Publication fun

A big thank you for your messages of good luck and congratulations for the publication of Other People’s Secrets - I celebrated at Sandhurst Library with the lovely team there, who made Dorothy Koomson and I very welcome (giving us strawberries dipped in chocolate, no less!) If you live near any of the following places, do book a ticket to see us on our continuing mini-tour:

Weds 21 July Crawley Library

Weds 4 August Uxbridge Library

Weds 11 August Canary Wharf Library

Meanwhile, don’t forget to email me and let me know what you think of the book. Did you guess the secrets? Who was your favourite character? Have you entered the competition to win a holiday in the Italian Lakes?

Have a great weekend (I will be supporting Holland in the World Cup Final!) x

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Rabbiting on…

Well hello, July, month of Wimbledon finals, school holidays and MY birthday! With publication of Other People’s Secrets just a few days away, I seem to be gabbing away non-stop at the moment about the Sale and the Trustlove families in their Lake Orta hideaway. Here I am talking (in a somewhat caffeinated fashion) to the very lovely Sarah at BookRabbit:

www.bookrabbit.com

Enjoy! And do check back soon for confirmed dates of a couple of August events with Dorothy Koomson (see our July dates on previous post)…

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Meet me in July!

Just to alert you to three confirmed events for July, all of which I will be doing with the wonderful and super-bestselling Dorothy Koomson. We will be talking about our careers and our latest novels, answering your questions and signing books at:

Sandhurst Library on Thurs 8 July at 7.30pm

Sittingbourne Library on Weds 14 July at 7.30pm

Crawley Library on Weds 21 July at 7.30pm

If you are in any of these areas, check your diary: we would love to meet you. Please contact the venue for information about tickets.

P.S. The Sandhurst event is publication day for me, so I will be in a REALLY good mood x

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Get your free book now!

Just a quickie to say that I’ll Be There for You is free with the current issue of Cosmopolitan magazine – so if you haven’t read it already, snap up your copy and enjoy the very many bedroom tips while you’re at it (in the magazine, I hasten to add, not the book!)

Also, watch this space for details of my July library events with the fabulous Dorothy Koomson…

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The best bit

As Carrie in SATC2 has already told everyone, by far the best bit of being a writer is when your new book arrives through the letterbox (or in Carrie’s case, is hand delivered by a liveried footman to your Upper East Side apartment, one of two you keep empty in case you need somewhere quiet and interior-designed to write). This happened to me yesterday, when Other People’s Secrets arrived. Actually, I picked it up from the Camberwell collection office, an unglamorous expedition by anyone’s standards, involving as it did an expired Oyster card and an exchange of words with the driver of the number 68 bus. Still, seeing the glossy red paperback for the first time brought a tear to my eye and made me look forward to publication day on July 8th. Now, what else? Since my last update I’ve been to two lovely weddings, Woburn Safari Park, several restaurants, and, of course SATC2, all experiences that were mercifully unrelated to sport. But be warned, even I may succumb to a World Cup themed opinion in my next post…

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No Man eBook

Now that Volcanic Ashgate is no more (and, if the Mail is to be believed, never actually happened), I can redirect your attention to the continuing emergency of Haiti. I and many other authors have contributed to an eBook called No Man and its publication marks the hundredth day since the earthquake occurred. There are stories by Alexander McCall Smith, Dorothy Koomson, Kate Furnivall and Bernadette Strachan, among others (my own tale is called The Assignation), and all proceeds go to UNICEF’s Haiti Earthquake Children’s Appeal. Everyone involved gave their services free of charge and the eBook costs just £4.99 from Waterstones.com. Please, please, please buy, enjoy, and count your blessings…

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Back in Blighty

A quick hello and thank you to all who sent messages and tweets of commiseration (and envy!) while I was stranded during the volcanic ash cloud scandal. Safely home now after a prolonged holiday in Sharm El Sheik (whoever told me it was ‘just like Vegas’ was obviously not thinking of the Ocean’s Eleven version I hoped they were). I can report that it was a very peculiar scene by the pool, with all the usual stages of the trauma process being experienced – shock, denial, anger, acceptance etc – just in a bikini and with the Beatles being piped through a squirrel-shaped speaker to my left. Only now I’m home has the true tragedy been revealed: my tan is nowhere near as deep as that displayed by other repatriated strandees in my neighbourhood. In fact, there is no physical evidence of my captivity at all – merely the emotional and financial scars. Hmm.

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A new crush

With my next novel Other People’s Secrets put to bed and being readied for your delectation in early July (Thursday the 8th to be precise), I have started a new one. It’s such a nice phase in the process, so romantic, like falling in love or maybe even the bit before that, having a crush on someone and spending all your time apart trying to remember what your new object of desire looks like or sounds like or smells like, because you don’t know them well enough yet to be able to conjure them up whole. Thinking of all the conversations to come, wondering how things might develop (hey, maybe this will be The One). Of course now I’m on number eight I know the other bit of the analogy, maybe the most important bit: enjoy it while it lasts… Happy Easter, everyone! x

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Tweethearts

I am quite getting into Twitter – as, I understand, most homeworkers do sooner or later. (We are famously lonely and paranoid.) It’s particularly fun when you log in for the first time each day and read in reverse order all the tweets that have accumulated while you were absent. It’s a bit like Memento, a film I never fully understood but enjoyed nonetheless. You get the news of joyful discovery a page or two before you find out about the original loss. Anyway, thanks to the very spooky interlinking of everything I ever key into my PC, you may have ended up reading this via a link on Twitter, in which case you are already aboard. If not, then do join (see link below left) and we can follow each other. Maybe not to the ends of the earth, but a little way across the keyboard, at least. Meanwhile, have a lovely weekend. I intend to declare spring tomorrow by ditching the Uggs for something friskier and more hopeful x

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The modern gentleman

You may recall my (maybe not entirely kind) remarks about all those essential guides to the business of femaleness? Well, I have found one that I have absolutely devoured, and been much enlightened by to boot! Except it is for men, not women: The Modern Gentleman (A Guide to Essential Manners, Savvy & Vice), by Phineas Mollod and Jason Tesauro. Gosh! So many new ways in which one’s own man can be seen to be falling short! I thought I knew them all! Does yours, for instance, know the true rules of flaskmanship? Does he own CDs by Django Reinhardt or Joao Gilberto? Does he know the difference between a kink and a fetish? I thought not. And it’s quite an old book, too. Since then Phineas and Jason have penned another, about love itself. I shall order it without delay.

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