Sarah Lay's Blog

The Winter Passing is one today – some story secrets (but no spoilers)

The sun rises on the longest day, the year peaking and the first anniversary of The Winter Passing being published.

Over that year the book has found its way to hundreds of readers and there have been many kind words said about it, a few deep fans of the world, the characters and their story emerging. As a writer you’d hope I could explain how it feels to know something that existed only in your head for so long now belongs to others as well, but I can’t: simply wonderful will have to suffic...

The light is returning: Winter Solstice in The Winter Passing

Solstice greetings one and all – six months on from publishing The Winter Passing and with midwinter the background to a major moment in the story I thought it was time to share some more thoughts (but not spoilers) about solstice in the story.

Get your free copy of The Winter Passing here

I wrote back at midsummer about symbology and what solstice means to the Morrigan but as the wheel of the year turns again I’m thinking more about what midwinter means particularly.

Solstice in The Winter P...

The importance of reader reviews

A massive thank you to everyone who grabbed a copy of The Winter Passing while the Kindle Deal was on and it was available for free – I really hope you enjoy it once you get stuck in to reading. Now – it’s time for reviews!

I wanted to write a quick post today about the importance of reader reviews – especially to independent authors like me, and independent publishers like Reckless Yes. For us book blogger reviews are great (and please get in touch if you’d like a copy for review) but reader...

FREE! Get The Winter Passing free this weekend

This weekend you can get the eBook edition of The Winter Passing for free – that’s right for £0 and £pence (or same free price from your local Amazon). Head over to Amazon and get it here.

With five star reviews calling the contemporary fantasy ‘stunning’, ‘spellbinding’, and ‘a must read’ as well as calling out the ‘beautiful, beautiful writing’ comparisons have been drawn to Neil Gaiman, John Wyndham, and Robert C O’Brian. Readers have fallen in love with the characters, the subtle but sinister noir undertones, and the magic of the Morrigan.

And now you can try out this first novel from Sarah Lay for free on Kindle and Kindle App – head over to Amazon and grab it now.

The Winter Passing is the first book in the House of Morrigan series and follows Centaury Morrigan as she finds her life is not all it seems, and those closest to her are keeping a secret. As her memories and her power are returned she must return to her childhood home and regain control of her bloodline, before everything is lost to a rising dark power. The story explores how we are all made of our memories, as well as friendship and familial bonds.

More about The Winter Passing

Sign up to the mailing list to get the latest news from author Sarah Lay and find out when the next book in the series is due and make sure you’re following the House of Morrigan on Facebook and Twitter.

If you’d prefer a paperback copy limited first editions are available here.

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Where do your ideas come from?

I was chatting this week to someone about The Winter Passing. They were turning a copy over in their hands, running their fingers across the cover, flicking through the pages. We talked about the story, about the themes and then came a big question: where did the idea come from?

It’s one I’ve asked myself a few times and yet I still stumble over the answer. The truth is – the idea of The Winter Passing came from everywhere, and yet nowhere too. And isn’t that the way with most ideas?

Forming ideas: imagination and creativity

Science still doesn’t really fully understand how the brain works and imagination is still a partial mystery. It comes from environment, from memory, and from understanding how the world works and it uses lots of different areas of the brain in order to form mental models or images.

We use imagination all the time – whether we realise it or not – in everything from putting together a meal from what we find in the fridge, to coming up with a new business idea or the plot of our next novel. Some of this use of imagination may seem small, but even that will feed into the bigger things we model in our heads.

Creativity too is drawn from multiple sources – play, problem solving, and patterns. While on the surface both imagination and creativity may seem to be chaotic, or random, or divined from who-knows-where they are both driven by logical processing in the brain.

Of course, this is a simplified view of how imagination and creativity work to give us ideas, but it gives some understanding of how magical worlds seemingly suddenly appear whole in your head.

The idea of The Winter Passing

Knowing this helps me get closer to answering the question about where the idea for The Winter Passing came from. It was, in short, my imagination working overtime and then creativity putting a spin on it all.

The story draws from my environment and from my trying to understand the way the world, and the way people work. I wanted the characters in the book to talk to each other in ways I recognised from my own conversations, and I wanted them to find themselves in landscapes inspired by places I had been. I also wanted to put them through some fairly rough scenarios to test out how they would act, what would they do, who would they become as a result.

