Last week, I attended the book launch for The Vodka Trail, the fourth book by thriller writer AA Abbott and her first sequel.

I have read and reviewed all three of Abbott's previous thrillers, so I was excited to learn about her new release. I was also excited about the event itself because Abbott is fantastic at putting together a shindig. Incredibly, she organised three back-to-back book launches in Birmingham, Bristol and London!

Abbott chose the basement of Bodega Bar, a firm Birmingham favourite, and plied her guests with complimentary Prosecco and, in honour of her new title, shots of vodka. There was an informal speech and a reading, but mostly the evening was about fun and networking.

Abbott is unrivalled when it comes to assembling a guest list and I chatted to lots of fantastic people: 

Katharine D'Souza - Katharine is a fellow Birmingham writer and chair of PoWWoW. Katherine and I deliver a talk on self-publishing at the annual Book To The Future festival at the University of Birmingham. She recently finished her third novel, No Place, which will be launched in September.

David Massey - I first met David on an Instameet at the University of Birmingham last July. I have since seen him frequently on Twitter due to his involvement with Brum Radio, @Brumhour, and Birmingham Social Media Cafe. Dave used to work at several bookshops, so he knows his stuff about book-selling.

Margaret Egrot - Margaret is a member of Coventry Writers' Group and attended my Meet The Authors event at The Big Comfy Bookshop in January 2015. She will also be contributing to the Festive Cheer anthology which I mentioned last month.

Phil Ellis - Phil hosts Tall Tales on Brum Radio, in which short stories by local authors are performed and broadcast. I had heard about Phil from several authors so it was great to put a face to the name. I have entered three stories in the latest round of submissions.

David Wake -  I initially met David at a spoken word event at Brewsmiths. David co-founded the New Street Authors, a group of self-published authors who rally together to help each other with editing, publishing, artwork and marketing. I told David that I was a Marketing Manager and was soon fast-tracked to his mailing list!

June was destined to be my writing month. I was going to dive into creating my third Nephos novel.

This kinda happened, although it was not the JuNoWriMo binge that I had hoped for.

This was partly because I spent ages prepping for the Birmingham Writers' Group summer competition, which I was judging this year. I may have gotten a little preoccupied designing funky infographics.

But fear not.

I managed to write 9,700 words of Nephos Part Three, which takes care of the prologue, and an additional 3,500 words of notes. The manuscript currently features Sheriff Zu confronting three masked robbers and it introduces a mome rath for the first time in the series. There is a long way to go but it is happening.

These last few days offered me another distraction. My author friends Heide Goody and Iain Grant are putting together a Christmas anthology. The submission deadline is today and I had just a couple of days to produce something... 

At the time of writing, my Christmas story is 60% complete. It is about a young boy, Nicholas Partridge, who refuses to climb down from the Christmas Tree in Victoria Square until his Dad comes to get him. I have called it A Partridge in a Tree. I need to get it done very soon but it is hard writing about Christmas in the warm muggy summertime.

In other news, Heide and Iain have got a new book coming out, Oddjobs, although I am resisting that until Nephos Part Three is finished. That should keep me motivated.

Anyway, back to my Moleskine and Word.