Poldark, a LoveFest and two books written

Aidan Turner shooting Poldark in Cornwall, October 2015

Morning everyone, from a very grey and gloomy middle of England. I notice that my last post was July 3rd – OMG, that’s four months ago.

So, what have I been doing over the summer?

Quite a lot actually.

1. I finished TWO books – yay!! – both contemporary romances so look out for publication details on my Twitter, Facebook and Instagram feeds. Writing two at once has been interesting – the downside is you feel as if neither of them will ever be completed. The upside is that you gain fresh ideas for one wip while working on the other.

2. Yes, I finally joined Instagram which was instantly addictive. Good job I didn’t join until I’d finished my books. You can find me there as @phillipa.ashleyauthor

3. I’ve been to Cornwall three times as research for one of my books – yes, surprise, the new book is set in Cornwall.

The stunning Minack theatre near Land’s End, Cornwall.

4. While in Cornwall in early September, we came across the crew of the BBC Poldark series building the set – and when we went back 4 weeks later, we happened to see Aidan Turner actually shooting scenes at Charlestown. By now, you might have guessed that the Cornish setting of Poldark has inspired one of my new books – but more on that story later. Hopefully I’ll be keeping up the blog more regularly from now on.

So I call that a summer well spent.

The thing is that while writers need to do enormous amounts of promotion and social media these days, this author also needed to WRITE. I lost my mojo for a while at the start of the year and then we had an unexpected and very sad family event, but I’m back now, loving my work again.

Thanks for your patience,

Phillipa xx

PS I’m taking part in the Harper Collins BFI LoveFest but I’ll post about that next week.