And I wanted to explore the idea we are the sum of our memories, and created from other’s perception of us. Everyone’s experience is unique, even in a shared situation, because of the way they view it (both literally and figuratively), how they process it, and what they want from it. I wanted to dig around at what happened if memories were gone, and into the ‘truth’ of a shared memory.  I wanted to start to work through how throw away comments or everyday moments, the ones which don’t necessarily form strong memories, are sometimes the key to understanding the world and our place in it.

Of course I wanted to give my creativity some stretch as well – so the world I created doesn’t necessarily have the same rules as our own. Not only are the characters learning how to be human, they are often doing so while grappling with power and responsibility, with emotions, and with control.

All of this was unlocked by one thing: the centaury flower. Seeing the vintage illustration in a dog-eared, tattered covered, wildflower guide made connections in my mind and opened a door to a whole world I didn’t know until then was contained in my head.

Get The Winter Passing

Those who have already ready the contemporary fantasy The Winter Passing by Sarah Lay, describe it as: ‘stunning’, ‘spellbinding’ and ‘highly recommended’.

find the eBook of The Winter Passing here
find the limited first edition paperback here
leave a review on Amazon or Goodreads – and find out what other people thought
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Packaging The Winter Passing book

This week the cover of The Winter Passing is in the Author Shout Cover Wars vote (vote here – you can vote once a day) so I thought it was as good a time as any to talk about the cover design and packaging!

The Winter Passing cover and type design

The cover was designed by Marcus Galley at Mammoth Creative Works and draws on themes from the story – both the colours and the flower can be found within the novel. We’ve worked together before on music posters but Marcus took the brief for the novel – in terms of the symbolism and style but also the touchpoints of cover design I gave him – and arrived at this perfect design pretty much straight away.

For me it perfectly evokes elements of the story while also bringing to mind some classic cover design on novels I love – particularly the Brian Cronin designs for John Wyndham Penguin paperback editions – as well as vintage botanical illustration.

The cover design motif are repeated throughout the paperback edition of the book on fly sheets and chapter headings through the type design work Biddles Books did on the novel. The interior font is Baskerville – one of the most popular fonts in literary fiction but also highly readable while also elegant.

The Winter Passing paperback packaging

But the design of The Winter Passing didn’t stop there – I spent a lot of time thinking about how I wanted people who bought the book to feel when they opened their package in the post. I wanted the experience of The Winter Passing to begin before they had even got to the first page and to stimulate a number of senses beyond how it looked, particularly touch and smell.

This meant carrying more of the symbolism through and evoking the style of the Morrigan, giving you a little hint of how Centaury experiences in great detail the world around her, feeling as much as seeing what is around her. From the colours used – emerald green, purple and gold – to the bouquet of items on the front cover there is a link back to the story and to the characters you are about to meet.

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD – so you may wish to come back to this post after you’ve read the book (order your paperback copy here).

Colour symbology

The paperback packaging starts with emerald green tissue paper – with the colour green repeatedly appearing throughout the story. It refers to the green of the island and the vast array of shades between moorland, woodland, moss covered stone and the grasses of the sand dunes but also represents the colour of the Morrigan power when it is healing.

The Morrigan seal keeps it all together along with a handwritten card featuring The Winter Passing design in purple and gold. These too are colours present throughout the book – the Morrigan power is golden when working for good, when at its most potent, while purple (which symbolises a calming of the mind and a positive awakening) is also the colour Centaury associates to Rune.

Crow feathers

The crows are part of the island too – their magic powerful in its own right as well as being aligned to the Morrigan. They are the keepers of memory and in this case the feather represents new experience and letting go of past beliefs. Some of the books come with a genuine crow feather collected from the ground in the woodland around my home, while others have a representative feather – the birds don’t shed on demand so it’s a bit lucky dip what you get! Take the meaning if not the authenticity.

I’ll write a whole post on the deeper meaning of crows, and The Crows in The Winter Passing. A favourite creature of mine for their intelligence, symbolism and beauty a pair of crows can also be found on the cover in the Reckless Yes Publishing logo.

Wildflowers

Another intrinsic part of Centaury’s identity – she is named for a wildflower, many of her memories and experiences of place involve flowers, and the song Rune often sings to her is of wildflowers too. I am a big fan of the language of flowers as well as the properties of plants in healing as well as magic so to include some in the bouquet was really a given.

