Romantic Novelists's Conference Day Two

Saturday was an example of how my life can be divided. I needed to be in two places at once. DS2 was celebrating his last day at prep school and there were all these wonderful sessions at the conference.........I may it back to the conference in time for Jill Mansell's talk which was the last session of the day.

Jill had us all laughing which did make it tricky to take coherent notes but here is what I can make out of mine (Jill if I have my facts wrong please please correct me - otherwise it might be embarassing!):

-she writes feel good fiction with nice people in it
-her characters are much wittier than she is (so she says)

-she writes by hand sitting comfortably on her sofa with tv going in the background

-she doesn't break the work up into chapters until she has written the whole book and can see where the breaks need to be

-she uses a time line

-she gets here ideas from being nosy, eavesdropping, watching tv while writing, problem pages in magazines, asking people pertinent questions

-sparks of ideas do just come

-she adores the Internet and has found that looking oneself up is like being in the a loo cubicle and having people just outside talking about you

-the biggest compliment is that she made a reader laugh or cry and helped them come through some hard times
-she collects embarrassing experiences
-she writes one book a year/ roughly 1000 words a day


Now Fortunately I can send you and me in the right direction for some brilliant reports on the the sessions I missed. Debs Carr has written up her day at the conference here. The notes are brilliant in their detail. Ray-Anne is working her way through her notes and thus far written up the Midas PR session here. We were lucky enough to have the independent book seller Mark Thornton of Mostly Book in Abingdon providing the conference with the book stall and a talk on Shelf Secrets. His account of the conference is here.


So the one successful thing I did do was have my camera handy to capture everyone dressed for the gala dinner........... So here is a selection of Romantic Novelist's in the bar of course

Here is Anne Ashurst and Giselle Green

.

Nell Dixon and Fiona Harper.

Here's Bex Leith and Lesley Cookman.

Jane Wenham-Jones and Katie Fforde

Kate Harrison and Sarah Duncan

Julie Cohen and Pam Brooks aka Kate Hardy

Janet Gover and Ray-Anne (see above)












Fenella Jane Miller, Anna Jacobs and Jean Fullerton

Jill Mansell and Moi

Beryl Kingston

Kate Johnson

and her shoes!