Victoria Connelly » Carole Matthews

Partying in Piccadilly

Victoria — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 17:53:28 +0000

On Wednesday night, we had the pleasure of celebrating the launch of the RNA’s fabulous anthology, Loves Me, Loves Me Not. This wonderful golden tome contains over forty fabulous short stories and is published to celebrate the RNA’s 50th anniversary. Most of the contributors were there and we were all happy to pose in our finery on the amazing staircase at the Cavalry and Guards Club in Piccadilly.

Here I am with the RNA’s marvellous chair and writer extraordinaire, Katie Fforde - both of us wearing celebratory gold.

And chatting to the gorgeous and gracious Joanna Trollope.

I also met the lovely Adele Parks…

and Carole Matthews whose heels were snapped for Janet Gover’s shoe blog!

And here I am posing on that fabulous staircase.

It was such a great evening and I hope we don’t have to wait another 50 years until the next one!

Home and away

Victoria — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 09:50:24 +0000

I really will have to think about moving to Chawton one of these days as I’m there so often. My latest trip was to hear a lecture about Jane Austen’s manuscripts and it was fascinating stuff. Did you know that our beloved author didn’t know how to use apostrophes properly? She would send her hand-written manuscripts to the publisher with all sorts of crossings out and errors and they turned everything into the perfect prose that we know and love today. But I think the highlight of the talk for me was actually being within touching distance of six first-edition copies of her books!

Monday brought a trip to the Isle of Wight to deliver more of hubby’s paintings to Island Fine Arts. We were anxious about the crossing as there was some heavy rain around but it was fairly smooth, thank goodness, and the sun even came out for us in the afternoon and we drove up to Culver Down where Roy painted and Molly and I went walking.

Back at home now and my first website competition has come to a close. Katie Fforde chose the winner out of over three hundred entries and the signed copy of Molly’s Millions and the goody bag are winging their way to Chaitali in Illinois, USA.

If you’d like to know more about Katie Fforde, have a look at the Writer Top Tens page where you can also read all about Carole Matthews too! More top tens coming soon …

Writers, writing and Wales

Victoria — Fri, 29 May 2009 08:16:10 +0000

It was the Oxford Literary Festival this month and I got to meet children’s writer and one-time laureate, Michael Morpurgo. His books Private Peaceful and The White Horse of Zennor are amongst my favourite. Whilst in Oxford, I met up with one of my other favourite writers, Julia Golding, and talked about fantasy, festivals and the horrors of getting the right title for your books. I also managed a quick chat with Joanna Kenrick between events.

At Waterstones with Lisa Jewell

Then there was a fabulous fiction panel at Notting Hill’s Waterstones which I attended with Helen Salter. It was great fun and lovely to chat with Carole Matthews, Isabel Wolff and Lisa Jewell who has given me a lovely quote for my novel Molly’s MillionApril also meant a trip to the London Book Fair where I met up with my lovely German agent for lunch. There was also time to meet up with Juliet Archer for a writerly gossip on the steps of Earl’s Court.

Then, a surprise trip to Pembrokeshire where I managed to finish the first draft of my new novel, Connie Gordon’s Clan, and completely killed my right shoulder doing so. Ouch! The coast and countryside glowed with yellow flowers: primroses, celandines, cowslips, dandelions, buttercups and the ever-present gorse.

Flowers on the Pembrokeshire coast