Home Thoughts Weekly

The last of our summer visitors depart and the house falls still. I can wake up gradually, slowly sipping my tea in bed rather than being on call the split-second I open my eyes and I no longer have to grab a nightie and cover up before one of the little grandchildren bursts into the bedroom. When I go for a run, glistening veils of dew spangle the fields and the tall spikes of fireweed are cloaked with clouds of feathery seed. There’s a melancholic sense of autumn in the cool morning air, but my head and heart are too full of all the memories we’ve made this summer to feel sad. We started early with a long-overdue visit to Canada to spend time with my elder stepson, his wife and their son, (our one and only - so far - grandson) who made their home in Alberta five years ago. We began with some sightseeing, flying out to Vancouver and driving through the Rockies before meeting up with Gill, Dan and Harry. It was precious time and we’re so grateful to them for their generous hosp...

This week,  I'm delighted to welcome fellow writer, Margaret James to my blog to talk about her work. Over to you, Margaret... Thank you so much for inviting me to be a guest on your lovely blog, fellow novelist and journalist Christine! I’m delighted to be able to share some home thoughts of my own today. I’ve been writing novels since my children were very little, and I’m a grandmother now. But, as well as writing fiction, I’m a journalist working for Writing Magazine , the UK’s bestselling title for writers of all kinds and at all stages of their careers. I write the Fiction Focus pages for every issue and some of the author profiles too. It’s been my privilege to interview many of today’s bestselling novelists and learn the secrets of their success. I’m also one third of the team that runs CreativeWritingMatters . The other team members are Sophie Duffy and Cathie Hartigan. We organise literary competitions, offer mentoring, and provide a whole range of other...

One of the most exciting moments for me, as an author, is that first glimpse of a new cover. All the hope, the dreams and the hours of hard work brought together and epitomised in a single image. I loved the cover of my first published novel, Turning the Tide , so much that I framed it and put it on my study wall. I have to admit, though, the the girl on the cover, cast away on a pile of rocks, looks nothing like the Harry Watling of my imagination. My heroine, Harry, is a fierce, angry, scared woman with a chip on both shoulders who’s prepared to take on the world to save the business her father started and wouldn’t be seen dead in anything except a pair of oily dungarees. When Turning the Tide went to Norway, Harry transformed again; her hair’s grown, so have her legs, and she’s wearing a teeny-tiny pair of shorts my Harry would never have had in her wardrobe. Eloise Blake, the heroine of my novella, Only True in Fairy Tales, is a reclusive woman who’s been badly hurt and ...