Head on over to Rebecca’s blog Ramblings of a Rusty Writer to find all of the details of how she is planning to celebrate today, or you can read some reviews of the book itself on Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com if you’re feeling shy!

You may like to visit some of the other blogs helping Rebecca to celebrate today too.

About New Beginnings

Sam Hendry is not looking forward to starting at her new school. Things go from bad to worse as the day of truth arrives and all of her fears come true… and then some.

When Sam meets a different group of people who immediately accept her as a friend, she begins to feel more positive.

With her new friends and interests, will Sam finally feel able to face the bully who taunts her, and to summon up the courage to perform on stage?

The day will start off with a chat to the whole school about what it is like to be an author before the story writing sessions begin.  I am going to use different story trigger methods for each class (Reception, Year 1/2, Year 3/4 and Year 5/6), in order to make the creative writing in small partnership groups fast and fun for everyone. The day will end with the children being given certificates of writing merit as well as a few books (donated by the authors and publishers) which will be given out as special prizes.

These stories and all the others produced by children during my residency will be used to form an anthology of their creative writing.  Each school that I visit during my residency will also receive an invitation to send student representatives to take part in the WeLL Writing Challenge on the 27th October at the Portsmouth Guildhall, and I will post more detail about this at a later date.

If you want to read other posts about my residency, wish to ask me specific questions, want to sign up for update direct to your inbox or want photos of Portsmouth for writing inspiration, just look in the drop down tabs attached to the Writer in Residence category under my website header.

Today I am meeting with Portsmouth’s Literature Development Officer to go over my draft programme of events. I will post an update on Sunday about my experience of being Portsmouth libraries’ writer in residence so far. You can also read about my experiences over on the About My Area site where I will be guest blogging for the duration of my residency.

All the money collected from sales will be going  to the charity One in Four (a registered charity which provides support and resources to people who have experienced sexual abuse and sexual violence). I will let you know when the collection is available to download and hope that you enjoy the stories and the fact that you have done your bit for charity. Its not often that we get a chance to enjoy being part of a win / win opportunity.

Very honourable mentions to Chopski for: ‘ I always knew he was highly strung’ and for Jo with ‘He’s not heavy, he’s my …woops!’

Congratulations Dom, you have won a copy of Joe’s latest novel – That Twisted Thing Called Truth. Email me (djkirkby (AT) gmail (DOT com) your postal details and a signed copy will be on its way to you.

I have been busy working on novel number two again (more about this on Sunday), and I have discovered a new benefit to the voice activated XBox Live…I get to use it and still be able to call it writing research. Oh yes I can… YouTube clips provide a lot of inspiration for writing and during writing breaks I often watch clips of songs that make up the soundtrack of whatever I am writing at the time. Now I can do this without even having to put in the effort of typing in the search words. I simply have a little chat with our XBox live dashboard and off it goes to fetch what I want to watch on YouTube. Cue total relaxation, erm, writing research!

My residency is going to attend to the need for outreach work with the young, elderly, housebound and otherwise disabled.  Additionally I will also be accessible to the other residents at times when I am writing in the library in the more traditional manner of a writer in residence. The outreach work related to my residency will begin in May and I will post a programme of events in February but in summary there will be school writing workshops, online seminars and Q&A sessions, writing challenges, and a celebration event where the unique works produced in collaboration with the residents of Portsmouth will be on display.

I have finally decided on an acronym which reflects my ethos which is a desire to blend the links between literacy and health outcomes: WeLL (We Love Literacy), and I will post the logo here as soon as I can.  If you have any questions about my residency please ask me on the page this link takes you to.