Andrea Wren: Journalist

Is my teenager taking drugs?

Well, I doubt mine is, and that's probably because he's been so exposed to the subject (and I mean because I used to be a drug and alcohol worker, not because I used to roll spliffs in front of him) that I doubt he'll see it as a form of rebellion. I'm more worried he'll start wearing brown cardigans and try to elicit discussions of freshwater lake sediment levels.

But seriously. My recently published article Is my teenager taking drugs? on allaboutyou.com covers two of the topics I write about frequently (and am very familiar with): substance use and young people.

Hotel review: Chester Grosvenor and Spa

Chester Grosvenor and Spa, Eastgate, Chester. Telephone 01244 324024

Seeking pure, unadulterated luxury? Then the opulent Chester Grosvenor is a real treat for a weekend escape, if you don’t mind the shopping street location. Rooms are wonderful – and if it's exra extravagence you're looking for, then the Prince William is for you.  It has a colour-changing ceiling light to stare at while allowing your mind to drift off.

Hotel review: The North Lakes Spa and Hotel

The North Lakes Spa and Hotel, Penrith, Cumbria.

Telephone: 01768 868111

Undisputedly, the jewel in the crown of this otherwise fairly ordinary spa (facilities consist of steam room, sauna, whirlpool and generous swimming pool) at this Shires hotel are the Hydrotherm treatments, which are beyond splendid.

RSS - it's really simple, but are you onto it?

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication, which means very easily, we can have the latest news, from whatever area we work in, delivered to us in headline form on a daily basis. It means we can pick out what we'd like to take notice of and miss out the rest.

Services such as Bloglines (the one that I use) allow you to subscribe to 'news feeds' from online distributors so you can see the content, without having to visit the site - whether that is the MediaGuardian website or the blog of a friend.

So how come there are still many people working in the media who haven't caught onto RSS yet?

Specialist areas: Business, employment, communication issues

Business and Employment Issues

If you've checked out other parts of this site, you might think this topic seems completely alien to the other areas I work in, yet because my degree was in Applied Human Communication and I studied HR as well as organisational communication, I have a good amount of knowledge of ‘people issues’ and I enjoy writing about them.

Specialist areas: Consumer and lifestyle

Health, Diet, Nutrition (and Lifestyle)

I've done lots of work in this field having written on anything from MRSA on hospital wards (REAL magazine) to the commercialisation of donor breast milk in the US (The Times T2).

Some of the other titles I've written for past or present in this area include such Weight Watchers, Boost!, Take a Break, REAL magazine, Natural Health & Beauty, handbag.com, and many others - mainly because of a deep personal interest in health and nutrition. As well, due to my previous work with young people (see below), I do have expertise in health issues.

Could the raw food regimen be for you?

I've just written for handbag.com on the raw food diet, an article I thoroughly enjoyed doing since my interest in nutrition and diet is such a strong one.

This feature sparked lots of other ideas, and introduced me to new contacts such as Barbara Louvrou and Karen Knowler who I think are doing great work, and who will hopefully inspire many more articles in me.

Dealing with grief the natural way

I've recently written for handbag.com on dealing with the grief of bereavement through natural health.

I'm very interested in using alternative methods of healing and following the death of my ex-husband just over 4 years ago, I tried to employ as many ways as I could of helping myself.

I also witnessed the demise in the health of my ex-husband's mum, who has suffered terribly, so I wanted to investigate ways in which we can try to buffer the ill effects of bereavement stress through natural remedies and treatments.

Unleash your writing power - if you dare

Is the world ready for me unleashed? I think not. But you can blame Judi Goodwin for the ensuing chaos that might occur.

Last weekend, in a sleepy North Yorkshire village, I was lucky enough to have participated in her course, Unleash Your Writing Power. I hadn’t been quite sure what to expect, as I’d assumed my writing power had all been unleashed when I became a journalist – but I was wrong.

I discovered that even people who have been in the game a while can learn so much more to improve their style and way of working.

The fine art of negotiating press trips

Globe trotting is set to reach record levels, according to recent Mintel research, so you’d expect that the need for travel writing would be even greater. But we know that no such thing could ever be true.

As one of the most competitive areas of journalism, no matter how much the consumer demands to seek new horizons, there will always be a big long queue of journalists’ eager to bag that shining chalice - the press trip.