Party time

We scrub up good!
(Thanks to  Lynda Stacey for the photo.)

I got out of the Ivory Tower again last week - this time for a trip to LONDON. (Squeals of delight in background.)

A little trip that included many of my favourite things:

• Staying at a nice hotel (no bed making, full English breakfast and NO WASHING UP)

• Wandering over Waterloo Bridge at dusk,  with all the new skyscrapers in the city lit up, and St Paul's lurking like a ghost in the background. (OK, yes it was raining, but the Xmas market was in full swing on the South Bank, so it felt cosy and warm, in spite of the weather.) 

• Going to parties in posh places (Author Trisha Ashley's lunch time get together at the top of Waterstones in Piccadilly and the RNA Winter party, plus the annual Industry Awards, at the Royal Overseas League)

• Getting together with other Choc-lit authors and hearing about some exciting plans our publisher has for 2017. (You'll be the first to know, I promise. 😍)

• An exhibition at the National Gallery - Beyond Caravaggio. (Some memorable art, but also research. I know I keep threatening it, but there is going to be a book with a 'lost' Caravaggio in it one day, I promise that too.)

All in all I had a very good time, but am now very tired. Lots of sleeping going on. Back to normal next week, I hope.

Research is Dangerous

To a writer research is like catnip, or crack cocaine - dangerously addictive. Procrastination and having fun, and calling it work? What's not to love? I have several books in the planning stage at the moment, which means I have multiple excuses to go exploring. In the last few weeks I have been to Brecon, to scout locations for some scenes for the heist book I keep talking about - a good place to hide out, in the Brecon Beacons, if the bad guys are after you. Even better if it's winter, and snow bound. Closer to home I've been taking pix of local landmarks that may end up in the trilogy that I also have in the works - that one features three heroines in jeopardy and an island. I'm currently designing the island. Did I mention that writers also have delusions of grandeur?

You'll have to imagine the snow.

Islands have lots of  beaches.

 

Being an academic/geek/nerd, when I want to know about something I like to go on courses, which is how I came to spend a day at the National Gallery in London, learning about the paintings of Caravaggio. If you're planing to steal something, you might as well go for something painted by someone famous and therefore extremely valuable. That's not me doing the stealing by the way, but my hero. Although I suspect I will be called on to help him plan the thing. And I don't have designs on a real painting. I intend to invent one for the purpose. And if you want to invent something, you need to know a bit about it first. And it won't be from an existing museum or gallery, so I have to invent that too.

Only looking at the pictures - not pinching them.

See what I mean - exhausting stuff, this research. And completely addictive.