There’s a thing women’s magazines have started doing. Where they would formerly have commissioned an article from a writer whose work they like they now go trawling. Let’s say they’ve decided they want to run a feature on Living With a Competitive Sister. They send out a request to every publicist in the land. Do you have anyone who’d be…

I wandered, lonely as…. lonely as a sadsack with halitosis and a personality disorder? No, that doesn’t work.  Back to the pencil chewing. Let’s talk about similes. I’ve discovered that I have, if not an allergy certainly a sub-clinical sensitivity to them. Dog dander, sulphites, and now similes. The sulphites are a particular burden because I…

   This morning I slayed (slew?) an elephant. Not a real one, you understand. I like elephants, though I acknowledge they don’t make good neighbours. Uprooting trees, trampling crops and generally setting themselves up for an ASBO. And they look so cute.  But I’m talking about distant elephants, those things we agree to because they’re months and months away and…

    I’ve been invited to speak at The Lady Literary Lunch on September 9th and unlike Miss Otis I am able. You can reserve your seat right here No pushing, eye-poking or stampeding, please.

It’s been a funny old week.  We went down to Kerry for a few days, making the most of our Senior Citizen free travel passes before the Irish government decides to withdraw that generous concession. But I took with me two pieces of work: the page proofs of The Grand Duchess of Nowhere which required immediate attention and my…

     Circumstances beyond anyone’s control have led to a telescoping of the final tweaks to this year’s book. Less than a week after finishing the copy-edit the page proofs are already on my desk. It’s been hectic and quite taxing, not least because of a bit of a grammatical wrestling match. Generally speaking writers don’t get to meet their copy…