Tag Archives: uk meet

Fun on the South Coast

Hi all, I’m back from my trip to Brighton for the UK GLBTQ Fiction Meet. Both Brighton and the Meet were fabulous, and I’m still recovering from lots of travel and a bulging inbox. I’ve now sorted out photos, etc, and am now ready to blog!

So, here goes:

The UK GLBTQ Fiction Meet

The reason I was in Brighton in the first place, the UK Meet was a place for readers and writers of GLBTQ fiction to meet, exchange ideas, show off their work and skills, and so on. I took part in three events: a reading of 150 words from the beginning of a story, a panel on LBTQ fiction and a talk on marketing. All were fun, but I must admit to being relieved when my last panel was finished so I could just relax and enjoy the day.

Also, as a result of being involved in three sessions, I didn’t get to sit in on many panels. However, over the course of the day I got some questions answered, was asked some questions, met some cool people, talked to people I already knew and just generally had fun. I was also paid a very high compliment about my work. A person who shall remain unnamed came up and said that they never read lesbian fiction, it wasn’t their thing,  but when I read my 150 words out, they got goosebumps. I was silent for a second, then said thank you about a dozen times because I just didn’t know what else to say. It was a massive compliment and put a silly grin on my face!

Overall, it was a very worthwhile day. Fun, informative, well-organised (thanks, organisers – you did a super job!) and definitely worth attending. Happy news is that next year’s meet will be in Manchester, which is easier for me to get to. Plus, hopefully I’ll be able to drag my buddy Victoria Blisse along with me! 😉

Brighton

Gorgeous seaside town. I didn’t see nearly as much of it as I would have liked, but I saw enough to make me want to go back. The town is big and quite spread out, so there’s plenty of walking to be done. I’m not much of a shopper, but it’s a good place for shopping. I visited my usual haunts, i.e. Waterstones, Paperchase, sex shops, chocolate

shops. But I also did the seaside thing of visiting the pier (but I don’t look down. Hate it!!), eating candy floss, playing on 2p machines, eating fish and chips, and so on. I even took a photo of the dodgems as a nod to my story, Dodging, which appears in Smut by the Sea. And if we do a second volume, I have some inspiration, too! 😉

The road between the campsite we used and the town took us straight past Devil’s Dyke, which is part of the South Downs Way – another reason I want to go back. That, with the town and the close vicinity of lots of country houses and the like, mean Brighton is definitely on my list for a longer visit in the future.

Other

I also sneaked in some novel research on the way home. I visited Cliveden (albeit briefly) to go in the maze. I have a maze scene planned into my novel and wanted to get some ideas. It proved fruitful! 🙂 I took plenty of photos and had a good think about the scene – hopefully it’ll be as fun to write as it was to visit the maze!

In other news, I have a new release in two days! My first m/m erotic story, Ditched, is released on Wednesday by Resplendence Publishing. I can’t wait to see what people think – I hope they like it!

UK Meet – A Meeting of Minds

Last Saturday I attended the UK Meet, a get-together for fans and writers of MM / FF, GLBT. It was the first time I’d really attended anything like it, so I didn’t really know what to expect. I’d already had some involvement with the organisers as I contributed to both anthologies that were put together for the meet, British Flash and Tea and Crumpet, but other than that I had no idea what to expect.

British FlashLuckily, my buddy Victoria Blisse was in attendance so I knew one person, at least! Us Northern birds would stick together. My OH kindly offered to play taxi, so we collected Ms. Blisse from Milton Keynes train station and the fun began! We got to the venue in plenty of time, which was fine because it gave us more time for chinwagging, which we’re ohhh, so very good at.

A while later, more and more people started to arrive and proceedings began. We all stood up in turn and gave a brief introduction of ourselves and whether we were readers, writers or both. Then there was some general chatter and we broke for lunch which gave us time to eat, of course, and also to talk and mingle with people. Victoria introduced me to Serena Yates, who I’d previously corresponded with by email, but was happy to meet and found her a delight to chat with. I chatted to a few others and had my fill of naughty foods, checked out the promo goodies on the table and generally soaked up the atmosphere.

