Flaming Nora: Community and cornets

Friday, November 11, 2022

Community and cornets - my writing week

This week was the book launch in Ryhope for my Christmas novel A Mother's Christmas Wish. The book is in the shops on Thursday November 24, but I held a special launch event at Ryhope Community Centre this week by way of thanks to Ryhope Heritage Society to coincide with their monthly meeting. It was immense! We had to bring in the emergency chairs because so many people turned up. What an incredible day. This picture shows me with Brian Ibinson, Chair of Ryhope Heritage Society and my cousin Robert and his wife Julie, who played The Miners' Hymn on cornets at the event after a moving film from Brian about Ryhope's mining past.

This week is Sunderland Beer Festival which runs at The Peacock pub in the city centre, where I'm sponsoring a beer made from a 1920s recipe. It continues over this weekend. If you go, pick up the free CAMRA Angle magazine from the Campaign for Real Ale, where I've written an article about Ryhope pub landladies of the 1920s to tie in with my new novel, A Mother's Christmas Wish.

I was on the front cover of The Sunderland Echo, my local newspaper, with a feature on my new book A Mother's Christmas Wish and a competition to win signed copies and a chocolate hamper.

I was interviewed this week by Gilly Hope on BBC Newcastle about my writing life and new Christmas novel A Mother's Christmas Wish - find out more here.

You can listen to it all here.

I donated 30 books to Saint Paul's church Christmas Fayre and sold them within the hour. All money went to Saint Paul's church. It's fantastic talking to readers of my books and I love these events.

I gave a talk at Chester-le-Street library for their monthly book group, which went very well and it was an honour to be invited. I also told the group about my next novels which are set in their town.

I also helped out at Sunderland Antiquarian Society this week where they were stuffing envelopes with their Christmas newsletter. With almost 1,500 members, it was all hands to the pumps to get the newsletters into envelopes. And each newsletter carries a flyer inside to help promote my Christmas novel A Mother's Christmas Wish.

And I even found time to start planning the first in my trilogy of The Toffee Factory Girls books.

I'm delighted to say I am now offering GIFT VOUCHERS which can be exchanged for any of my sagas or cosy crimes. Perfect Christmas presents! All details at bit.ly/GlendaYoungGiftVoucher

I crafted another episode of my weekly soap opera Riverside for The People's Friend magazine. I've been writing Riverside weekly since 2016 and you can find out all about it here.