New Website!

Finally! I haven’t been this excited about anything for a long time. (Hmmm... is that quite worrying?) It feels a bit like having a new house, only cheaper and much easier to look after since no-one can come along and litter its pristine spaces with wet towels or empty biscuit wrappers, and even if they did (and this is the best bit...) it wouldn’t be me who had to tidy it up. That is the job of Martin, husband of my lovely friend Liz, fellow veteran of many a rain-(and wine-) soaked camping expedition and erstwhile employer at the marketing agency where I used to write bits of sparkling copy about luxury cars and cruises down the Nile. While I used to have to bow to his tyrannical demands, now I am the client and can ring him late at night to discuss fonts and layout and mock him for his dreadful spelling. It’s all most satisfactory.

Of course, the problem with improving one area of your life is always that it makes all the rest look even more shabby and down-at-heel by comparison, which is why I’ve given the blog a little bit of a makeover, with new pictures and a playlist for the most recent book. Now I'm off to redecorate the kitchen, polish the taps in the bathroom and have a seaweed body wrap and facial peel.

(I wish.)

Five things I would probably rather do than update my website

1. Sleep with Boris Johnson.
2. Eat jellied eels
3. Appear on Wife Swap
4. Be photographed standing next to Angelina Jolie, with no make-up on.
5. Actually, pretty much anything else.

The time has come to Get Help.

Three Things to Celebrate

1. Francesco Da Mosto’s new BBC series, Francesco’s Mediterranean Voyage. Research, inspiration and relaxation in one gorgeously-accented package, this goes a long way to filling the viewing gap left by The Apprentice. Just add sofa, wine and olives for the closest you can get to heaven on a Tuesday evening.


2. Translations of my first and second books into Spanish and Portugese. New covers, and great new titles. Innocencia Oculta... how fabulous is that? (Have had enormous fun opening them on random pages and trying to work out which bit I’m reading, but even though I know the books inside out it’s surprisingly hard! Since I’m obviously never going to be able to sit down and skim read through them, if anyone would like a copy just drop me your address via the website and I’ll get one off to you.)

3. Finally, after months of trying, yesterday I managed to get project playlist to work on my website. Apologies to anyone within a three mile radius of my house who would undoubtedly have heard the whoop of triumph, followed by an ear-shattering rendition of the songs while I danced round the house. Expect a further slump in word count over the next few days as I exercise my new found competence and play!

Still Catching Up

I’m ashamed to realise that my unhealthy preoccupation with Alejandro and The Deadline meant that I failed to mention earlier something pretty important and very exciting. Fortunately Michelle Styles, Natasha Oakley, Kate Hardy and Susan Stephens are better women than I, so you probably already know that 2008 is the National Year of Reading, which is a ‘year long celebration of reading, in all its forms.’ To my mind, reading-- like friendship and Friday evenings—is something we should all celebrate, often, so I’m really delighted to have been invited to be the writer in residence for Cheshire Libraries. Sadly, being a writer in residence doesn’t mean you get to live in the library for a year, which would be my idea of heaven, (I’d bed down in the far corner by Historicals, and work my way steadily from there, via Biography, to Romance and General Fiction, with frequent sorties into Cookery to dream over beautifully photographed recipes that—since I was living in the library, I’d be under no pressure at all to attempt) however, it does mean that this Saturday I get to spend a couple of hours talking heroes and happy endings at Macclesfield Library. If you’re going to be anywhere near, we’ll have the kettle on at 10am sharp, so come and join us!

Yesterday, once I’d done my thousand words (1194 actually—how keen am I?) I started work on the Great Website Update, and that’s why this morning I have a sore shoulders, a slight hangover and have had only four hours sleep.

And it’s still nowhere near fully functional.