I've spent most of the week working on the Valley News website (please give us your feedback - still plenty of room for improvement!) The National Park with Susan Briggs of the Tourism Network recently ran marketing workshops for local businesses, which have proved very helpful. We've also been developing sample pages for a new comic book series about the Unexplained which Ken Webb of Worth Press took to the London book fair. We worked with Ken in the past and this would be a nice chance to get together again if we can find book partners to publish the series. Now he wants more material for the US fairs. Time to get busy. Planting in the garden will have to wait. 

Well, still a few moments to play the uke... The Eskuleles ukulele band had their debut at Grosmont Crossing Club on 27 April - what an outing! The Crossing Club is this unique little cosy bar off the high street in Grosmont, which is where the steam engines have their loco sheds. You enter through double doors and up a couple of steps and then immediately into this great space that looks like a cross between the back room of a pub and someone's living room, but 10 times nicer than you ever expected, especially when teeming with musicians and interesting characters propping up the bar. Caroline Robson organised it all and was running round pulling pints, doing the MC, fetching pies from Whitby at half time, and singing and playing in between. Amazing. She arranged for members of the George Formby Society and uke players from other clubs and a few independents to join up, play some songs, share stories and ukuleles. There were people there who own 10+ ukes! A big cheer for Caroline for her fantastic welcome, for getting everyone together and for her brilliant musicianship. 

The Glaisdale poetry group is going strong. Strangely fascinating having your poem dissected in front of a group of people. We now have to read our poems at a wine and words evening on 17 May, Glaisdale. Emphasis on the wine...

We've now been in Glaisdale (eight miles from Whitby) for four years, and we intend to stay. Our move from London in 2009 was a step into the unknown but Glaisdale village turned out to be what we'd hoped for - with an excellent small school and an active community of interesting and friendly people. Leaving behind close friends and publishing contacts was difficult at first but we carried on working freelance for publishers we'd known in London and managed to survive for the first few months. I then got a lucky break - a notice in the local butcher's shop for a job to co-ordinate trips on the 'Heather Hopper', a community minibus aimed at getting isolated or less mobile people out on sociable trips. This proved to be a great way to get to know people up and down the Esk Valley and I've only recently given it up to focus on publishing. The other fortunate break was when Ann Bowes agreed to let us take over Valley News magazine, in April 2010, as she wanted to develop her own publishing company in new directions (Fryup Press). Ann had done a lot of the hard work in getting the magazine up and running with a ready-made list of advertisers and subscribers and a distribution network. We've spent the last three years generating content, building contacts and developing the magazine. It's a lot of fun and from the feedback and friends we've made it seems to be working...