New Year Reflections

Reflecting on how I took my creative writing up a notch in 2025…

After leaving work in March, I completed two online Curtis Brown Creative courses – the 30 Day Writing Bootcamp and Writing a Romance Novel.

I attended the Writing West Midlands Conference and the Bournemouth Romance Writing Festival, as well as the South Warks and the Stratford Lit Fests.

I built my own website Joanne Barker Author Events, then exhibited and spoke at the Southam Book Festival, where I sold copies of my second-chance romance, The Joy of Jars, and launched ‘Book in a Box’ and my collaborative writing project Keyboard to Kindle.

I completed the messy manuscript and started the big edit of my new novel, Miss Wed, with interest from an agent. I was also lucky enough to receive tentative enquiries into my third book, before I’d even started writing it!

Here’s to 2026 and so much more to come. I hope you’ll stay around and join me in my future adventures with words!