writing workshops, festivals and other things in between...

I've had a busy couple of weeks. First, at Ty Newydd in North Wales tutoring a course with Mary Hoffman www.maryhoffman.co.uk . It was a great week, with really enthusiastic students, keen to know more about writing and hone their skills. We worked them pretty hard, but I think that they enjoyed themselves. If you want to write, then check out the courses at Ty Newydd www.tynewydd.org or at one of the centres run by the Arvon Foundation www.arvonfoundation.org . Marcus Sedgwick came along as our visiting author. It was great to see him and the students really enjoyed hearing about his next novel. When I go back from Ty Newydd, I did another writers' workshop for Warwick Words, but this time it was pretty local. The session was full of dedicated people, dedicated enough to tip up at 10:00 on a Sunday morning in the pouring rain. It was lovely to see some old friends there and nice to meet Claire who has her own blog and has already been in touch via mine, so somebody is reading this! Joe, the book that I was trying to remember was The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick.

On Saturday, 11th October, I was at the Cheltenham Festival - 'hi' to everyone who came along, especially the Bookwitch, who was there with her daughter and came up afterwards to have her book signed. She's one of the best of the book bloggers, who are getting to be quite a power in the land. You can find her at: www.bookwitch.wordpress.com .

I'm nearly at the end of quite a busy time, so now I'm going to try and get some writing done...