Most copies come with pressed gypsophila – also known as baby’s breath or soap wort – which has the meaning of fertility, being pure of heart and innocence. This too is representative of Centaury and her story. The Morrigan power is a sort of fertility in itself and with the return of her memories her innocence is lifted and she starts to see people and the world through different eyes.

Rosemary

As well as pressed flowers copies shipping within the UK also include a sprig of rosemary in the packaging. Cut fresh from my garden as I package the order the inclusion stimulates the sense of smell as the book is handled for the first time but also has a deeper meaning related to the story.

For rosemary as a herb represents rememberence, love, memory and mouring all of which pretty much sum up the core themes of The Winter Passing.

Eternity knot charm

Finishing off the packaging is this little charm, held in place by twine. Also known as the symbol for infinity the eternity knot is seen throughout The Winter Passing and is the symbol of Centaury and Rune. He has the symbol tattooed on him and when they become bound to each other it is this knot which appears through them in the joining of their hands.

This one is a nice little copper charm which has even more meaning behind it – protection from negative energies, a little self-esteem boost, physical and emotional alignment, as well as connecting you to your true emotions and even enhancing your psychic abilities.

Hopefully those who have ordered the paperback version of the novel have enjoyed the packaging as a start to their reading experience and even without knowing it have been thrown into a world where there is meaning in everything beyond what the eye can see or you remember of an item, place, person, or time.

You can vote in Author Shout Cover Wars here.

buy The Winter Passing eBook
buy The Winter Passing limited first edition paperback book.


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Five writing and publishing things I learnt from writing my debut novel

The journey to my debut novel has thrown up a few lessons – some surprising, some expected as I work through a process. Even though I’ve been a professional writer for two decades (as a music journalist, and in digital content) writing a novel was something quite different within the same discipline.

I’m sure there are many more lessons to learn as I go on as an author, but for now here are five things I learnt from writing my debut (The Winter Passing – details at the bottom).

Five Lessons on Writing and Publishing
Just keep writing

From Stephen King to my good self (and we’re at opposite ends of the professional writer scale) offer this advice: just keep writing. Get a first draft out – it doesn’t have to perfect, it just has to be written.

Lots of people start writing a book but few commit to the discipline of writing – write when you don’t feel like it, write when it feels like you’re clawing the words out not just when they flow with abundance, write when the set up is all wrong, write when you’re tired, write when you’re in the creative dip of ‘this is rubbish, I can’t do this’.

You can critique the words as much as you want after they are written, you will of course take time to carve out the painstaking detail later, but the important thing is to start, stick with it, and finish a first draft.

Trust your instinct, seek advice, find support from other writers

There are an awful lot of ‘how to…’ guides on writing a book from your voice to the typography. It is definitely worth familiarising yourself with the advice out there from publishers and established authors – not least because you’re then making an informed choice if you ignore it, rather than making an unwitting mistake.

The Winter Passing has a poetic style, incredibly detailed passages – I knew this was right for this story and to support the character’s traits, and as advice will tell you ‘show don’t tell’ I had to work at maintaining my voice and the right style for my book, while also leaving something to the writer’s imagination.

Finding a support network of other writers – both published and aspiring, formal and not – helped me with this as well as other parts of the process of writing and (crucially) production and marketing. Find your tribe, listen to their experience, and hold their wisdom close as you forge your own path.

Always proofread on paper, not screen

I didn’t do this: I am Jack’s Bloated Regret. No matter how many times you proofread, no matter how many others proofread for you, there will be mistakes that jump out at you on paper which had become invisible to you on screen.

Always get a proof copy, go through it and mark it up, then go through the amended copy with as much fastidiousness. I speak from a position of lesson learnt, rather than perfect example here. Even if readers are forgiving of an extra space here and there, or a misshapen speech mark, you will know those mistakes are in there and they will haunt you.

Take extra time, and the upmost care, in getting the proofreading and the type design as close to perfect as possible.

Production takes longer than you think it will

When self-publishing build in enough time for all of the rounds of literary edits, copy edits, and formatting.

