Please welcome Angela Sims who’s here to share her Writing Cave and news of her exciting debut novel! Welcome Angela. Over to you …
Hello Georgia and thank you so much for hosting me on your blog. It’s a great privilege for me to join you and your readers. Being extremely nosey, I have enjoyed reading about other authors, how they research, how they write and where they write. So, it seems only fair that I share with you a little bit about where I write, my writing cave…or more accurately, my writing attic.
We live in a 1930s semi-detached house on the outskirts of Cardiff, and when we moved in thirty years ago (Thirty? Really?!), the attic was just that, an attic. Like many attics, it contained everything from battered holiday suitcases, Christmas decorations and dusty boxes of treasures that were useless but not useless enough to make it to the skip. Of course, there were also genuinely useless items that I thought had gone to the skip, but my husband had decided to store “just in case”!
As our daughters grew up, we decided to convert the attic into another bedroom, which my elder daughter lived in until she moved out in 2018. There was a very real danger of the room reverting to its previous use as a dumping ground, so I quickly staked my claim, renaming it My Work Room. After redecorating (with glittery paint, of course), all my assorted sewing, music, books and arts and crafts materials were relocated there, alongside a work desk, conveniently placed under the skylight window.
Then, in 2020, life as we knew it changed. My work as a University lecturer meant that I was suddenly working at home, and I needed a complete online workstation. Like everyone else, there was a scramble for webcams and WiFi, but I was soon set up. This coincided with the rapid development of tentative ideas for my debut novel, and before long I was working and writing in this beautiful space.
Working and writing in this attic room has so many advantages. When I am working, running classes, etc, it is quiet. I can concentrate, and there’s enough room for me to walk about when I’ve been sitting too long. When I have finished work, I can go downstairs and shut the door on my working day. (The commute is much quicker too!) During the worst of the pandemic, I could retreat upstairs to the very different world of Renaissance Florence, where my book is set, and lose myself completely in research and plot and characters. The Rose of Florence was published at the end of January 2023, and without the creative bubble of my writing attic, it may never have had the focus and attention it deserved.
I have my bookshelves (never enough), a table for my flipcharts of ideas (whoever suggested mind-mapping a story was a genius) and the beautiful view of the ever-changing sky over the rooftops (it is Wales, after all). What more do I need?
Thank you so much for coming on and talking so eloquently about your Writing Cave. It’s a fabulous space and I’m very jealous! Wishing you all the luck in the world with your book, which is set in one of my favourite cities and is definitely going on my To Be Read Pile.
To find out more about Angela, here are the linky things:
https://www.facebook.com/angelamsimsauthor
And to find out more about The Rose of Florence, check it out here. Buying links follow:
The Rose of Florence
1478: Gianetta and Matteo have a happy life, working in service to the wealthy Rosini family. They are used to entertaining rich and powerful members of Florentine society in Palazzo Rosini, where Lorenzo and Giuliano de’ Medici and Botticelli are regular visitors. Even when the Medici brothers narrowly escape the Palazzo with their lives (an accident, surely?), Gianetta and Matteo can’t imagine that the growing unrest in the streets of Florence would ever spoil their happiness.
When a bloody conspiracy erupts in the heart of Florence, in the city’s beloved Duomo, nobody is left unaffected by the aftermath. When the family hear that Matteo is among the conspirators, Gianetta knows that her life will never be the same…
https://www.romaunce.com/product-page/the-rose-of-florence-by-angela-m-sims
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/2940165972638
