Well, the conference was even better than I had hoped, in some respects at least. On the plus side, I got some very encouraging feedback from Juliet McKenna which has made me decide to stick with the new Dreamwalkers project for the time being, and I met friends from last time as well as making new ones. On the downside, I don't feel I got much out of the Saturday programme; I've reached the stage now where the talks aren't telling me much I don't already know, and the trend seems to be away from workshops where you actually write and learn. So, this may be my last Winchester conference for the foreseeable...

At Juliet's recommendation, I have signed up for NewCon 4 in Northampton this October. The guest lineup is very good, and agent John Jarrold is attending (though of course I won't be thrusting my manuscript into his hands!). One of my crit group buddies is also booked, so it should be good fun :)

The other day I finally got around to buying "The 10th Kingdom" on DVD (used to have it on video, back in the dark ages) - and to my extreme annoyance, the first disk in the set is refusing to play on any of my DVD drives. Grrr!

In the end we managed to watch some of it on my husband's work laptop (with external speakers plugged in), but it's going back shortly for a replacement or refund. A real pity, as I love the series and am really looking forward to watching the rest of it...

[For those of you who have never seen the show, "suck an elf!" is the young trolls' favourite curse - said quickly, with the stress on the first and last words, it sounds a lot like a certain obscenity that's popular in the UK :) ]