Even with help from others this process will take a long time, longer than you think. If you’ve got a publication date set make sure you count back from it to give yourself time for all the tasks needing doing, and add in contingency. Writing may be art, but production is business and you need to approach it with a plan, dependencies, resource, and risk.

There will be frustrations in the process, and you’ll likely question whether you really really want to publish more than once. Accept it, knuckle down and try again to get your indents right. I’ve found setting aside a short session once a week to try and learn something, or practice something, about production has started to help.

Marketing your own work is an awkwardness you must own

Maybe some people enjoy this bit of the process but I suspect it won’t come easy to a lot of writers (or creatives in other fields).

Despite many years of promoting other creatives work as a PR and marketer doing it for my own work was a whole different game, and it’s taken a while to accept the awkwardness around it. Like me, I’m sure many will be about the writing not the selling, but if you want to get your story read it’s a necessary task.

From pricing strategies, to product design, from PR to inbound marketing – just like production there is a whole bushel of stuff to get your arms around in this area. Get to know your market (Who are you potential readers? What else are they reading?), find your focus, and measure the success and return you get for your efforts.

Most of all…accept it’s a job that needs doing, it can be uncomfortable pushing your own work, but you’ve done something pretty special in completing a novel and getting this far so help it along to find its reader any way you can.

Get the 5 Star rated contemporary fantasy The Winter Passing

The Winter Passing is out now as an eBook – always free on KindleUnlimited – you can find it here.

The limited first edition paperback version is also available for order – get yours here.

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The Winter Passing – paperback edition orders open

Pre-orders for the paperback edition of The Winter Passing are now open – place your order here – shipping late July.

This limited first edition is only available to pre-order direct from the House of Morrigan store, or from publisher Reckless Yes. 

The stunning cover design by Marcus Galley (Mammoth Creative Works) and the packaging of the paperback reflect the story and bring a little bit of magic out too.

Judging a book by its cover

When it came to thinking about the design of the paperback I didn’t have to think too hard to know what I wanted  – it definitely had to reflect elements of the story and use some of the symbology woven through the tale and stylistically I wanted it to evoke the feeling if not the technique of Brian Cronin cover illustrations from recent editions of John Wyndham novels.

There needed – for me – to be a bit of magic, a little nostalgia, and something classic about it all. Marcus Galley took the brief perfectly (and is highly recommended if you do need graphic design work)!

The packaging too is something I’ve pored over – we’re all used to ordering online and the cardboard box turning up at the door with books unceremoniously but practically packed inside. I wanted something a little bit more, something of the delight of discovery, a little surprise; something that makes this a piece of art as well as a medium for my words. Pretentious? Maybe. Special? Hopefully.

Order your copy of the limited first edition paperback here – shipping late July

Reviews of The Winter Passing

“Absolutely brilliant read! If you’re a fan of modern fantasy and the supernatural then this is the book for you. Like an adult Harry Potter with nods to Neil Gaiman, Robert C O’Brien and John Wyndham, this tale of a young woman coming to terms with her forgotten past and her dangerous powers that might destroy the world rather than save it is gripping and thought provoking throughout.” 5 Stars, Amazon Customer

“I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Couldn’t put it down in fact. Beautifully written and I can’t wait for the next one.” 5 Stars, Amazon Customer

Order your copy of the limited first edition paperback here – shipping late July

Preview The Winter Passing

You can read a preview of The Winter Passing below or find out more about it here.

 

pre-order the limited first edition paperback of The Winter Passing – shipping late July
order the eBook edition of The Winter Passing – ready to read immediately
already read the book? Please leave a review on Amazon or Goodreads
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Literary London: Stories of the city

Over the weekend I headed down to a very hot London and although the trip was for the record label I co-own (Reckless Yes) there were so many stories whispering on the sultry air I wanted to note something down about it really quick.

Stories seemed written through the city streets, in the fabric of the buildings, and in a literal sense upon the shelves of the library but most people are rushing past without feeling that gossamer thread of words across their face, the cobweb strand of imagination floating forever in the air.

Five thoughts of literary London
St Pancras Old Church – The Hardy Tree

Just around the corner from St Pancras and Kings Cross stations is the quiet and shady haven of St Pancras Old Church. It’s a fascinating building and grounds, whether you are religious or not, and was also a pleasantly calm and cooler escape from the jostling city on a extremely hot day. Among the grave markers and monuments grows an Ash tree. Now circled by railings around its base are circles of headstones, stacked and scale-like as they stand close to their next.

