On Thursday the 11th I was invited to Radio Humberside for Carl Wheatley's Summer Show. We chatted for almost an hour; he asked me about my life as a child in the West Riding of Yorkshire and had obviously done his research very well for he picked up on the time we spent at my granny's house and as she didn't have electricity but only gas, I took a candle up the stairs to bed. Carl said it sounded just like a scene from one of my books which made me think, not only of how ancient I sounded, but wondered how we ever came to grow up to be fit and safe and healthy without the rules of Health and Safety to follow and adhere to!
Last week I had a meeting with Andy Barber of the KC Smile Foundation and Linda Monday, a volunteer with the Hull Memory Clinic. There will be more to report on this meeting in due course.
I'm to appear at the Beverley Literature Festival on October 15th and share a spot with Mike Pannett. I haven't met Mike before but I understand from those who have heard him speak that he is very entertaining. I shall be speaking of my upcoming novel, The Harbour Girl due out in November and read a taster from it. In the festival brochure I am described -- for the first time ever, as Beverley's own Catherine Cookson, which I find very strange as Catherine Cookson was quite unique. The title has probably come about because I won the Catherine Cookson Award way back in 1993. The other thing is that I am billed as Val Woods. Catherine Cookson I am not. Val (or Valerie) Wood I am.
In the meantime, the novel in progress continues on. The characters are well formed and are taking on their own lives with a little help from me.
