It is, isn’t it? I mean, we had a week of gorgeous sunshine and one far-too-hot day last week, so it MUST be summer, despite what the grey clouds and chilly 14 degrees are saying today…
First things first: I bought a new pair of dungarees, with pencils on. Aren’t they brilliant? I’ve been wearing the same short pinafore (embroidered with references to my books) for years and I fancied a change. Plus, not to put too fine a point on it, I’ve stress-eaten a lot of cake and biscuits this past year (don’t ask – complicated stuff going on with my kids) so I’m carrying seven extra centimetres around my middle, according to the nice lady who did my health checkup…
March brought World Book Day again, which is always a really wonderful occasion, and I visited two schools in Gloucester, one in London and one in Hinckley. As ever, a real privilege to be able to meet so many young people with such diverse lives and personalities – and it’s also always a stark reminder of the range of facilities available in different schools. One school can’t afford books for their library; another includes fencing in their PE lessons, which take place in a fully-equipped dance studio…
But the interesting thing is that kids are pretty much the same wherever you go – excitable, troubled, challenging, sweet, tired, worried, imaginative and just trying to get through the school day as best they can.
One school reserved TWO parking spaces for me by accident, which made me laugh. And then I thought: WHAT IF THERE’S TWO OF US? and that’s why I write stories…
In April I had the brand new experience of working with a group of young people in the LGBTQ+ community as part of the Luton Literature Festival Storytelling Project. The teenagers in the group had come up with a set of characters and the outline of a plot, and my job was to write it up into a Proper Story. It was fascinating to see what they’d invented, and very challenging to get thirteen named characters (all with back stories; some with illustrations) into a story of four thousand words (which I utterly failed to do and went over word count by some margin). In May I drove to Luton to meet the young people in person, and to have our story read out by a fantastic actor and workshop leader, Aaron Spendlow. It was so lovely to see the effect of the process on the young people: kids often feel disenfranchised these days as mental health difficulties soar post-covid and there’s never enough help for anyone. But this gave them ownership over a creative process and I was so thrilled for them. You can read the story I wrote for them here.
In June, I enjoyed performing at the annual Wychwood Music Festival in Cheltenham. Not just a music festival, it also has a Storybox Tent, run by the fabulous people at Cheltenham Waterstones, and I’m fortunate to be asked back year after year to do an event to whoever turns up in the tent! This year, my lovely author pal John Dougherty and I did a joint event, covering our books and the songs we’ve written over the years (both together and separately) – including the brand new Starlight Stables Gang song, complete with cowboy hats! In the other photo, you can see me with authors Rachel Delahaye and Gareth P Jones. Authors work in isolation so much of the time it’s lovely to cross paths at events!
Last month, I accompanied my daughter to Cardiff for the Taylor Swift concert. Well, she went to the concert; I went to a book shop event featuring my old friend Clare Mackintosh, who is now an internationally bestselling crime writer, but back when we met she was a police officer. She was talking about her latest book, I Promise It Won’t Always Hurt Like This, which is based on her very personal experience of losing one of her twin boys at only five weeks. I haven’t yet read Clare’s book, but the event was very moving (as you might expect) and full of wisdom. You can buy her book here and in all bookshops.
And so to more recent times. Last week I did a fantastic two-day visit to four schools across Gloucestershire with the Read For Good organisation – wow, what fun! (Also, it was VERY HOT and I think some of the children may have melted.) I haven’t had a lot of time for writing this year (see earlier complications with my kids) but things are looking a lot calmer now and I am STARTING A NEW BOOK, hurray!
I will leave you with a few highlights of the past months, from a dinner table of prairie dogs at the Cotswold Wildlife Park, to a lemon and mascarpone cake I made (OMG so good), via the Northern Lights in my back garden (surely a once-in-a-lifetime moment) and a very posh hotel I stayed in on my own which was BLISSFUL. And an arty photo of a fairground ride at Wychwood.
I hope your summer is filled with nice things.
Jo Cotterill 