Yes, I know that the lack of rain—about half of England is officially in drought—has reduced crops dramatically, but the sunshine has helped crops, too.
Hereford, where I live, is very much an agricultural county. As I drive around I can see that the crops have already been harvested. The yield will be lower, I assume, but, on the benefit side, the farmers will not have to spend lots of money to dry the grain as they usually do. It’s already bone dry.
Joanna announces the forthcoming release of a spooky new Libertà anthology
Many of you bought (thank you!) and enjoyed the first Libertà six-story anthology, Beach Hut Surprise, written by the members of the Libertà hive, plus two multi-published writing friends, Louise Allen and Lesley Cookman. Very sadly, Lesley died in 2025. For this new collection, we have the original five authors plus another prize-winning writer friend, Janet Gover. So it will contain six novellas, as before.
For this new anthology, we’re leaving the beach and travelling to the wilds of Cornwall, to a remote village called Trehallows. (And yes, we made it up, just as we invented Little Piddling. But, in case you were wondering, Trehallows is on the south coast of the county, not all that far from Fowey.)
In Beach Hut Surprise, we had stories ranging across the 20th century and into the 21st. For our new venture, we’re setting our novellas in six different centuries, from the 16th to the 21st. Bit of a challenge for some of us who had to write about periods we’re less familiar with. But good to exercise the writing grey cells, no?
And speaking of grey cells, the first novella in the collection features a certain mystery lady called Agatha. Continue reading →
I have a routine on Sundays. I read the Sunday papers, over coffee and croissants. When I’ve finished reading, I do — correction: I TRYto do — 3 puzzles in the Observer: the Killer Sudoku, the classic Sudoku, and the prize crossword.
And I do them in that order which is a bit daft since the Killer is the one I find most difficult of the three.
The Sunday before last, I managed to finish the two Sudoku puzzles, but I could not finish the crossword. Clue 1 across defeated me. Even though it was only 4 letters and I had 2 of them from the down answers. I had R, Blank, M, Blank.
Unfortunately the clue led me to the answer MEME. But I was sure that I had the correct answer to clue 1 down, beginning with R. I knew it couldn’t be MEME in any case, because that was the answer to a different clue, later on. Tearing my hair out, I even googled the clue and the internet told me that the answer was definitely MEME. Continue reading →
The very first Libertà newsletter — with our very first exclusive for subscribers — goes out this Friday, 1st July 2016!
Don’t Miss Out!
If you’d like to subscribe, you can do so at the top of the sidebar on any page of the Libertà website or click on the link below, to go direct to the sign-up page
At some point every romantic novelist faces the Wedding Dilemma.
Will they? Won’t they? If they do — how, when and where? On the page? On the last page?
Of course, the purist’s answer is: whatever is right for the characters. But, just as organising a real-life wedding needs to take account of friends and family, the end of a story — perhaps more than any other part of the book — is there to satisfy Readers. To provide emotional closure.
Do Readers want, need a wedding to achieve that? Even if the characters don’t? Continue reading →
