Yoga, Vampires, Festivals & Fear.

I’m struggling to stay awake as I write this blog for March. Who would have thought that spending a day at a Yoga retreat would leave me feeling so tired. I’ve yawned so much since I got home I’m sure my jaw is going to ache, along with everything else come morning. It was good though, our guru Goddess Caroline Garland, led us through meditation, yoga and Yin yoga moves in a thorough workout over five hours, including a late lunch. I’m sure at some point in the future, you’ll see Yoga appearing as one of my characters leisure pursuits.

The lovely thing was I made several new friends and re-discovered an old friend I used to work with over 20 yrs ago. It felt like we created a family during the course of the day and along with the yoga experience it left me feeling all cosy, warm and loved inside.

Chicken Wizard is on hold regards chasing an agent as the whole world seemed to explode around the writing group which I founded, facilitate and chair. I won’t bore you with the specifics. The group will continue while I have blood in my veins, (that isn’t an invitation to any vampires reading this) but there’s been a bit of a shake up regards the committee roles.

I expect things to change in groups these days. Past experiences have made me accepting of it, and it is an important thing to remember if you ever consider setting up a group. Creative people in particular, are individuals with needs, wants, abilities and dreams. Its only a matter of time before those things come to the fore as their lives change and they adapt by altering their goals.

All groups have a shelf-life and mine is no exception, its just not happening yet. Members will always come and go, numbers rise, fall and rise once more. The important thing is to stay true to the aim of the group – to support, inform and advise writers with their writing careers. It’s a group I love with members I love too, and all the time I do, no matter how stressful, it will continue.

Meanwhile, plans are afoot for my input to Birchington Literary Festival on Saturday 30th April & Sunday 1st May. Its free to attend the sessions but you need to get tickets and those are limited.

I’ve been asked to interview Faye Beerling, a great children’s author and personal friend, so that should be interesting. I’m hoping to make it more a conversation with… than a question-and-answer session.

I’ve offered to run a workshop on character building. Its one of my favourite subjects and critical in making fiction writing come alive. Readers can spot poor character descriptions a mile away. Only a couple of days ago I was advised, from someone reading Witch on the Warpath, that my characters are good making my stories come alive. For me, that is the best feedback I could ask for.

Next, I’m doing a panel discussion around the dystopian/sci-fi genre with two other authors. Finally, I’m facilitating a session where the finalists of the short story competition read their submissions. Plus, maybe do a little piece about writing a short story.

A full weekend for me and hopefully an opportunity to sign and sell some books.

Family wise we’ve celebrated our boy’s twenty-third birthday this week, which meant eating lots of food and slipping off my diet briefly. Thankfully no more spurges planned for the next couple of weeks…. Hold that thought I’ve got a Ladies Night ball coming up soon. More food to force down. Gosh life is such a hardship.

This previous sentence stopped me in my tracks and made me realise how awful that sounded given the current political global climate. I need to remember just how lucky I am to be living in England, and not subject to the whims of an irrational dictator hell bent on Armageddon. My heart aches every night with the news. Covid was awful and so is this, in a different way for a different reason, but innocent lives are being extinguished for no acceptable reason.

With Covid, we couldn’t communicate with a virus and ask it not to kill our people. We had to find a way to prevent it harming humans, but even then we haven’t resorted to killing it outright. We’ve built an invisible wall around ourselves using vaccines instead.

I don’t have the answers, but I do believe all people should be allowed to live without fear for their lives, whoever they are, where ever they are. No one person should have the power to destroy another person’s life.