Going Beyond the Blurb

I want to take a moment to shout about this literary event I went to last week. I had the best time. The venue was stunning, the authors were amazing and... what? Oh right...how did I get to an event during a lockdown?! Sorry, I should explain...it was an MYVLF event!  What's MYVLF?! MYVLF (My Virtual Literary Festival) is an online venue that plays host to all sorts of literary events including author panels and interviews with different writers of various genres and the best part of all is that it is free to become a member!!  The site was set up by three local authors here in Jersey (Channel Islands): Deborah Carr, Gwyn Garfield-Bennett and Kelly Clayton.  They realised that there needed to be a space online that would bring readers and writers together in a friendly and accessible way from the comfort of their own home. Have you ever wanted to go to an event but it's been too far away or the ticket prices have been just a bit out of budget? Living on

It's been four weeks this week since I've been working from home due to the Lockdown and I won't lie, it's been an adjustment. Initially, there were a lot of technical difficulties getting the work system set up on my laptop...apparently having a brand new MacBook Air is less ideal than an old Windows laptop when it comes to downloading systems 🤷‍♀️ Then there was the question of where to set up my "desk". For the first couple of weeks, I rotated every couple of hours from the kitchen table to the sofa, on to my bed and lastly my dressing table. The other hurdle I came to was realising that having the kitchen about 10 steps away all day was VERY dangerous! Put it this way, I now had no excuse to make time for breakfast...or lunch...or any type of snack I found in the cupboards!! But once I'd settled myself into my chosen desk space (the kitchen table) with my fully functioning - if not ancient - laptop and all snacks pre-consumed, I suddenly r

March: Historical Fiction Title: The Winter King Author: Bernard Cornwell Blurb: Uther, the High King of Britain, is dead. His only heir is the infant Mordred. Yet each of the country's lesser kings seek to claim the throne for themselves. While they squabble and spoil for war, a host of Saxon armies gather, preparing for invasion.  But no one has counted on the fearsome warlord Arthur. Handed power by Merlin and pursuing a doomed romance with the beautiful Guinevere, Arthur knows he will struggle to unite the country - let alone hold back the Saxon enemy at the gates. yet destiny awaits him... I should start this review by saying this is not my first Bernard Cornwell read. I am a HUGE fan of his "The Last Kingdom" series and have read one of his famous Sharpe novels which I found on a bookshelf in the a hotel in Malta whilst on holiday a few years ago and it became my poolside companion for the next 7 days. So when I was thinking of a book to rea

If you knew you were going to be stuck on a Desert Island all alone, what top 3 things would you make sure you had with you? These are the types of silly questions me and my friends used to ask each other all the time when we were younger. I think mine were always the same each time; Chocolate, my phone and the complete series of Harry Potter books (yes, I do count the complete series and one item and yes, I do now realise a phone would be a pretty pointless item to have with you on a Desert Island 😝). And now that we in Jersey are completing our second week in lockdown, it made me think that had someone asked me beforehand to pick three things to make sure I had at home with me when stuck there for the foreseeable future, what would I say? I'm tempted to say that none of my answers would change. I've always been a massive chocolate lover and crave it most when I don't have it. But I fear I'd come out of this lockdown looking like Violet Beauregard from Charlie and t