Vibrant Imaginative People

November 2025, Issue No. 45

Your VIP Newsletter from Soulla's Writing Room

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Hello and welcome to your November dose of what’s been happening behind the scenes of my busy but wonderfully blessed writing life.

What’s autumn/spring been like for you so far? I have been delving back into reading and writing and three books in particular (all very different in pace and genre) have stayed with me long after I turned the last page.

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Books for escaping, imagining, thinking...

What Was Promised by Tobias Hill

London in the aftermath of war: children run wild on East End bombsites, while their elders strive for better lives in a country beggared by victory. Clarence and Bernadette Malcolm have come five thousand miles in search of prosperity, but find the Mother Country not at all as has been promised them; Solly and Dora Lazarus, too, are strangers in a strange land, struggling to belong even as they try to make sense of their past; and Michael and Mary Lockhart take with both hands all that the world owes them, wherever it leads them, whatever the cost. In the street markets and tenements of Bethnal Green the three families live and work together in uneasy harmony, until Michael shatters the balance between them, his hunger for betterment changing the courses of all their lives over decades and generations.

The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

Lily has grown up believing she accidentally killed her mother when she was four years old. Now, at fourteen, she yearns for forgiveness and a mother's love. Living on a peach farm in South Carolina with her harsh and unforgiving father, she has only one friend, Rosaleen, a black servant. When racial tension explodes one summer afternoon, and Rosaleen is arrested and beaten, Lily chooses to flee with her. Fugitives from justice, the pair follow a trail left by the woman who died ten years before. Finding sanctuary in the home of three beekeeping sisters, Lily starts a journey as much about her understanding of the world as about the mystery surrounding her mother.

The Dutch House by Ann Pratchett

In the economic boom following the Second World War, Cyril Conroy's real estate investments take his family from poverty to enormous wealth. With it he buys the Dutch House, a lavish mansion in the Philadelphia suburbs. Meant as a surprise for his wife, the house sets in motion the undoing of everyone he loves.

Danny Conroy grows up in the opulence of the Dutch House. Though his father is distant and his mother is absent, Danny has his beloved sister Maeve: Maeve, with her wall of black hair, her wit, her brilliance. The siblings grow and change as life plays out under the watchful eyes of the house's former owners, in the frames of their oil paintings.

Then one day their father brings home Andrea, a new stepmother. Though they cannot know it, her arrival to the Dutch House sows the seed of the defining loss of Danny and Maeve's lives: exiled from the house and tossed back into the poverty from which their family rose, Danny and Maeve have only each other to count on.

What have you been reading or planning to read next? Do any of these titles pique your reading tastebuds?

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Let's get wintering together

I came across the term wintering a couple of years ago and I absolutely love it. It suggests that we should naturally honour the season... it's about pulling back and drawing into yourself so as to nurture, nourish and recharge. It’s about caring for yourself, quietly, and often alone, without the need to share or be a part of the big wide world.

I’ve got back into writing my morning pages again now that my editing commissions are completed for 2025 and giving myself the time and space to think and be has been wonderfully cathartic. The beautiful elephant notebook I am using is in the newsletter header and was a birthday present from my son and his girlfriend who were in Thailand for a couple of weeks... I absolutely love writing in it.

I’m also eating and cooking good hearty food, reading a new book which my sister Maria lent to me (The Figurine by Victoria Hislop), I'm spending time doing little things on my own at home... decluttering, sorting out messy drawers, tidying my bookshelves, filling the larder with yummy staples, watching movies (lots of classic Christmas ones!), writing out Christmas cards, wrapping presents and taking time to journal every day.

What do you think? Have you been wintering?

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Christmas Giveaway…

Christmas is a time for sharing, for giving and receiving and I would like to give one lucky reader a beautiful Cyprus-themed tote bag as a thank you for reading my newsletter, for supporting me, for being a friend.

All you have to do is send an email back to me saying what you most like about the newsletters you receive from me. I will put each respondent's name in a hat and ask my adorable little Eleni to pull out a name. I am making this an international competition so it is open to all of you.

Until next time, have a wonderful December, enjoy the holidays, have a blessed Christmas with your loved ones or however you choose to spend the holidays and I will be back a couple of days later than usual on Saturday 27th December with the last newsletter of 2025!

Happy Christmas!

Sending love, joy and many blessings, Soulla xxx