Hi Folks
Last night was the first of our events with Marie Claire as part of their Inspire and Mentor programme, in London at MC’s amazing offices. There’s a roof terrace! With views over everything! And conference suites named after different fonts, like Helvetica and Garamond! There were four of us on the panel, Carla Bevan, who is MC associate editor, Katie Espiner, who is the rocking deputy publisher at HarperCollins, and Jonathan, my agent.

A tiny part of me has been a bit ambivalent about doing the tour, because as we all know it’s so difficult to get published these days and I don’t want to peddle that X Factor ‘follow your dream’ line, as it can lead to muchos disappointment. But as we were having ‘a’ drink on the terrace and people started rocking up I looked at them arriving one by one, on their own, high heels, after a day in the office, and I thought, well, damn good on you, ladies (it was mostly ladies - 90 or so and about 5 chaps? good on you, chaps!). You have taken the first step and it’s really brave to have come along to this, I would never have done, I scribbled away in my room and bit my nails instead. Anyway, it was a fab fab evening. Loads of great people and some interesting questions though I’m sure we all rambled on too long, and afterwards I got to meet some incredibly lovely people who wanted their copies of I REMEMBER YOU signed (in a free goody bag along with copies of Marie Claire and some nice smellies - mm!) and that was great too. There was a girl with the same necklace as me, someone called Chi Chi - what a great name, no? a lovely woman called Marie who’s already emailed me today (good luck Marie!) and a lady with the greatest fringe ever who had the same vest top from gap as me (yes, I was staring at their clothes, they were all sooo elegant).

Anyway, we’re off to Bristol tonight, Birmingham tomorrow, and next week Edinburgh, Leeds, and Liverpool, and I’ll be blogging for Marie Claire - here’s the first one. http://www.marieclaire.co.uk/community/blog/491050/the-schedule.html

If you’re coming to any of the events, look forward to meeting you.
Everyone else, have a great summer. If you’ve emailed me and I haven’t responded, huge huge apologies. I’ve read all the emails and it is so great to hear from you! THANKS! Just been taking it easy on the typing as I’ve done my shoulder and elbow in through too much clacking away. But I have a new bright green ergonomic chair and wrist pad and my RSI is much better, also summer is the season of prosecco so I am basically jacked up on that all day too. Ho ho. Thanks though.

Love
Harrie
x