Wednesday 30 July 2014

The House at Zaronza by Vanessa Couchman is published!

Last night I attended the launch party, along with other members of the Parisot Writing Group, for The House at Zaronza, my friend Vanessa’s first book.  The novel, which falls under the genre of historical fiction, is set in Corsica, a place I love.  We are so proud that one of the Parisot Writing Group has achieved such success and we were thrilled to join the celebrations.  I’ve enjoyed reading Vanessa’s short stories and I can’t wait to read The House at Zaronza.  It is published by Crooked Cat and is available through Amazon.    

Wednesday 9 July 2014

The Parisot Writing Group (PWG)

I realised I haven't mention the writing group I belong to on my blog in any detail.  I formed the PWG nearly two years ago at the library in the village of Parisot, Tarn-et-Garonne, France.  It has been a rewarding experience and has really helped me with my writing.  We started out as a group of nine.  At that time, some of us had been writing for a while and others were new to writing.   We meet up for three monthly sessions in both the spring and autumn.  The sessions are just over two hours long.  Having the meetings structured in this way means that most people make every session and we still have eight original members plus two new ones.   The first group proved so popular that I started a second group last autumn, as I didn’t want the number of the original group to be more than ten.    We are now at a stage where everyone feels comfortable sharing their writing and trusts each other.   This year we kicked off with a weekend writing workshop with Amanda Hodgkinson, which proved a great success and we hope to have more author led workshops over the next twelve months.  One of our members, Vanessa Couchman, has been writing fiction since 2010 and is about to have her first novel, The House at Zaronza published by Crooked Cat later this month, which we are all excited about.  You can check out this link for more details.