Where will you go Today? Lynn Huggins-Cooper

I love being an author - but I love being a publisher nearly as much! I have been published for over eighteen years, and I recently started my own small publishing company, The Forest House Press. It is a small concern, but sits snugly in its little niche, producing educational, craft and self help books. This week, we had a fantastic meeting with the Just for Women centre. The centre stands in an old mining town that has suffered terribly from the pit closures in the 1980s, and has never recovered. Yet the women who go to the centre to craft, and share their lives, have created a vibrant, wonderful community. The women are telling their stories and sharing their crafts - and we are creating a book from their writing.

The central idea of the book is how therapeutic crafts can be. I am a crafter as well as an author, and I understand this feeling. I write craft books, as well as many other types of book, and I get to play with lots of beautiful materials in the course of writing my patterns and instructions. Today, I went to Woolfest in Cumbria, and played with everything from sari silk to soft angora wool (and angora rabbits). The materials were beautifully inspiring, which is a great thing as I am in the middle of writing a book about making textile faeries, called Faerierealms.

For me, though, as therapeutic as crafts are, reading (and writing) are just as good. Books take me out of myself, whether I am reading them or writing them. When I read a novel, I drift from my world into a new one. It's like taking a holiday without leaving home. Where will you go today?