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Allison Symes – Author Update November 2024 – Book Fairs, Autumn Gatherings, Flash NANO and More

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Image Credits:-
Many thanks to Janet Williams for taking pictures of yours truly at The Hilt Book Fair. Other photos were taken by me, Allison Symes, as were all screenshots. Other images created in Book Brush using either my photos or Pixabay ones.

It’s been a busy time of late. As well as going to the Association of Christian Writers (ACW) Autumn Gathering event in Rugby, literally the following week I was at The Hilt, taking part in the Book Fair.

I was pleased to see this back and while it was quieter than last year, it was great to meet writers from last year, meet new authors, and have a good chat with those I’ve known for a while, including our own Richard Hardie who was promoting his new book, Remember Remember, the third in his Temporal Detective Agency series for YA readers. (I’ve not been a YA for some considerable time but still love books like these and see no reason why my age should preclude me from reading them!).

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Making the Most of a Writing Event

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Image Credits:-
Images created in Book Brush using Pixabay photos. Screenshots and photos from The Writers’ Summer School, Swanwick were taken by me, Allison Symes. A huge thank you to Julia Patterson for taking the image of me leading my editing workshop at the 2023 Swanwick.

I’m shortly off on my travels again to a major highlight of my writing year, The Writers’ Summer School, Swanwick in lovely Derbyshire. I meet up with friends I only see online for the rest of the year (though that is wonderful).

Indeed, one writer I plan to be catching up at Swanwick is Val Penny, author of the DI Hunter Wilson series, whom I’ll be interviewing here again next week. I hope to write more about Swanwick for a later post here but I am running a two part course called Editing as a Writer, Editing as a Competition Judge, which I’m looking forward to presenting.

I thought it might be useful to share some tips as to how to make the most of any writing event you might go to, whether it is a week long residential one like Swanwick, or a single day event. (I am hoping to get to another of those soon too run by the Association of Christian Writers).

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How Has Your Summer Been?

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I know, I know! With a title like that, this could be a very short post indeed!

It has been an odd year, has it not? Even the weather has reflected it. I noticed my first ripe blackberries out at the end of July, a good month early. And I’m seeing the leaves on the trees changing colour and some shedding of leaves occurring now, in August, significantly earlier than normal, and almost certainly due to the lack of rainfall over the last few weeks.

A beautiful summer image here. I suspect most of us will hope Summer 2021 will be happier than this year’s. Pixabay image.

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