CONGRATULATIONS to the Book Vault Bookshop on Market Street who have been awarded the honour of being one of only 20 bookshops in the country named as a Bookshop Champion.

There will be a special week in June really celebrating Inde Bookshop Week so do watch out for events and signings in the shop around that.

I’m lucky to have such supportive book hives in Barnsley – Mike’s Famous Bookstall in the market and the Book Vault because it isn’t a given that just because you are a local author, your bookshop will support you.

Believe it or not I have a very famous, top of the tree, romance writer friend whose local bookshop darn sarf will not distribute her novels because ‘they don’t sell that sort of book’.

Yet if someone orders one of hers from them, they expect her to drive across the city and sign it.

So it’s great that in Barnsle, us local writers are supported and Ivy and Keith are so amenable to anything that gets readers in through their door.

In this day and age so many people don’t read at night but prefer to scroll through TikTok or Insta in bed which enlivens the brain, whereas a book would power it down.

Please don’t lose the love for reading and encourage it in your children. And if you are in a book funk, go into a proper bookshop like the Book Vault and tell them that you don’t know what you would like and they are so well read in there that they’ll guide you to a book that just might make you rediscover your love of reading.

The bookshop was started late in 2019 – a lifelong dream of co-owner Ivy … and then Covid happened.

It was the kiss of death to so many businesses and the Book Vault not only survived but thrived.

So use it or lose it – the same with our pubs and village halls. We must cling onto these jewels in our communities. But anyway, well done to them being recognised as people who really are champions of reading. Only 20 too… that’s quite the accolade.

I don’t have a new full-length book out this year but I was commissioned to write a novella which came out this week.

It’s on eBook and audio only from Amazon and it’s only a couple of quid but if you are one of my readers and fancy a little fix, then it’s called Lift Me Up and it’s a workplace romance, an enemies to lovers story and one that has the message of sometimes the best family are the friends you pick for yourself and not blood connections. I’m sure that will resonate with far too many of you.

…but not me as I love my family. I have had the most wonderful weekend in Belfast with my sons who bought me the trip for Christmas.

It was the longest we have all spent together for years, certainly as adults and it came as a lovely surprise to find we all got on so well (maybe a little less shock on that front, boys, that your mother has a fun side!).

I don’t think I’ve drunk Guinness since I was pregnant. I asked Dr O’Dwyer if I should and his reply was ‘What do you want to drink that foul stuff for?’

I’m still laughing now. It tasted just fine in Ireland. But then food and drink always tastes so much better in good company, don’t you find. And I had the best.