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I have just returned from the Romantic Novelists Association’s 2023 Conference which was held at the Imperial College in London. Despite being a member of the RNA since 2016, this was my first conference and I’m pleased to say that I thoroughly enjoyed myself. So, what is the conference all about?
When I tell people I'm a writer, there is usually a short silence of surprise as where I come from it is not a common career path. Mostly it's almost indiscernible, just enough time to think of a suitable reply. I don't blame them. We've all watched writers being depicted in films. They are usually laboured with every negative character trope going. They are either socially inept or introvert (Melvin Udall in As Good As It Gets), flawed (Dix Steele in In A Lonely Place), obsessive (Jack Torrance in The Shining), struggles to recapture or achieve success (Barton Fink in Barton Fink) or/and depressed and lonely (Virginia Wolf in The Hours). Perhaps the latter does not exactly fit as Virginia Wolf was a writer and did suffer from mental illness so I'll use another example - Mort Rainey in Secret Window.
I'm not saying that writers don't suffer from one (or all) of the above as no one has a perfect life... but most of the writers I know are pretty normal people with ordinary lives. How do they prevent their creative imagination (which is capable of creating stories that can involve anything from disasters and murder to finding your perfect soulmate) from causing havoc in their personal lives? How do they stop becoming isolated from society after they have spent thousands of hours, months, years, putting words together in what they hope is an interesting order that will stop a reader from throwing their book in a bin?
On the 31st January, 2023, my seventh book, Waiting For Our Rainbow, was released. It was inspired by Cornwall's friendly invasion of American troops during 1942 to 1944, a time in Cornwall's history when thousands of soldiers arrived in the county to prepare for D Day.
So what do authors do on their book's Publication Day? Well that depends on many things and varies from writer to writer.
This week I parted company from a dear 'friend'. For almost six years this 'friend' has been in the back of my mind. Entertaining and interesting, this 'friend' fostered both affection and loyalty from me - although at times it also caused me to want to tear my hair out due to its occasional habit of throwing a surprising tantrum at me. This friend was not a person or an animal but a blog which shared the musings, experiences and tips of seven writers (of which I was one). Over the years the blog paid back my hours of writing by providing me with many new friends. Its contributors and readers have changed over the years, a natural development which also provides the catalyst for fresh content and a new perspective on the writing world. After many years as a contributor it is now my time to leave the blog so another writer can take my place. What is the name of this blog? Why am I leaving? And what do I mean when I say tantrums? Read on to find out.
