Welcome to British Isles Friday! British Isles Friday is a weekly event for sharing all things British and Irish — reviews, photos, opinions, trip reports, guides, links, resources, personal stories, interviews, and research posts. Join us each Friday to link your British and Irish themed content and to see what others have to share. The link list is at the bottom of this post. Pour a cup of tea or lift a pint and join our link party!

Last week, I shared videos about the musical Hamilton‘s performances in London. Tina enjoyed the fourth in the mystery series by Robert Galbraith (aka JK Rowling). Gaele reviewed three books: Happily Ever After at the Dog & Duck by Jill Steeples, The Christmas Wish by Tilly Tennant, and The Little Christmas Teashop of Second Chances by Donna Ashcroft.

November is NaNoWriMo — National Novel Writing Month — when a few hundred thousand people around the world write 50,000-word novels in thirty days. Last year, most of my novel was set in England. I really loved how it felt like I was on vacation all month. As a bonus, I had numerous topics to choose from for my British Isles Friday posts — which was good because those posts need to be pretty quick and easy when I’m aiming for 1667 words a day on my novel.

I’m already regretting, a little, that I didn’t set this year’s NaNoWriMo project in the British Isles.

This year, I’m writing a dystopian novel set in a small town in Missouri. I chose dystopia because I thought it might be healing for me in these times — a chance to hit a reset button on the world by killing off 90% of the population and seeing if something good can come out of that. I chose a small town in Missouri because I grew up in one of those and probably have a better chance of surviving catastrophe there than any where else, so it’s a setting I can write about with lots of authenticity and not much research.

I finished up my outline for my project last weekend during a retreat in Excelsior Springs, Missouri — a different small town than the one I grew up in, but with some similarities. Since it’s an old spa town, I thought I’d gratuitously share some of my photos from Bath when we were there in the fall of 2014.

The Roman Baths

The garden behind the Queensberry Hotel where we enjoyed quiet suppers.

The front of Bath Abbey, late afternoon when the golden light warms the front

What do you have to share of the British Isles this week?