The tree is known as the Hardy Tree, after Thomas Hardy – best known as the author of classic Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Jude The Obscure, Far From The Madding Crowd and more –  who was one time overseeing the careful removal of graves as the expanding St Pancras cut through what was once part of the churchyard. The tree has grown from the centre of these moved markers, a bend to its trunk as it stretches toward sky, trains squealing past on the rails above. Hardy wrote of how each tree has a voice as well as feature, and I wonder whether this tree would speak for each of the human stories stacked around its base, whether the memories of each life lived – the inscriptions are long rubbed flat to the stone into which they were carved – wind through its roots.

London Above

“The next morning he boarded the train for the six-hour journey south that would bring him to the strange gothic spires and arches of St. Pancras Station. His mother gave him a small walnut cake that she had made for the journey and a thermos filled with tea; and Richard Mayhew went to London feeling like hell.” Neverwhere, Neil Gaiman.

‘If Hogworts were a city’

As we shuffled along the packed pavement below St Pancras station, slipping sideways and shoulder-first between strangers, quick-stepping out of the way of the luggage dragged along behind them, I listened to the child unseen behind us talk. As Platform 9 3/4 sat somewhere at our backs in the noise of Kings Cross, and the grand frontage of St Pancras towered above he said resolute, ‘If Horworts were a city, this would be it. Just get rid of the signs, and the Muggles, and this is just like Hogworts’.

There is not much that feels magical about London a lot of the time – it is a rush, and a push, it is hot, and it smells. There is more annoyance floating in the air, than spells. But this is the grown up London seen with grown up eyes, as we rush to another grown up task. The truth is the magic is there, we just become blind to it.

The mix of architecture along this street alone – the Victorian gothic, the brutalist, the neo-classic. The idea of transport hubs above and below ground, the sonder of so many people from so many places. The cameraderie spilling from pubs and cafes as people gather for the football, the rainbow flags and glittered skin as others pass through on their way to Pride, the mass of others doing and going who knows where.

The child may well have been thinking of the literal connection between London and Harry Potter – the mentions in the story for this area of the city, or its use as a setting in the films – or maybe he was sensing the possibilities on the air which we tend to numb ourselves too when we have somewhere to be, something that must be done. His words got me to look up, and slow further, and they made me smile.

The British Library

It is almost with shame, dear reader, that I admit I had never been to the British Library until this weekend. I’m not sure how this happened, or rather hadn’t happened, but I’m glad that first visit has now taken place! Another calm and cool escape on this hot and busy day – the marble floors and air con was welcome but the impossible height of the open atrium inspired wonder as soon as I stepped through the doors.

I am a lover of possibilities and libraries are perfect locations for a person that way inclined – every shelf contains a million possibilities, the pages of the books and the knowledge and the ideas; each book testament to an author’s possibility filled and the possibility of an idea or a fact passed on. This is one of the better parts of humans, and already I long to go back and explore the rooms away from this central social area, to sink into some random find and let it blow a dandelion seed of an idea across the expanse of my mind.

The Winter Passing’s city without name

The opening of The Winter Passing takes place in a city but it’s never named – in fact none of the locations in the story are explicitly picked out as definite places of real existence. This vagueness is deliberate; I wanted there to be enough that was familiar that you can imagine a geography, and the journey, without locking a reader down to the exact look of streets, of smells, or into their own memories and knowledge of a place.

But here I feel I could easily bump into Centaury – she would be hunched but determinedly looking upward at the parts of buildings so many miss, trying to pass unseen and untouched among the many strangers. I could be jostled by Pete as he jogged past, the sharp angles of him. The Professor may be found in the dim light of the side rooms of the British Library, Tilda and Jen tripping through the station arm-in-arm as they head across London to Pride on this day, Rune sat cross-legged among his bags at a table outside a pub as he watches everything go by.

The Winter Passing is more pastoral than urban fantasy, the story doesn’t only stick to the city streets, but the city is through all the characters even if it isn’t the backdrop to every scene.

~

The Winter Passing eBook edition is available now. If you have already read the book please remember to leave a review on Amazon or GoodReads.

