What a wonderful day we had at the Literary Lunch at Cheshire View, Christleton. It was long awaited due to Covid and so wonderful to see so many members (over 200) attend. The tables were decorated with local blooms from Val Miller’s garden and they looked gorgeous. This was after a last minute call out when Pat Sharp’s garden had suffered badly from the heatwave last week. The hottest couple of days on record!
We were so lucky to welcome Clare Macintosh https://uk.claremackintosh.com/clare-mackintosh-about/ to speak to us. Clare is a crime writer living in North Wales with her husband, three children and lots of animals. She is cold water swimmer, horse rider and a fluent welsh speaker.
She has sold more than two million books worldwide in over forty different countries. Her first novel ‘I let you Go’ was the Sunday Times bestseller and the fastest-selling title by a new crime writer in 2015. It also won the Theakston Old Peculiar Crime Novel of the Year in 2016 and was chosen as a Richard and Judy book club book. From then on her books have remained on the top of the charts. Clare has a online book club through Facebook with almost nine thousand members where members recommends books and discuss a chosen book each month. She also sends out a monthly newsletter with book suggestions to read and supports independent book sellers.
Clare donated her fee to the Silver Star Society, a charity based at the John Radcliffe hospital in Oxford, which supports parents experiencing high-risk or difficult pregnancies.
Clare was joined on the stage by Joanne Goodwin, Editor of Cheshire Life who asked her questions including a quick fire round and opened the floor up to questions for the audience at the end. https://www.cheshirelifemagazine.co.uk/app/CHECOM. Its the first time they have met although they both work together on the magazine as Clare has a monthly column.
Pat gave an wonderful thank you to Chris Bailey to providing guidance and support and mentoring her whilst she took over the Editors role at Cheshire News. Chris had previously organised the Literary Lunch for twenty years and passed detailed information regarding each one to Pat.
Susan Leicester conducted the raffle and Wendy Morris thanked both Clare and Joanne.
A lovely reception allowed the members to mingle, have a drink, buy a raffle ticket or two and purchase an array of small gifts. Nantwich Book Shop https://nantwichbookshop.co.uk/ were selling Clare’s latest book ‘Hostage’ and taking advance purchases for ‘The Party’ which was due to be released next week.
Thank you to all the support and help from the Trustees and members and an extra special congratulations to Pat for a wonderful job of organising such a fabulous eve
