A postcard from Spain and using emotional inspiration in your writing
Plus, How to enter The Society of Editors’ Media Freedom Awards, Booker Prize judges announced, why romance fiction rocks & media 'Lessons from Southport'
My dear wordsmiths,
To my new subscribers - hello and thanks! You can expect a bloggish, oversharing, writing and journalism diary with added news and opportunities written from the heart of the northern English countryside. I’m Nicola, a senior editor working across a regional news organisation by day - and querying writer by night. Plus, I do a little radio presenting at the weekends..
Hello - a little personal note from me this week but please make sure to check out the news, opportunities, reads and events below - particularly the important Lessons from Southport.
I said a ‘goodbye’ this week. Not to a person or a much-loved pet but to a house - and not even my house. But as they tend to, this house represented an era, an era of hope and of one man’s dream - my father’s. Luckily Dad is much less sentimental than me, so his farewell to his Spanish dream home in the mountains was matter of fact as, mentally, he’s moved on to the next chapter. This is impressive for a man who recently turned 80 but also illustrating the differences between us. His mathematical, spreadsheet-based mind passed me by. I’ve been given the words he still writes - and his nose.
My dad - Len - had promised to sell his home in the mountains of Andalusia (southern Spain) at 80 and was good to his word as practicality is his byword. But it was there, amid the peach toned Moorish arches of his mountain-side property, he reached for the stars - literally.
As an astronomer and a single man following the loss of my mum too young (F* you cancer), he chased his dreams of full time astronomy which, as any real astronomer knows, is less looking dreamily upwards and more maths, science and tech. He never did achieve his dream of finding his own supernovae and it now seems unlikely he will in light-polluted England. But this past week we were summoned (me, my brother, my sister) to help him pack and up and leave after a completion date dropped. He hired a huge lorry for the volumes of largely telescope related kit after disassembling his observatory which had been constructed in the house’s idyllic courtyard next to the unused outdoor stone bar. He doesn’t drink.
Astronomy is not a whim to dad - he is essentially a retired professional - but he began the unlikely passion as a child living on the Hartlepool council estate he was brought up - after a family move from Glasgow. He just wanted to get up in the sky as high as possible - he was also in the RAF as an officer for years. And I have been told many times about the role he was offered as Head of astronomy at Melbourne University - it was only my mum’s pregnancy with me that halted that particular dream. He was even friends with the late Patrick Moore and visited his home. Later, he poured his expertise into a number of books.
Dad’s home in Spain was the culmination of a long held ambition and he chose carefully. He rented various properties for years and eventually picked a dark-skied, rural, beauty amid almond and olive groves with a pool to attract his grandchildren and a view glorious enough to attract his adult children. It was not expensive thanks to the unsealed road (not for the faint hearted) and countryside position with its side order of regular water stoppages and power cuts.
Ironically, it was this farewell trip that meant the most as I cannot remember (possibly with the exception of scattering my mum’s ashes) us four spending any time alone together in our adult lives. It wasn’t flowers and roses - we are different people with different lives and priorities and we clashed at times - but it was also important. We had definitely had enough of each other after a few days but I also felt we talked for the first time in years.k
The chats brought up emotions long forgotten but also new ones and I have learned that it is experiences like these that should be stored up in an emotional directory - a reminder of the real/less everyday feelings that also inform human experience. Important for any writer and often a one word note can remind and be used for a character in a novel. It’s also, strangely, therapeutic.
So farewell Spain, thanks for the memories and the stars (my sister Jenny says thanks for the mosquito bites).
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News, events, opportunities, must reads..
Journalism:
NEWS: Lessons from Southport (but also actions)
Following discussions here, I am part of small working group to pilot a regional version of the Media and Online Behaviour Response Assembly (MOBRA) across Merseyside, Greater Manchester, and Lancashire. With the anniversary of the Southport tragedy approaching on 27 July, there is an urgent opportunity to demonstrate that lessons have not only been learned but are being acted upon. A North West proof of concept—supported by contributors such as Maria Breslin (Liverpool Echo), myself (National World) and Andrew Brown (Standup for Southport) is in the works, building capacity to respond constructively to future moments of crisis, while strengthening trust and resilience in our communities. The report so far has been authored by David Lush and you can read more here via journalism.co.uk. If you are part of this regional community as media or otherwise and would like to get involved at this key stage, please contact me.
AWARDS: The Society of Editors’ Media Freedom Awards:
Now open for entries into 23 categories celebrating excellence in public interest and campaigning journalism across the UK news media industry. With categories including Investigation of the Year, Podcast and Commentator of the Year, the awards are open to journalists and news organisations working across all platforms including national and regional print media, broadcast, digital and magazine journalism. New categories include The Ecotricity Impact Award for Environmental Journalism with excellence in environmental storytelling recognised across national and regional platforms. Entries close on 11 August, 2025. Enter here.
Books and writing:
READ: It’s about time romance fiction got the accolade it deserves, say I. This is a good read. 'Not just smut': Why it's happily ever after for romance books, This by BBC is worth a read
OPPORTUNITY: The East Anglia book awards are now open for entry. To qualify works must be set largely in East Anglia or be written by an author currently living in the region, which for the Awards’ purposes is defined as the counties of Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Norfolk and Suffolk. Books must have been published for the first time between 6 August 2024 and 5 August 2025 and must have been commercially available in physical bookshops. More details here
NEWS: The 2026 judging panel for the International Booker Prize has been announced as submissions open to UK and Irish publishers.This year’s judges are looking for the best works of long-form fiction or collections of short stories translated into English and published in the UK and/or Ireland between 1 May 2025 and 30 April 2026. Critically-acclaimed author Natasha Brow will chair the judging panel, which also includes:
Writer, broadcaster and mathematics professor Marcus du Sautoy
International Booker Prize-shortlisted translator Sophie Hughes
Writer, editor and bookshop owner Troy Onyango
Award-winning novelist and columnist Nilanjana S. Roy
Until next week - please like and subscribe! Nicola x