Flying off....

I'm flying off to south-east Asia today as a guest of the Singapore Writers Festival. The writing life is a funny old thing. The long hours, the insecurity of freelance work, the crazy ups and downs of the publishing industry all make for a profession that's a lot less glamorous than most people imagine...but then someone invites you half-way around the world to talk about fairy tales, and suddenly it feels a little glamorous after all.

I'll be back on this blog in two weeks (Monday, November 11). If you happen to be going to the Singapore Writers Festival yourself, please come and introduce yourself. I'll also be at a fairy tale symposium in Sussex at the end of November, if Singapore is a little too far afield.

'See you in mid-November!

"Travel does what good novelists also do to the life of everyday,
placing it like a picture in a frame or a gem in its setting, so that
the intrinsic qualities are made more clear. Travel does this with the
very stuff that everyday life is made of, giving to it the sharp contour
and meaning of art."  - Freya Stark

''One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.''  - Henry Miller

Image above: "Green Willow"  by Warwick Goble (1862-1943)