I'm off to the see Wizard (well, not actually the wizard)

Oh readers, I am very excited. More excited than a grown woman should be perhaps... but excited all the same.
On Thursday I will be travelling to Dublin (ON. MY. OWN. aka NO. KIDS) to

• Meet with some lovely writerly friends for drinks and dinner
• Stay in a hotel on my lone (as Joseph would say) and have a bed all to my self.
• To get dressed up in nice clothes, with make up and everything (Can you tell I really don't get out much?)
• And...wait for it... to meet a whole big pile of writers who have inspired, entertained, mentored me over a very long time indeed.

Among those writers will be Patricia Scanlan. Her City Girls was the first Poolbeg book I ever bought with my very own money! (When I was around 15, from memory). I wanted to be Devlin. I wanted the blonde bob and the chain of spas and the hunky man and basically, well, everything she had (apart from tragic early Ballymun years).
The City Girls trilogy shaped my teenage years and I may well faint/boke/ talk rubbish when face to face with the actual Patricia Scanlan.

Similarly Sheila O'Flanagan AND Cathy Kelly will be there. And I know i'm going to meet them because they said so and honestly I took weak for about half an hour afterwards because these ladies were my 20s.

A host of other writers will also be there including Melissa Hill, Ciara Geraghty, Emma Hannigan, Shirley Benton, Clodagh Murphy and many others and I'm excited about that too. In fact very excited.

And there is just such a lovely buzz about the whole event that it feels like it will be something very special indeed.

I promise to post pictures!