Authors Electric

Karen King, Ann Evans, Chrissie Bradshaw, Sheryl Browne, Lynda Stacey. Last weekend was one of my writing highlights of the year – the Romantic Novelist Association's annual conference.  This year is was held at Lancaster University, and it was my third conference. My good pal, author Karen King and I teamed up, and we took the train north feeling really excited to be going along to another RNA gathering. It's the thought of meeting up with familiar faces, making new friends, and basically just being around so many people who share that love of writing. It's such an amazing atmosphere, lots of buzz and noise, lots of laughter and chat – and of course plenty of time to eat and drink. Of course it wasn't all socialising. It was brilliantly organised with th e programme of talks, workshops and one-to-ones sent out to delegates some weeks before the event so that you can say which sessions you plan on attending, and arrange a one-to-one consultation with ...

l-r:Kevin Brooke, Chas Eden, Sheryl Browne, Polly Robinson, Sue Johnson, Ann Evans, Linda Bromyard, Karen King, Rod Griffiths, Diana Harrison. It's always a good thing to inspire the next generation to have a love of books and reading, so I wanted to tell you about the Living Library event that I've been involved with over the last couple of years. It's organised by friend and school librarian Linda Bromyard for her school – Blessed Edward Oldcorne Catholic College, usually for years 7 or 8. As she tells the children, usually when you go into a library, you see books. On these occasions they come into the library and meet authors. There's generally between 8-10 local authors, both traditionally published and self published who give up a couple of hours of their time for free to take part. Each author has their own table to display their books, leaflets, bookmarks, posters etc.  Then small groups of children – no more than four ...