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At the invitation of lovely author, Liane Spicer , I'm over at Novel Spaces  - a universe for writers and readers -  talking about writing terrors that go bump in the night.  Join in the discussion about writerly fears for a chance to win a copy of Move Over Darling

My fellow Choc Liteer , Christina Courtenay tagged me in her post ‘The Next Big Thing’ and kindly handed the baton to me… there’s only one problem, which is that I don’t actually discuss my work in progress and I’m far too worried about jinxing anything I do to describe it as a 'big thing'! That said, this post does give me the opportunity to talk about some different aspects of my current book, Move Over Darling , so that’s what I’ve chosen to do instead.  What is the title of your book? … the tricky ones first, eh. Where did the idea come from for the book? Initially it was moving to west Wales and discovering that the population of the county I’d moved to was roughly equal to the small Surrey borough I’d just left. The legacy of working in various research posts in the past has left me (someone who loathed maths at school) with a bit of an appetite for statistics. Looking more closely at the figures, I noticed that increases in the population here are mainly due to midd...

Absolutely the best bit for me about being an author, apart from writing… or maybe that should be ‘having written’ since the process involves an awful lot of toil and tears… is getting feedback from readers. The ones who’ve enjoyed it, that it is. Getting feedback from folks who haven’t enjoyed it isn’t much fun at all, but, there, everyone’s entitled to their opinion. Reaching those readers, though, is the tricky part. I’m put off by authors who use social media only to trumpet about their latest book so it makes me reluctant to shout about mine.  Sometimes, however, I’m genuinely too excited to keep it in, like on Monday, when Move Over Darling did something extraordinary, racing up the Amazon charts and settling – for a heady moment – at #2 in the Movers and Shakers chart and at #3 in Women Writers & Fiction. I was very tickled to see my title with its bright cover and Doris Day references resting between two editions of Fifty Shade of Grey so forgive me for sha...

I'm over at the Romantic Novelists' Association blog today talking about myself again, but if you've got a spare moment I'd be very happy to have someone to talk to so please leave a comment if you have time.  Thank you! Painting is Blue Pool by Tom Tomos

What lies beneath? ‘ I’m afraid,’ says the man peering into The Cesspit of Doom at the bottom of our garden, ‘that you will have to have The Big Lorry out.’ He then goes on to give us the grave news that if this tactic isn't successful, deployment of The Jetter may also be required at considerable extra cost. It’s only now, since moving away from a house with the luxury of mains drainage, that we are discovering what country living really means; constant vigilance against incoming mice exploring the cavity walls and defending the loo from outgoing foreign objects. Visitors blanch when they get The Loo Lecture, but I have stopped short (no pun intended) of putting up a sign that boat owners sometimes display (boat loos also being notoriously fussy): ‘If you can eat it, so can I. If you can’t eat it, I won’t try.’ (I’m not sure I want to think about that too deeply, but it sort of makes the point and it was National Poetry Day last week). After a certain amount of cr...