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Circularity Festival: The Winter Passing author in-conversation

Last night I spoke as part of the ‘live podcasting’ happening at the first Circularity Festival in Burton in Trent. A meeting of ‘ideas and music’ the night came from the growing grassroots movement and featured music from Star From Ivy, Andy Crowe and Emma Buckley, as well as ‘in conversation’ pieces between sets.

The night was themed around mental health (Circularity covers a wide range of modern issues and thinking so do check it out) with profits from the night given to charity MIND. I was asked to not only speak about The Winter Passing, but also about the creative process of writing and the link it has to mental health (speaking from my own experience). I did that – and spoke about something unplanned too!

Chris Baldwin and Rob Gillespie handled the interview side and we spoke about the novel and as some of that will become available as a podcast I won’t go word for word on what we covered but rather touch on it through the themes of the book. Before I do shout out the museum where it was held: my mum was curator of the National Brewery Centre when I was growing up and the place is brimming with memories of her – it was an emotional return for me but if you’re interested in the inspirational woman my mum was I wrote about her a few years ago here.

And if you’ve been wondering what The Winter Passing is about – not so much the plot or storyline but the themes – this one is for you. If you’re all ready to buy the book and start reading you can do so here (paperback coming soon – promise).

Memory and perception

The novel is wrapped around memories – both the fact Centaury finds hers have been locked away but also in how it’s told. It moves between current action and her memories surfacing in order to move the story forward and reveal different perspectives, and looks at how even the smallest words and actions can have big consequences.

I’m fascinated by the idea that we are our memories. We’ve driven forward by our experiences and the evidence we gather on how best to live, what decision to take, but that our memory and our perception of what is happening is filtered and edited imperfectly as we process it. The novel, really, is about whether we really exist without our memories and whether we realise our perception of an event is only one version, never a definitive.

Science and magic

I’m also quite into the idea that a lot of magic is stuff we haven’t yet explored or understood through science – they are two sides of the same coin. And I guess that’s where the other thing I spoke about came in: synaesthesia.

In talking about being a music journalist and my path with writing I mentioned I saw the colour of sound – and the audience were really taken with this condition and my experience of it. I’ve never spoken openly about it before, and I don’t know what it’s like to not have it, so suspect I was a bit rabbit in the headlights but there is a good article here if people are interested generally.

In the book this idea of ‘everyday magic’ – things like synaesthesia, the natural world, the seasons, even incredible but intangible things like love – are given more time that we generally do in the world right now.

Familial relationships

There was a good question from Rob about how writing helps me process stuff and we talked about how for me it is a way to work through experiences. I don’t really realise I’m doing it at the time (I don’t sit down and think ‘today I’m going to write something representing that break up I had when I was 17’) but there is definitely a cathartic aspect to writing.

In The Winter Passing familial relationships and love are central to the story; it is at its essence a family saga. It begins to explore the switch between the parent / child as care provider as child grows and parent ages, as well as looking at what we inherit against what we make of ourselves.

Friendships

Another key aspect in this story for me. Yes, there is some romantic love, but the other forms of love (the Greeks considered there to be four forms – empathy, friend / family, erotic, and unconditional) are so much less explored in modern culture and yet make up much bigger parts of our lives often.

I wanted particularly to show female relationships in a way I could recognise and relate to – they both recognise the effect of the patriarchy on female relationships and challenges it too, and I hope I’ve avoided one-dimensional characters (the Spice Girl effect) to show people who have many different facets and different roles across their lives.

Sonder

And following on from this is the idea of sonder – a concept described by John Koenig in the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows as, “the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.”

I really only started to touch on this in The Winter Passing but it’s something I want to explore more in coming novels and short stories so I leave it here as something to think about – you can really blow your mind if you think about it deeply enough.

~

The Winter Passing is out now as an eBook and a paperback edition will be available soon, both available via Reckless Yes Publishing. You can buy the eBook here and if you enjoy the story please help this independent author out by leaving a review on Goodreads or Amazon.

Circularity Festival will return but their next event is the Circularity Cafe on 11 July at the National Brewery Centre – this is an informal event with no set agenda but will encourage networking and connected conversation to see what music and ideas can grow from it. Join Circularity on Facebook, find out more on the website, and follow on Twitter here. Check out the podcast on Spotify, iTunes etc etc etc.

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