The other day Fevers of the Mind invited me on Twitter to be part of their Wolfpack of writers and overnight they’ve published this! Editor David L O’Lan and the Fevers team work hard at this excellent blog with new postings most days, always moving, varied, wonderful.

This caught my eye the other day – Seven Years As An Author: Ten Things I’ve Learned: ‘You can do a whole lot in seven years. Eat 364 tins of baked beans. Have nine kids. Drink 2,555 pots of nuclear-strength coffee. Watch all of Grey’s Anatomy. Or, you could do what I did and write 18 novels.’

Ladies, gentlemen and everybody else, please welcome Clare Lydon. When she joined my writing sessions years ago in Greenwich Waterstones, she already had a firm idea of what she wanted, a clear, exiting writing style and the business mind and discipline to make it work. Congratulations, Clare, you deserve all your success. I’m thrilled to see you do so well.

My story Laughing and Grief has been accepted by American Writers Review. In February, while builders were bravely replacing my roof in high winds and snow, I wrote about a sweet gentleman I met in February 2020 when I treated myself to a few days in Paris, just as the world was tilting into the pandemic. It fitted the theme of an event in Greenwich (online) run in March by marvellous Irena Hill of In-Words and she kindly allowed it to elbow in beside the poetry listed for that excellent evening. Many thanks to Irena and to everyone for their wonderful comments about the story. It’s my first fiction in over ten years and I’m excited to see it published at all, let alone somewhere as prestigious as American Writers Review. You can find their back issues here – enjoy!