SWF First 5 Pages Prize - longlist

NEWS: If this were a milonga has been longlisted for the SWF First 5 Page Prize!     Last week, I found out that my current project, If this were a milonga has been longlisted for the Stockholm Writer’s Festival’s First 5 Pages Prize! Given that there were 800 entries, I’m thrilled that mine was among the 14 longlisted entries in the romance category. You can view the full longlist...

Book review: the Tango Effect

The Tango Effect front cover

If you read my newsletter, or follow me on Twitter, you might remember me mentioning Kate Swindlehurst’s “The Tango Effect: Parkinson’s and the healing power of dance”, when it was still crowdfunding on Unbound. I received my copy back in March, just before lockdown started and it’s been a while now that I have wanted to share my thoughts about it. The book is part personal memoir, as the author...

Travelling on New Zealand’s TranzAlpine Train

Travelling on New Zealand's TranzAlpine train

There’s something magical for me about getting on a train for a long journey. You get to see how the landscape gradually changes around you, you can walk around and the sound of a train on the tracks is one I have always found comforting. I feel like flying is sometimes too fast and airports are hectic in a way that train stations aren’t for me. Long journeys have a...

Something is better than nothing: Thoughts on losing NaNoWriMo

statue of Belgian artist Pieter Bruegel something is better than nothing

In October, I shared this blog post from two years ago on Facebook and announced my intention to participate in NaNoWriMo for the third time. Subscribers will also have read about it in the newsletter I sent out in October. If you’re wondering what I’m talking about, you can find out more here or read about my previous NaNoWriMo experience here. Like the previous time I did NaNoWriMo, I did...

Alcobaça and the Dead Queen

Monastery of Alcobaça

There are two people buried in the monastery of Alcobaça and it was them who first brought me to Portugal. I was fifteen and had just won a writing competition organised by the Portuguese Ministry of Education. My entry was a re-telling of the story of Ines and Pedro, written in diary format from the point of view of Pedro. I called it “The Dead Queen”. Don Pedro and Ines...

Planning a trip to New Zealand without a car

Lake Wakatipu, view from Skyline Gondola summit, Queenstown, New Zealand

When I was planning my trip to New Zealand last year, I was told the only way to see it was by car. Not having driven since I passed my driving test many years ago, I didn’t feel that a solo trip to New Zealand was the best time to start. After doing some research, I concluded that it was feasible to visit many of the places I wanted to...