April* Wrap-up

*and late March…

It feels like it’s been a while since I last posted here. I’ve been very busy with various things, unfortunately not many of them were writing related.

The end of March was an excellent time for me, with two big book signing/sales events: Clunes Booktown and Australian Romance Readers Association ‘A Romantic Rendez-vous‘.

Clunes Booktown was a two day event were a huge number of books sellers and authors set up at to sell their wares. I was in a tent with a number of other romance and genre writers, and we had a fantastic time speaking to people and soaking up the atmosphere.

A number of authors from the Melbourne Romance Writers Guild were also there, though most were in other tents from where I was. I think there were a similar number of people there this year to last year, however I’m not sure people were spending as much. I think the cost of living thing has been hitting people and their ability to buy new books might have decreased. That being said, ebooks are still a good, less expensive option to support your favourite author.

I also appeared at the ARRA event in late March. Held at the Novotel in Preston, I was worried there wouldn’t be many people there, but I was quite busy and made some good sales. I also handed out a number of cards with a link to my free ebook. You can download a free copy of my recent book ‘Pillion for a Police Officer’ from my website here.

The first week of so of April, I was up in Moulamein (rural NSW, sort of near Swan Hill) for ConFest. It was my third ConFest in a row acting as one of the leaders of the Life Drawing Tent Crew. We were preparing for a bumper year as it was the 50th anniversary of the very first ConFest held in 1976. A lot has changed since then, but a lot has also stayed the same. There is a commitment to community leadership, grassroots action, and no amplified music.

I joined eight other members of the Life Models’ Society there as the Life Drawing Tent Crew, and we were able to provide a basic introduction to modelling to many over the Easter long weekend, as well providing a great quite spot for artists (beginner and experienced alike) to draw their fellow ConFesters.

A lot of the people who modelled had never done it before, and it was something on their bucket list, or that they’d been meaning to do for a while. Some were experience life models, who were able to bring their experience to the stage and wow our artists.

Once I made it back to the city, I was thrown into a couple of weeks of hectic work stuff at the day job. If I’m being honest, it’s been really hectic since December of last year, but the end is in sight. We have the external team coming to assess us in about two weeks, and after that we will have a bit of a break to get back to some of the other things on the to do list.

In all of that, I haven’t been able to do as much writing as I would have hoped. I did submit my short novella, ‘Banking on her Secret Star’ to the anthology for attending authors at the Secrets in the Pages signing event in Bendigo in September, so keep an eye out for links to that closer to the date, and feel free to come see me there!

In the meantime I have a couple of story ideas that are waiting for me to have some time to write, and I’m planning to submit some artwork to the Incognito Art Show at the end of May. I’d better get cracking on that, as I haven’t got very far on this project yet.

I hope with the wind down of the day job, and the break between now and Spring ConFest, I’ll be able to do a bit of writing. I’ve booked in to a full day horror writing workshop this Saturday through The Wheeler Centre, so I hope that will be inspiring! I would love to be able to put out a book this year, so we’ll see how we go.