Thank you, dear readers for your kind messages. It’s been a tough couple of weeks but I’m still standing. Plans A and B have now metamorphosed into Plan C, starting Monday:  dog-walking in Wiltshire, followed by a few days grannying, and then rounding off in London with a spot of Metropolitan cat-sitting, all lubricated with…

Only four sleeps till pub day for which I great plans  –  watch this space, patiently please  –  but Fate had something else in mind. This week my beloved husband will be going to live in a nursing home so my time is divided between packing, weeping and giving myself pep talks. Plan A had…

RED magazine are first off the mark with a very nice review of The Early Birds. You can read it here. Just one small correction: I’m not American. I am English, with a light seasoning of Welsh, but after twenty years in a mixed marriage I do speak (almost) fluent Amurican. In the early days…

I hope you’ve noticed that my website has been spiffed up in preparation for the publication of The Early Birds next month. This involved posting images of the new cover plus the cover of its predecessor, Future Homemakers of America, on the home page slidey thing. Excuse my lapsing into techno terminology. The slidey thing…

For want of anything interesting to report about life down the rabbit burrow I thought I’d share with you five of my favourite quotes about writing for a living. I love deadlines. I love the whooshing sound they make as they go by.  Douglas Adams Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very’: your…

Some great recommendations by Anne Marie Scanlon in today’s Irish Independent. And I’m not just saying that because I’m one of them. Cross my heart and hope to die in a cellar full of rats.

  This afternoon’s task was to organise my thoughts for the coming work week instead of just turning up at my desk tomorrow morning and hoping for the best. I have actually spent two hours trying to make an origami bear, Mk II, and failing. Paper too thick. Mk I was okay-ish but it was…

When we moved house a little over a year ago I pruned my collection of cookbooks to fit our new, reduced living space. I kept sixty books that were dear to me and disbursed the rest among my children and the closest charity shop. I also declared a moratorium on buying new titles and I…

A couple of months ago I mentioned my plan to make my very first novel, long out of print, available as a free e-book. To that end I’ve been transcribing it ready for digital formatting, a tedious process at the best of times. Reader, I cannot go on. The book sucks. I don’t know what…