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!

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 …