Our people do writing stuff while Germany stuff Brazil

Our Izzie writes a blog. You'll find it here. More and more people are visiting it. So much so that it's rated one of the top 4000 in the UK. When you think about how many hundreds of thousands (millions?) of blogs there are competing for attention this is quite some feat. Well done, Izzie.
Our Chris writes books and drives trucks. More of the latter later but for now this reporter is envious to record that Chris sold 24 copies of Why Don't You Fly? at a recent U3A talk. He's a brilliant speaker and it's a great book so why should we be surprised?
Our Annie writes books for children. They're wacky and wonderful tales told in her inimitable way. Annie enjoys being part of a specialist childrens writers group and the members there (as well as here) are encouraging her to build her portfolio and find a specialist agent.
Our Tony writes short stories (and has embarked on a novel that has been reported on elsewhere in this blog). He's been busy submitting to competitions - most recently two for the BBC. He also blogs about writing and music and his latest post Shedloads of Memories is a great read.
Our Linda and our Rob both write novels. Linda is waiting for her interested agent to get back to her about A Headful of Budgerigars and Rob is editing his Out of Such Darkness in line with his publisher's suggestions. The publisher has already gone public here.

Keep going, Chris.
Victory is in sight.

Now more about our truck driver Chris. Regular readers will know that he's writing Karl Marx and Careful Driving and in his absence Linda read the latest extract. The group was unanimous that this is a feast of perceptive philosophical argument while at the same time being a unique insight into the life of a truck driver in Eastern Europe.  In among the overwhelmingly positive comments about Chris's writing and the understanding about thinking and trucks that his book imparts there were concerted pleas for more anecdotes about life in the cab and more dialogue when he writes about his encounters. There was all round approbation for Chris's skill in making difficult philosophical concepts accessible - exciting even. But we did want to know more about Chris's companion in the cab Vladimir. He may have been incommunicative - relying heavily on a Berlitz book to make conversation in English - but we still wanted to know about his doings while Chris  mused on the thoughts of Marx, Plato and Pirsig.
As the 9.30pm deadline that Rob had imposed approached (he wanted to be home in time for the second half of the Germany v Brazil World Cup match) the group decided that we'll take a holiday in August. Our last meeting before the break is 22 July when Jayne is submitting. We're meeting at Tony's.
The first meeting after August falls during Bewdley Book Week on September 9th and Rob is hoping that we'll support it by going along to the poetry slam. Surely one of us can win the Limerick competition?

(PS By the time Rob got home Germany had scored 5 of their 7 goals and the game was effectively over.)  

Random Musings of a Writing Group

The latest meeting of the SVA was held at Rob's house. Sadly, recent recruit to the group, Gavin was
unable to make the meeting due to last minute family commitments.

We were flummoxed by the apparent lack of writing-based news and for the purpose of making the blog more interesting for our readers, we chatted about the following:

Annie was astounded by the power of the tea cosy and wasn't wearing any socks as she felt this wasn't the way to behave in public. For the record, Annie always wears socks and if she's happy, so are we.
Rob mentioned that Luis Suarez had bitten someone and there was much discussion that a sane person would probably punch people instead.
Izzie had to ask, "Is Luis Suarez a footballer?" Sorry Rob.
Linda had recently met a friend from her writing course who had no news either.
Tony has joined LinkedIn and had quite a few people connect. For the record, Sue (aka Melody) had made flapjacks and Tony's socks were full of holes.

Back to business:

Rob read Chapter 3 from The Petrified Fountain. This was well received by the group and the general consensus was that the chapter was understated, intriguing, atmospheric of the time and had great dialogue. Most of the group felt however, that the chapter was fairly uneventful compared to the previous two. 

Rob described it as a linking chapter and said this was entirely intentional.

The next meeting will be held at Annie's on 8th July. Chris is going to submit and also hopes to attend.

And finally: Happy Birthday Annie. We hope you have a fabulous day.