Fi Phillips

January seems to have flashed by in the  blink of a watery eye and suddenly February is here with its promise of spring. I feel like I've spent the month in a curious limbo, coming down after my birthday trip to Venice and reeling at the loss of so many icons. First, there was David Bowie, such a wonderfully creative man, the brilliant actor Alan Rickman who I'll always remember as an irreverent angel, Glenn Frey from the Eagles, then finally the velvet tones and kindly ways of Terry Wogan. January seems to have left the world a little less colourful. So February needs to be a new beginning, with fresh colour and creativity, and a renewed intent. That's how I'm treating it. Let's get this year started. Novel(s) Novel 1 is still away with a handful of literary agents so I'm working on the next two novels. After eight rejections that all had much the same feedback (loved reading this, keep sending it out, but it's not for us), I posed the question to...

I first heard about the Year of Reading Women through the Twitter hashtag #readwomen2014. In Joanna Walsh's article, Will #readwomen2014 change our sexist reading habits? she writes, "It's a truth universally acknowledged that, although women read more than men, and books by female authors are published in roughly the same numbers, they are more easily overlooked". Do we place more value in and respect for books written by men? I'd hate to think so but looking at my own reading choices, I have to admit that 75 - 80% of the books I read are written by men. Do I respect male writers more than female? Not consciously, no. It's an interesting topic that I'm sure will be discussed further throughout the year but for now I'm going to add my support by making a conscious effort to read more books by female writers, not instead of books by male writers but in a larger percentage than I currently do. Adding to my previous list of writers that I conv...

Today, I'm taking part in ' What I Live For ', an online event organised by author Satya Robyn. People like me all over the world will be sharing what gives their lives meaning. In Satya Robyn's novel, ' Thaw ', Ruth gives herself three months to decide whether she can find a reason to carry on living. When I initially thought about what gives my life meaning, I instantly thought of my family. My children and my husband are what I live for. That seemed like the right answer and yet something was missing. Life carried on as normal, school runs, family meals, bills to pay, and still that 'something' eluded me. During a writing session, the 'something' tapped me on the shoulder with a cheerful 'ta-dah' and I wondered why I hadn't seen it in the first place. What I live for is not only my family, those three souls who have dragged me through a roller coaster of house moves, tantrums and laughter over the last decade, but for what ...