Live It, Love It

Welcome to all BBQ'ers arriving from Karen's! Please say hi so I can visit with you, too. :)

Today I feel like a chicken who's been injected full of caffeine then had its heard cut off! My best friend from Canada arrives this weekend, and while we have a fun week planned of wine, wine and PARIS, I've got about five zillion items to cross off my to-do list. Spending an hour yesterday playing with my new Marilyn get-up (oh, yes) was not exactly time well spent, either.

A few links to share with you before I pass you over to today guest blogger, the wonderful Shirley Wells! First off, I was on Fabulosity Reads yesterday talking about why I love chick lit, and at The Naked Hero spouting off on why I love London. There's a new review of Willow here, and a nice one of The Hating Game here (I almost forgot I wrote that novel, ha!). Phew. That's everything, I think.

Oh! My favourite donut-loving, writer friend India Drummond's Ordinary Angels is available again on Amazon! Yay!

And now... over to Shirley!

Thank you, Talli, for inviting me to your utterly gorgeous home. I’ll try not to drop crumbs or spill anything while I’m here.

For those of you who don’t know me, let me say that Talli and I are practically identical. We both write. Talli writes wickedly humorous books and I write mysteries, but it’s close enough. We both love wine. Talli gets mistaken for super-model Agyness Deyn and … well, I’m working on that.

What else is there to know about me? Well, I’m an internet addict. I’m still not sure how that happened, but thanks to Facebook and Twitter, I can give you daily weather updates for Florida, Lanzarote, Arizona or just about any place you could want.

Am I jealous of these exotic locations? Well, yes. And no.

I was born in the Cotswolds, but I’ve lived in Cyprus where I wrote several holiday romances, and in Orkney where I continued writing romance. I still remember my horror when Mr W’s job changed. He was promoted and we needed to move to the north of England. “No,” I cried. “It’s nothing but whippets, flat caps, and racing pigeons. It’s always raining. And it’s all grimy old mill towns. There’s a reason people say it’s grim up north, you know.”

Despite my pleas, I had to move north. And I love it. It has a beauty all its own. I live out in the countryside, amid the rolling Pennine Hills. Instead of walking along picturesque beaches, I take the dogs across bleak, windswept moors.

When a heavy mist falls, it can get quite spooky on those hills and instead of working out the storyline for my next romance, I began to think “Hey, this would make a great place to hide a body” or, more often, “What was that noise?”. Instead of the happy-ever-afters I’d been writing for years, my mind was turning more and more to crime.

In 2006, I wrote my first crime novel and my eighth has just been accepted. So although I turn a particularly unattractive shade of green when I see white sandy beaches and hear of 30 degree temperatures, I know that moving to Lancashire was the best thing I ever did.

What about you? Do you love where you live?

Thank you again for having me, Talli. (And don’t worry, the whippets are house-trained.)

Having had several hundred short stories, ten serials and ten novels published, Shirley Wells is finally getting the hang of this writing lark. Her latest Dylan Scott mystery, DEAD SILENT, is available from Carina Press, Amazon, Barnes & Noble and all good e-retailers. Connect with Shirley via her website, follow her on Twitter or find her on Facebook.