Being a writer involves a lot of sitting at a computer in a small room talking to imaginary people in our heads.
But every now and then, we get let out.
This week was THE most glamorous event on my social calendar… the Romantic Novel of the Year Awards.
But glamour isn’t easy – for some us, the awards night is a lot of hard work.
There is a team of people who organise the awards – collecting the nominated books, sending them to the readers – then collating the scores and doing the maths to find out who is the winner. With my maths skills, I’m not allowed anywhere near that – and rightly so.
There’s a lot of hard work going into making something so smooth and sparkly. I am but a small cog in a very hard working machine.
Being a bit of a geek, my job is the technology – specifically the display on the big screen as the shortlists are presented and the winners announced.
There’s a lot of work involved in collecting and processing the images… not to mention checking and double checking that I spelled everyone’s name right.
That keeps me busy for several weeks before the event.
On the night, I’m part of the team that gets there early – organising photos, laying out books, checking the table decorations – and triple checking that my spelling on the slides is correct.
The end result was just wonderful….
OK – some of those photos were from the RNA’s official photo shoot – because I was so busy doing my bit, I didn’t have time to take any myself once the event got underway.
The winners were all wonderful – and deserve all the praise they get… but so too does the team that helped put this together – you are all stars – each and every one of you. Take a bow.