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A beach, a badge, and a book

            …an alliterative blog post. 🙂

A beach

It’s the height of summer here. The strawberries have come and gone, but now there are crates of watermelons in the supermarket. The kids are getting tanned, even though I cover them with sunscreen every day. During the day, we squirt them with the hose on the trampoline, and when the cool evening comes, they’re back out there again, bouncing with the mosquitos.

Earlier this month, we loaded up the car and headed north to our favourite holiday spot. It was really nice to swap the scene on the left for the one on the right…I know which back yard I prefer!

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Around the world in 18 days

Auckland, Sydney, Dubai, London, Oxford, Copenhagen, Yngsjö…

What exactly does a writer do when she’s set free in the big wide world?

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She goes to a party

In London, I was lucky enough to go to the RNA’s fabulous summer party, where I met and mingled with lots of lovely authors and publishing industry people. Jenny Colgan won the RoNA award for Romantic Novel of the Year, for her romantic comedy Welcome to Rosie Hopkins’ Sweetshop of Dreams. And the Joan Hessayon New Writers’ Award – there’s me in the photo amongst the nominees! – was won by Liesel Schwarz, for her wonderful steampunk novel A Conspiracy of Alchemists. (Thanks to Marte Lundby Rekka for the photos.)

The RoNa nominees - winner Jenny Colgan is second from right.

The Joan Hessayon nominees - winner Liesel Schwarz is second from left, I'm third from right.

The Joan Hessayon nominees – winner Liesel Schwarz is second from left, I’m third from right.

She does a bit of sightseeing

Some things you just have to do – ‘research’ and ‘sightseeing’ are two sides of the same coin after all! And some special places just have to be revisited. Hello, Trafalgar Square…

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She walks in the footsteps of great intellectuals (it might rub off a little, right?)

I wandered – and dodged a few bicycles – amongst the dreaming spires of Oxford, where even the statues are studious! (We don’t need to mention how long it took to finish my degree!)

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She explores a fairy-tale town

I visited with Hans Christian Andersen’s Little Mermaid in Copenhagen, as magical a place as you always imagined. And yes, they have Great Danes in Denmark!

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She goes home (from home)

In beautiful Sweden, my second home, I spent time with greatly-missed friends and family (the honorary, exchange student kind) and rediscovered my rusty Swedish. Check out the YouTube clip at the end of this post to hear how it’s really done! The yellow building in the photo below is my old high school. Yngsjö – and all of southern Sweden – was at its glorious, newly-sprung spring best. It’s just as beautiful whether you can pronounce it or not!

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And finally, she goes home for real

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It was 60+ hours travelling time, and more than 25,000 miles there and back – not including an unexpected diversion to Melbourne. I really was all over the place! But the jetlag was more than worth it for the joy of stepping right back in with much-loved friends, and meeting online author friends for the first time. Amazing memories, fresh perspectives, and something extra special – the outline for a new book!

Now to go and finish the current one…

Happy travels everyone! 🙂

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(P.S. None of this adventure would have been possible without my guy holding the fort at home – filling lunchboxes, doing laundry and cooking dinners, while still running a company. That’s my kind of hero. ♥)

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