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I always feel a bit hesitan t about discussing my writing here. I think it’s to do with not being the kind of writer who trots out two thousand words before breakfast. In fact, if my writing was a lover, I’d have walked out years ago! It’s moody, evasive, constantly threatens my self-esteem, but I hang on because that rare feeling when everything falls into place is utterly sublime and powerfully addictive. I have to work hard at what I do, but it’s not hard work. Anyway, because people have been interested enough to ask, I thought I’d say a bit about the book I’ve just finished and the one I’ve started. I tend to soak up impressions of places so the setting for Turning the Tide was born out of all the sleepy, seaside towns I’ve visited whilst sailing. Move Over Darling is influenced by the experience of living on the coast of west Wales. One of the first things that struck me when I moved here was that the population of Ceredigion is roughly the same as the town in the s...

Look!  Those lovely people at Choc Lit have sent me a new contract for Book 2.  I'm absolutely delighted to say that Move Over Darling  will be out later this year.

‘Guess what?’ I say to my sister , ‘I’ve made my own marmalade!’ There is a good deal of laughter from the other end of the phone and my sister goes off to share the hilarious news with Ma, who’s round there because she’s been struck down by the Mighty Cold that seems to be catching up with everyone. ‘Even I’ve never made marmalade,’ Ma mutters, sounding incredulous and impressed at the same time. Actually, this is more about my role in the family as the opposite of a Domestic Goddess. As a former school cook, Ma’s culinary skills are pretty impressive, whereas it’s a well-known fact that if Tom didn’t cook for me, I’d live on toast and pasta. Sewing? I fell out of love with sewing in my very first lesson when I stood up and discovered that I’d stitched my square of gingham fabric very firmly to my gingham dress. My sister is the Queen of Curtains, and contrives the most amazing, lined, interlined and weighted creations. My own, much simpler, efforts are produced with a g...

How many memories does a rectangle hold? When Stepson Two’s Gorgeous Girlf asked, one lunch-time over the New Year celebrations, where we’d bought our dining room table it set me thinking about this ordinary piece of furniture. There’s never been any money in the budget for expensive furniture and neither of us enjoys trudging round shops for the sake of it, so our table, like so much of our furniture, comes from Ikea. It’s plain, solid and seats eight people. We bought it for our first home when we could finally afford to upgrade from the tiny, circular garden table that four of us had been squeezing round. Since then it’s been dismantled and reassembled for three moves and is now in its fourth home where I hope it’ll remain for many years to come. It’s the place where we sit to eat every meal and has been the starting point for so many memorable family occasions. My daughters have grown from little girls to young women here; we’ve laughed, cried, argued and made up, seen b...

Like Arthur C. Clarke who famously said, ‘I don’t believe in astrology; I’m a Sagittarius and we’re sceptical,’ I’m another sceptical Sagittarian and I never, well, hardly ever, read what is written in the stars for me according to the monthly magazines. I’ve always loved the prospect of a shiny new year; a tabula rasa freshly smoothed. But after a rather bumpy 2011, I’m slightly apprehensive about what will be written in the wax of 2012. New Year began with an unforeseen seven of us celebrating at Hotel H, an untried blend which worked out smoothly despite the foul weather that kept us indoors for most of the time. Fortunately the arrival of so many visitors coincided with some downtime in my writing schedule. Picking up one of the magazines that arrived with the visitors, promising all kinds of reinventions for the new year, I couldn’t resist seeing what the stars, apparently, had in store for me. ‘ Delays on the work front are inevitable at the moment ,’ said the monthly f...