishing friends to eat crisps and drink wine. Crisps are editors' canapes - Walkers have seen us through many an evening and I hope we'll devour more crisps together over many more years.
So, a busy week filled with friends and books. Just the thing to set me on my way to the next bout of revision and writing. Wish me luck!
Hi! I came here because I wanted to see if you were on Twitter so i could follow you. I didn't discover that but I did discover you mentioning me!! Thank you, but mostly thank you for mentioning Macmillan Cancer Support. Why didn't I come here on Fri? Did I miss you? i must go back and look at the comments - there were rather a lot but I tried not to miss anyone. Or did i already comment to you in my own comments bit? Oh gosh, i don't know - it was a very mad day and actually I am not sleeping enough, which answers your question. I read the other day that not sleeping may contribute to dementia, so I'd better either get sleeping or achieve something in my life before it all turns to mush.
Anyway, hello properly and ARE you on twitter? I looked for your name and found two but neither looked like you ...
nx
Oh wow, what a great book cover!
That is so cool.
In a spooky coincidence, I too have just blogged about my new cover. I don't think I'll ever get over the thrill of seeing the cover. It's such an exciting time. Hope you sell bucket loads of books in Denmark.
Hello karen,
gosh, I feel like I've entered a parallel universe by entering your blog, it's fascinating! The world of the writer! I think writers must be a much more sociable lot than us illustrators, by the sound of it. I'm very happy to be tucked up at home at all times! Thanks for leaving me a comment on my blog, I'll definitely be back to your blog, I'm fascinated by it.
Love Vanessa xxx