Happy Birthday, Happy New Year

My blog is nine years old this January and although it has changed since I started out as a newbie with the aim of writing weekly blog posts to chronicle my journey into writing, it's still here! Less frequent now, the posts are more about my novel writing rather than the short stories I'd started with. I love reading those early posts. It really has been a journey. 

Looking back on the goals I set myself last year, I think it was a much better idea to follow the advice I found on a blog post, New Year Writing Inspiration and Prompt Challenge, to set one BIG goal for the year. You may read it HERE. In the past, especially in the early days, I set myself lots of detailed goals and often they were not met. My big goal for 2022 was to finish writing the first draft of novel four and I did it! This time last year, I had done lots of preparation and research but there'd come the time that I needed to write it. With the help of NaNoWriMo where I achieved the goal of writing 50,000 words in a month, I wrote 51,945 words to add to the 52,000 I'd already written. I had a novel to edit and work on.

Smaller goals such as supporting other writers by inviting them onto the blog were achieved, too. Last year, I welcomed nine authors to talk about their forthcoming novels or about the research they did as preparation. A goal to continue learning more about the craft of writing was met by undertaking an excellent ten-week course at Cardiff University on Writing Historical Fiction, led by Katherine Stansfield, and a superb Advanced Imagine Writing Course, taught by Jenny Kane. I hope that what I learned will have had an impact when I was writing my new novel.

Alongside writing novel four this year, I have been able to make research trips that were not possible in the previous two years. Visiting the Hut 9, POW Camp in Bridgend in July was invaluable for viewing the artefacts and wartime clothing on display even though the camp housed German POWs not Italians. The highlight was a trip to Sicily in August where I was able to walk in the footsteps of my characters. Being in the actual places that inspired the setting for the novel was wonderful. On return, I made a visit to Henllan Bridge Prisoner of War Camp 70 in West Wales which was home to 1,200 Italians during the war to view the beautiful chapel the prisoners created from found and scrap materials. By being able to make these trips, I'm hoping my novel will have an authenticity that would have been so much more difficult to create otherwise.

In September, my third novel, Her Nanny's Secret,was published as a trade paperback. It was a great feeling to receive a box of books and see my books displayed on shelves. At the end of the same month, I had my first library event where I was in conversation with lovely Honno author, Judith Barrow. It was a full house and so good to talk to people face to face. In November, I attended the launch of the Worcestershire Literary Festival 2022 Flash Fiction Anthology which included my three flashes. Reading to a live audience for the first time after two years felt so much better than reading on Zoom.

So for me, life as a writer did get back to some sort of normality in 2022 with some live events and meetings. Travel opened up so that research trips were possible.

A huge thank you for your support this year, especially all of you who have bought and read my books, taken time to leave reviews and send me messages. I appreciate every one of them.

I wish you all a very happy and healthy New Year. 

You may also follow me on Twitter @JanBaynham and on my Jan Baynham Writer page.

For more about me and all my books, please visit my AMAZON PAGE.