Tea and CrumpetAfter lunch, Ms. Blisse herself chaired a panel on writer’s block, which was fabulous. In her usual chatty, friendly and humorous style, Victoria made her points in a fun way and had us all giggling. And very good points they were too – she made several suggestions on how to beat writer’s block, but rather than repeating them all, I’ll direct you to her blog post where she’s done a recap.

Next up were Total-E-Bound, who gave a fabulous presentation and basically consolidated my previous conceptions of them (which were very good) and made me even more eager to work with them. Claire and Heidi were very friendly and approachable, but also know what they’re talking about and give the impression of a company that knows what they’re doing and are eager to please both their authors and their customers. I look forward to visiting with them in September when they’re hosting an open day.

Following on from Total-E-Bound were a trio of historical writers, Erastes, Charlie Cochrane and Alex Beecroft, who gave excellent tips on writing historicals. Comments included the importance of research, not needing to go into silly amounts of detail, information on dialogue and dialect and more. I haven’t really considered writing a historical before, mainly because the idea of all the research and getting facts wrong frightens the life out of me, but the three writers on the panel certainly made it seem less daunting. So, never say never!

Clare London was up next, talking promo – my favourite! She made lots of very valid and interesting points on websites, Twitter, Facebook, forums and more. What I liked was her way of using visual aids to break up the presentation and also bring in a bit of humour and talking points. I know lots of people find promo daunting (hence setting up my business!) but Clare reminded people that it can be done, and successfully!

We ran out of time for the previously arranged panels, but I would say that the ones that did happen were informative and useful, and people definitely took things away from it. We were encouraged to ask questions which opened up discussion to the whole room and as a result, many ideas were thrown about. I certainly have some food for thought.

A mass signing session wrapped up the day for me, where I passed my contributor copy of Tea and Crumpet around to get it signed by the other authors and then had to dash to get lovely Victoria back to the train station on time.

Despite the fact the majority of the writers in attendance were m/m, I still felt the day was worth it for me. So much of the information was relevant to writing in general, and not specific genres, that it wouldn’t have mattered what I wrote.

Overall, it was a very positive experience for me, and I’d definitely like to attend next year’s meet, if they’ll have me!

Double Penetration

… into the short story market, that is! What were you thinking, you rude people!? 😉

Today I am celebrating not one, but two new releases! And what’s more, they’re not going to cost you the earth…

British FlashBritish Flash was created as a souvenir of the 2011 UK Meet, an occasion for GLBTQ supporters to get together in a relaxed setting to celebrate and chat about the fiction community they love.

It contains my saucy f/f story, While the Boys Are Away, and also nestling between the covers are stories from the following fab people:

Alex Beecroft, Victoria Blisse, Stevie Carroll, Charlie Cochrane, Sophia Deri-Bowen, Erastes, Lucy Felthouse, Elin Gregory, Mara Ismine, Sandra Lindsey, Clare London, JL Merrow, Josephine Myles, Zahra Owens, Jay Rookwood, Caroline Stephens, Stevie Woods, Lisa Worrall and Serena Yates.

But you know what the best thing about it is? It’s FREE! Yes, that’s right – you can get your hands on this yummy eBook without parting with any of your hard-earned cash. Get yourself over to Smashwords and download your copy today!

 

The Best of Lucy FelthouseThe Best of Lucy Felthouse is a single author collection from Xcite Books. Containing five of my favourite stories from Xcite anthologies, you can now get them all in one place!

Contains Fantasy Assignment, a story about a hot man in uniform, A Lucky Man, a tale of a man with a curvy girl he just can’t get enough of, Posh Boy, which is the tale of a guy with a posh accent and the girl that lusts after him, E620, a University lecture becomes suddenly more interesting when our narrator lapses into daydream and Beach Babe, the story of Megan, who meets a sex god on holiday and has her way with him, despite him not speaking a word of English.

Want a copy? Head over to Xcite Books today to get yourself a bargain – or just hang fire a little while and it’ll start popping up at other retailers, including Amazon, ARe and many more. I’ll keep this page updated so when I come across new links, they’ll be there.

I hope you’ll join me in having a tipple to celebrate! Unfortunately I’m working at the moment so it’s Diet Coke, but I’ll be having a Kopparberg later!