Vibrant Imaginative People

June 2023, Issue No.18

Your VIP Newsletter from Soulla's Writing Room

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Hello my VIP and welcome to your June newsletter which I am sending to you from beautiful Zeeland in Holland with a heart full of beautiful imagination, exciting, positive communication and a huge dollop of hope.

I’m here for a week doing a joint solo retreat with a dear friend and coincidentally I came across an article on LinkedIn discussing "niksen, the art of doing nothing in Dutch; helping to manage stress or recover from burnout by allowing yourself episodes of minimal activity with no purpose... also valuable for those looking to boost their productivity... breaks allow our brains to rest and find new focus and clearer ideas..."

While the no purpose bit is not strictly true for me, I am enjoying the not rushing around so much and the escape from the barrage of family demands, work life and the never ending piles and stream of laundry, which never seem to lighten in my house. Hoping that by the end of my week here the rest and change of scenery brings about the boost to my writing creativity I have been craving.

My friend is yoga-ing and meditating (I’m joining in when I can) and I am writing and so happy to say I am making some inroads into finishing the first draft of my next book. The weather is beautiful, the surroundings peaceful and immersing myself in all the colours of nature feels totally luxurious and indulgent. Feeling truly blessed right now and passing on these warm, gentle vibes to you.

Have you ever been on a solo break or done a writing retreat? What was your experience like? I will be sharing some of my writing days in Zeeland with you on my Instagram account: @soullasays so if you don't follow me there, I hope you'll drop by!

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On Book Six...

My writing this next book has taken me on a rollercoaster of emotions as I've poured the words out, sometimes painstakingly slow and other times so fast I couldn't get them out fast enough.

And in Greta Gerwig's words (in your newsletter header), all the feels have been coming through, subconsciously as I write. This is a story about love, all the layers of love, relationships, the pull and push of feelings and what impacts people's choices when it comes to matters of the heart. Love can be hard, it's messy, and sometimes painful yet, when it's good it can be the most beautiful feeling in the world and it can make you soar, give you wings to fly.

And talking of heart did you know there are so many different words for love in the Greek language.

IMAGE: www.greekcitytimes.com

Which of these words for love have you come across? Do you use any of them?

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In Competition News...

I have had nine guesses from readers as to the front cover colour of the soon-to-be-released-with-so-much-joy-and-excitement A PALETTE OF MAGPIES and no one has guessed the correct colour so I am extending this competition one last time.

Here's a little clue: It is one of the colours of the rainbow.

Can you guess the main colour of the new book's cover? Drop me an email or message on Instagram to be in with a chance of winning a paperback copy of the book once it is released.

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VIP Member Spotlight

This month's VIP Member Spotlight is on a wonderful female entrepreneur, who I have connected with on Instagram, and her fabulously yummy Bar of Crisps. Yes you've heard right!

Who didn't love eating their chocolate bar and favourite flavour crisps together - one stuffed mouthful at a time - growing up. Well, now you can do it a lot easier and be taken back to those childhood days in one mouthful.

Six years ago, after redundancy, instead of just wallowing in self-pity and worrying Maria took the time to really think about what she wanted to do and her thoughts, and passion, took her to chocolate and her life-long love of all things chocolate.

She took herself to Manchester and, she says, "Three enjoyable, educational days later, I took my learnings and a box full of chocolates I had made proudly back to London and set about photographing them. I named my company 'Just a Little Chocolate' and a friend of mine designed my logo and website for free. I paid for 500 leaflets and spent hours walking the streets delivering them. For a year I worked out of my mum's kitchen, which she hated! As you can imagine making chocolate out of a small domestic kitchen while she was also trying to cook for the family was a recipe for disaster."

She has faced many challenges along the way, including losing premises when an explosion ripped through the building she was using and when quite serendipitously she didn't go ahead with premises in Camden Passage; another chocolate store opened a few shops down and she would not have been able to compete. And then her chocolate moment dream came when she began Chocolate Moments based out of Essex and she has never looked back as she lives and breathes her Bar of Crisps!

If you would like to try Maria's Bar of Crisps chocolates then you can buy them here and if you follow both of us, @chocolate_momentsuk and @soullasays, you will be in with a chance to win some of Maria's amazing chocolate and a signed copy of The Village House. Look out for our competition coming up soon. How's that for a real summer-time treat?

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So, now I'm craving chocolate (!)...

but it's back to my writing and the last few thousand words of book 6 (oh, and I think I have finally thought of the perfect book title but I'm going to sleep on it for a bit before I share it with you).

Until next time, enjoy the sun, enjoy everything that life brings and I hope you are full of love, imagination and dreams for the future. Let me know what you're up to!

I will catch up with you again on Thursday 20th July which will be three days before I disappear on my first ever Mediterranean cruise with my family - life is good and being grateful just makes it better and better.

Lots of love and kisses

Soulla xxx

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