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Meet and Greet


I love a list. 

Any kind of list - to-do lists, shopping lists, Christmas lists. The last one in particular brings back memories of lying on my stomach on the living room carpet, circling things in the Argos catalogue, crossing my fingers for a Mr Frosty. I never did get one and I'm still not over it.

So today, with this blog being pretty new, I thought I'd do a little list of random facts about myself as an introduction. 


  • Lily Joseph is a pseudonym (it's an amalgamation of my grandparents' names). This is not for reasons of being shy or mysterious, it's mainly because my day job is so different to fiction writing that, if I ever became known for writing, I wouldn't want the two worlds to meet. This makes me sound like I work for MI6 or something, but sadly it's neither that glamorous nor interesting.
  • I have two children, aged 13 and 11, and I still haven't made my peace with being old enough to have a child at secondary school. In my head I'm still drinking Bacardi Breezers in a sweaty nightclub and watching SM:TV with a hangover the next day. Actually, that makes me sound even more old.
  • I'm terrible at sticking to things. When I was a kid I became partially accredited in ballroom dancing, gymnastics and the Air Training Corps. My mam always said I just waited until she'd bought the uniform then I'd get bored. She's probably right - as an adult I'm the proud owner of a little-used set of golf clubs, expensive running gear and a subscription to Slimming World.
  • I have been photographed with two celebrities - Jim Bowen and Warrior from Gladiators. Both pictures were the result of my dad boldly insisting that they pose with me, and neither of them look very happy about it. The fact that my dad made me perch on Warrior's knee while he was trying to enjoy his Little Chef Olympic Breakfast still makes me die a little inside.
  • Things I love the smell of: matches - both struck and unstruck; banana flavouring but not actual bananas; fresh limes but not lime flavouring; old books.
  • I would list my favourite books but that could get out of hand. My favourite fiction authors include Sarah Waters, Jojo Moyes, Lionel Shriver, Philip Pullman, Mhairi McFarlane, Diana Gabaldon and George R.R Martin, to name just a handful. I love the non-fiction work of Caitlin Moran, Cheryl Strayed, Jon Ronson and David Sedaris.
  • I absolutely love musicals. I spent many an hour as a teenager wearing my mam's mac in my bedroom, wistfully pretending to be Eponine from Les Miserables. You can still find me belting along to Shrek or Thoroughly Modern Millie while stirring a spag bol. 
  • When I was at university I went on a 3-month exchange programme to Finland. I didn't do much studying but travelled around Sweden, Russia and Estonia, went skiing and tried reindeer sausages. I developed a mild addiction to Fazer cocoa nibs chocolate and had to go cold turkey on return to the UK as we don't have it here. Scandalous.

That was a satisfying distraction from my work-in-progress - any excuse will do at the moment as I have 'the fear' and can become infinitely distracted with de-scaling the kettle or alphabetizing my Clarins samples. So at least I've written something other than my shopping list!


LJ





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