Spaced...

There's a lot going on right now. Like Frankie, I am in Seattle, a business trip of my husband's that I've come along to help with. Meanwhile, I was on the radio today without even being in the country. How clever is that? You can listen again here as long as you get there in the next six days.

Someone pointed out to me last week that all the events going on should be up here and he was quite right, although I have been rather too busy doing them to have time for that blogging thing, you see. Anyway, here goes nothing...

I have a very interesting piece going out on Radio 3, the show called the Verb on Friday 4th April at 21.45. When I was commissioned on this piece, the producer suggested I may want to do something dramatic, or experiment with sound, so I set myself the challenge of writing a piece to be read with a piece of music. I'd already had a bit of a go at this, with the opening prologue to Starfishing, but I'd done that quite loosely because it was for print publication rather than recording, so didn't need to be an exact science. I chose a longer piece of music this time, seven whole minutes. It was the most challenging piece of writing I've undertaken in a while and took a whole day's work, with lots of reading aloud to check the timings. Finishing it was extremely satisfying and exciting.

Thursday 3rd April I'm at the Bookcase in Lowdham for my Notts launch of Starfishing. Frankie is coming along, and will be writing about it afterwards. She's having fun with this postmodern side she's discovered in herself and has no intention of crawling back into her book anytime soon.

Saturday 12th, I'm hanging out at the New Street branch of Waterstone's in Birmingham to chat to customers and sign some books from 11am till 3pm. Thursday 17th, 7:30pm, I'm talking and signing at Waterstone's Nottingham. Nottingham Central Library are having me on Monday 21st April at 2pm. 26th April is my appearance at the Cuirt festival in Galway, 5pm.

I also have a piece in this month's Left Lion and next month's Marie Claire so watch out for those.

I'm off to give in to my jetlag.

Nicola x