Here I am, back from my jolly hollies, sand purged from my shoes and ready for a bit of light re-writing. My editor enjoyed the first draft of The Early Birds and has requested just one thing: that I insert some love interest for Peggy, now in her late seventies. Ah well. It’s at times like this that I’m grateful for my experience as a short-order journalist. Just tell me what you want and I’ll hold my nose and deliver.

There is also the question of what next. I’m under contract to give my publisher one more book but it’s an odd situation, like being in the dogdays of a love affair. Realistically they are unlikely to renew my contract next year. A 70 year old author with a backlist of commercial flops? Naah. So, you know, a person can lose heart.

I already offered them a sequel to Lubka  –  not that I want to be thought of as a burned out shell capable only of sequels, but because I thought it would be a cracking idea to see how Buzz Wexler copes with having a teenage daughter. Anyway, they didn’t bite. Because Lubka bombed. Too quirky. Apparently.  So Lubka II joins the growing list of books I want to write but no-one wants to publish and I have to decide what alternative to offer. It seems like madness to try to seduce a publisher a-new when the magic has already gone but that’s what I have to do. I feel like a tired old tart dragging my wares around Shepherd Market.

‘Hello dearie. Looking for a nice, quick read?’

On a cheerier note, today is publication day for the paperback edition of The Night in Question. It almost passed me by unnnoticed. Worth a wee dram before dinner, I think.