Looking ahead

It must be the start of new term effect or the fact that for years of my life September always meant new beginnings - new term, new school, new courses - and then when I went to university etc new places to live . . . But I always feel more like a new start around the beginning of September than I do at the turn of an old year into a new one.

Updating my web site (with the help of wonderful Heather from We Write Romance) has made me look forward at what's coming up for me. And as I know that some of you want to know about courses, workshops etc that I'll be running, I thought I'd let you know about some events that are on my calendar for the future.

First of all, there's Guildford Book Festival. This runs from 16 - 25th October.

I've been asked to take part in a panel discussing the appeal of romantic fiction together with the fabulous Katie Fforde and Matt Dunn - with Jane Wenham-Jones (who you will know about from my reports on Caerleon Writers' Holidays) acting as compere and asking the questions.

This event will be on 17 October at the Electric Theatre. Time: 7pm

I've also been asked to run a workshop based on the 12 Point Guide to Writing Romance - the details have yet to be finalised, but I expect that the workshop will be on the 17th as well - and it will last for about 2 hours. As soon as I get more details, I will post them here - and on the Events page on my website.

A couple of other teaching events I have been booked for are coming up in 2009. The first of these is in February - Februrary 20th - 22nd to be precise.

And that's when I will be teaching on the Writers' and Artists' Workshop Weekend at Fishguard. As many of you know, I have taught in Fishguard before, at the Winter Novel Writers' Weekend but this is a slightly new departure for me. I will be teaching a course on The Novel, not just Romance and I'm really looking forward to the challenge.

And if anyone wants to learn more about writing poetry, then I should let you know that the Babe Magnet will be adopting his poet and Creative Writing Lecturer hat and joining me in Fishguard to run the Writing Poetry Workshop.

You can find more details about this weekend in February here. And as this weekend is run by the fabulous Anne and Gerry Hobbs who run the Caerleon Writers' Holidays then this will be a welcoming and fun event as well as a chance to learn more about writing.

And talking of Caerleon - although being in San Francisco this summer was wonderful, bit the Magnet and I were really sad that the dates for RWA and Caerleon clashed and in order to be in SF we had to miss being in Wales.

But we will be back at Caerleon in 2009 - and I'm already looking forward to it. The Writers' Holiday this time will be a really special one as it is their 25th event.

The Magnet and I will both be teaching a full course (that's 5 one-hour sessions ) at this Writers' Holiday - where I will be teaching Writing Romantic Fiction and The Babe Magnet will be running a brand new course called Writing the Past - this is a course for those wanting to write creatively from the past - biography, historical non-fiction, and fiction. It covers research, writing techniques and writing for publication.

(And if you should want to take both our courses, you can as we are teaching in different parts of the week so the teaching hours don't clash.)

You can find out more about Caerleon Writers' Holidays - and all the extras that they provide as well as the courses - on the web site here.

So these are the teaching events I have coming up in the future - so far. If anything else crops up, I'll let you know. And you can always find these and any further details you need on the Events page on my web site where I'll post anything and everything I'm doing as I get to know about it

And maybe I'll see you at one of these events - if so, please do come and say hello.