Romance in the Court et al...

What a week! I've had two trips down to London for Author Outings within forty eight hours. Is it any wonder I have no voice left?

Thursday afternoon Jenni Keer and I arrived at Diss railway station looking forward to the wonderful Romance in the Court event organised by Goldsboro Books. Unfortunately two cancelled trains meant that we arrived well over an hour late, but we still made the most of it and rushed around catching up with old friends and meeting new ones.

Photo courtesy of S-J Virtue

Here's a line-up of some of the authors who attended and then of course there were fabulous readers, bloggers, publishers and agents to mingle and chat with. I was thrilled to finally meet Jo Thomas who has been a social media pal for years and turned out to be great fun (as I suspected she would) and full of highly entertaining anecdotes.

Saturday afternoon and I was back on the train again heading off to The Big Chill and the author/blogger meet-up organised by Kim Marsh and Holly Martin. The weather and the venue were both absolutely blissful and it was, as ever, a great opportunity to share news, discover who was writing what and offer and learn new writing tips and ideas about the whole publishing process.

Simona Elena, Carrie Elks, Jenni Keer, Annette Angel, Holly Martin

I was extremely excited to meet Simona Elena. Simona has been a hugely supportive blogger right from the very beginning of my career and it was lovely to have the opportunity to give her a hug and say thank you in person.

Front left - Rebecca Chance and right - Fiona Harper

A photo opportunity with both Rebecca Chance, who was every bit as vivacious, hilarious and fun as I imagined and gorgeous Fiona Harper was too good an opportunity to miss as we are all now represented by agent Amanda Preston from LBA.

And then there were 3...

All in all, this has been a wonderful week and on the back of it I have made some pretty dramatic decisions, but I'll share those with you another day. For now, I'm getting ready to dive into writing the first draft of Book 6 and getting in plenty of fizz to celebrate The Cherry Tree Cafe paperback publication this Thursday!

Wishing you all a wonderful week and please, if you are out and about and spot a copy, or have one delivered, I would love to see some #shelfies and #selfies.

H x