Waiting for Godden: 'Springfield Road' chosen for the #fbsbookclub

Hello and happy new year to you all...

I hope you have been toasty and warm, enjoying the snow, staying by the fire, reading books and sipping delicious dark red wine. I hope that you aren't making yourself miserable shivering with wet hair in a gym changing room or starving yourself to death on a juice cleanse. January is long and dark and bleak. I hope you spend many hours in fluffy socks, reading, writing, watching the snow fall, sleeping and dreaming of all the marvellous things you'll do in springtime. Wait for the first daffodils, wait for the first snow melt, read John Fante, Wait for spring, Bandini.

New year news:

Springfield Road has been chosen for the For Books Sake Online Book Club. There will be a live twitter discussion and Q&A on Wednesday January 28th 7pm. Please join us and follow +For Books' Sake using the tag #fbsbookclub

It is January and my year started with a trip up north to Yorkshire, up to the poetry prison of Arvon, Lumb Bank. I did my time, spent a week banged up, writing poems with my inmates, a class of brilliant thirteen and fourteen year old boys. It snowed heavily and so the boys enjoyed rambling walks in thick snowy woods and sledging. In the end we came out of that confinement with lots of stories and poems themed around snow and home - seriously, what lovely laughs and what a brilliant and creative week to start the new 2015.

I'm home and here by the fire writing this, making shapes and faces in the firelight and flames and sipping red wine. I have been dreaming of heat, of the open road, cut off denim shorts, bourbon and shooting pool in sleazy bars, maple syrup and pancakes in road side diners, and planning a road trip across America later this year - I hope to be reading at some US Book Festivals around Autumn time. I'll let you know dates and states when shows are confirmed. I have been looking at maps and plotting routes and adventures...

For now though I'm in my cave and hibernating. I have a stack of books to read, deadlines to meet and new words to write whilst my dreams are wild and vivid and real. I hope you are dreaming well too. Stay home, stay warm, stay toasted, my comrades. Thank you for subscribing to 'Waiting For Godden' and see you all for real in springtime.

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