Successes

Last day of my work at the Literature Festival today, and it was another success. The media team did a great job, you can read their reviews and interviews here. I've been very impressed with their work - they're all 15-18 years old and haven't done this kind all day every day media stuff before.

I got to hear a few authors speaking, most of whom I hadn't ever heard of, not being into youth fiction much these days. Some were quite inspiring, some very open with their stories, and a few were hilarious. I was almost crying with laughter in Alan Gibbons talk this afternoon. I should have been floating between the media members in there and the others writing things up but I just couldn't pull myself away. He had such a marvellous way of describing people, you could see them right there

I came away from my few days wandering in and out of talks feeling like even I could write a novel, despite my I ability to do plot OR character.

This evening I had dinner with some friends, celebrating one person's last few days in Norwich and just enjoying good company and good food. We had quite a bit of fun baking and icing a carrot cake. Dana was cooking Syrian food for us, and a cake. She turned out to be very good at delegating all the tricky bits to everyone else - I grated the carrots, and Juliette and I made the icing. I've never made cream cheese icing before, but it was all a great delicious success.

Mmmmm. A good day. And tomorrow I'm off to Poole to visit my brother and family. It's meant to be 27 degrees and sunny all weekend so I have hopes of beach and sun and sand and some real summer just for a couple of days. Plus little munchkins, a change of scenery and everything else that comes with good time with the family.