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Louise Candlish’s latest novel - in bookstores from July 19th 2012.

A child falls into the river.
A stranger jumps in to rescue him.
And four lives are changed for ever . . .

Read the first chapter.

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28

Apr

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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26

Apr

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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01

Apr

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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19

Mar

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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11

Mar

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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12

Feb

Very Valentine

God, another February, another Valentine’s dilemma – to celebrate or not? Not, obviously. In our house, cards and kisses will be exchanged between child and cat and that is about it. That’s not to say I don’t sometimes worry about the effects of raising a daughter in an atmosphere of such godless cynicism. ‘Oh Mum,’ she sighed, tragically, the other day, ‘do you think you’ll ever get married?’ ‘Not knowingly,’ I said, and she treated me to the sweetest, most pitying of looks. So I wish the rest of the world well with its flowers and balloons and harp music and clippety-clops through royal parks (getting very specific now, you know who you are!) Yes, I blow kisses to you all. I feel your love.

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28

Jan

Truly madly

Am in heaven with the return of Mad Men last night. Loved how the BBC continuity person instructed us to get ourselves a stiff drink before it started. Ever obedient, I mixed one of my new concoctions, a kir royale made with Prosecco chilled in the freezer, therefore pouring with perfect slush puppy consistency (as with all good things, its invention was pure fluke). Of course in Mad Men you’d have your six-year-old child get your cocktail for you. Anyway, on it came, as fabulous and provocative as I remembered. GASPED as Betty smoked through her pregnancy (and didn’t wear a seat-belt – did they even have them then?); SCOWLED as Don told Peggy a copywriter is not an artist but a problem solver (I used to be an agency copywriter, so that hurt); GASPED again when Roger enjoyed his first brandy of the day at 10.30am. And on it went thrilling and delighting and outraging generally. We are blessed.

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18

Jan

Some brand new insights

So…we’re well on our way to February and I’m only just finishing reading the self-help books I was given for Christmas. I say ‘self help book’, but this generation is more life philosophy treasure trove: beautifully illustrated, archly toned, nice to run your fingers over. The problem is they tell me absolutely nothing I don’t already know. Maybe it’s my advanced age, but I’ve known for some time now that you mustn’t sleep with married men (unless you really, really can’t help yourself and/or you are married to him yourself); you are allowed to say no, and to all manner of people about all manner of proposals, but especially work-related ones; and, also, anyone can cook if the tomatoes are nice and ripe and the olive oil of a sufficiently high grade.
Well, for anyone suffering similar guru fatigue, I now share three genuinely new insights:
1. All men between the ages of 35 and 45 choose pin numbers inspired by heavy metal songs.
2. ‘Maybe’ is an excellent alternative to yes or no.
3. Not cooking will free up so much more time for you to sleep with the married man of your choice.
I will share more nuggets throughout 2010, as and when they occur.

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27

Dec

A new dawn

Hello, I write in a condition you will doubtless be familiar with: overfed, overwatered, overwhelmed, and far too addicted to be able to stay away from my PC for any proper, restful length of time. Christmas was lovely, of course, but when you host (as we always seem to) it is never the holiday it’s cracked up to be but rather a painfully intensive course in running a B&B/restaurant. Well, at least I had prepared myself this time and booked a few days in Paris to recover. We’re off tomorrow, child’s torch, water bottle and Kendal Mint Cake in the luggage in case of tunnel trappage, and we will be returning in good time to herald 2010. Which reminds me, am I the last to discover that this will be pronounced Twenty-ten? Someone told me the other day and I was astonished, having been saying Two-thousand-and-ten for the whole of Two-thousand-and-nine. I quite like Twenty-ten, though, it’s snappy and modern and alliterative and has the ring of a classic. A Good One. A good one for all of us, I predict. Happy New Year!

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30

Nov

Nose to the grindstone

Apologies for the break since my last update – I realise it doesn’t take this long to read a short story! – but I’ve been in serious head-down mode finishing my new book, Other People’s Secrets. Obviously that’s not all I’ve been doing, as I would probably have been able to squeeze in The X-Factor even if I’d been busily drafting the Bible. In our house we have been fervent Jedward fans, absolutely loving all the memories they evoke of Bros and ‘When Will I, Will I Be Famous?’ (I can’t answer that.) But now the twins have been taken from us, I can concentrate better on my complete and utter admiration of these people’s guts. Imagine being sixteen and getting thrown to the lions in this way, dressed either as a waiter or the Nutcracker or Right Said Fred (it’s hard, sometimes, to tell which the stylist has in mind), the while being blinded by a zillion stage lights and bits of swan-shaped confetti. Only to be told at the end of it, by Dannii Minogue and Cheryl Cole of all people, that your vocals are flat! NOTHING would make me do that.

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