Home Thoughts Weekly

What’s happened to all the spare time I thought I’d have after completing Book 3? It’s a question I ponder as I leave Tom and my comfort zone and head off alone to fulfil one of my new roles serving on the committee of the Romantic Novelists' Association. I know it’s lame, but I’m pretty hopeless at finding my way round London and always dread it. Today though, I’m armed with maps and directions carefully printed for me by Tom and instructions from Rose to ignore the hurry everyone else is in and to take my time. What can go wrong? The plan goes slightly awry at Epsom where I’ve spent the night at Ma’s. At the station I congratulate myself on picking a quiet time to travel, but, seconds before the 8.17 to Waterloo train arrives, the platform is flooded with commuters and I’m outgunned and outmanoeuvred in the rush for a seat. Well never mind, there’s enough room for me and my bag to stand out the way and I can quietly read my Kindle. Except, of course, that with every pa...

Towards the end of a ninety-thousand word writing journey, all I can think of is reaching The End. By this stage, I’m pretty tense wondering if all the story threads will knit together; I used to think I was a ‘plotter’, but three books down the line, I realise I work with the spark of an idea and by allowing space for my characters to grow. This means that I’m constantly going back, revising my work in the light of what I’ve found out, but even so the final chapters still feel like hurtling down a helter-skelter hoping I don’t crash-land! The next test for me is handing the manuscript over to Tom. He may be my other half, but it doesn’t make it any less excruciating knowing he’s reading my work as there’s no hiding his reaction. Fortunately the man with the red correcting pen says, ‘yes’. I also take it to be a good sign that he’s sat and read the story straight through, barely moving from his chair. Then it’s a matter of making the last-minute corrections, giving it a bit ...

Ma modelling her splint Time: A little after 3pm . I am slowly digesting the radiology report following my CT scan which has just been read to me over the phone. Normal. I don’t think a word has ever sounded so good to me. I still have the symptoms, but it isn’t caused by a growth lurking in my sinuses. Huge, tearful relief.  It’s been a productive week at Hotel H , I’ve been balancing work – so tantalisingly close to the end of Book 3 – with trips out with Ma who’s been staying here. We’ve just been for lunch at a garden centre before I crack on with another 1000 words. Ma, who’s been pottering in the garden, calls out from the back door. ‘Have you got a plaster?’ ‘I’ll get you one,’ I say, getting up. And at the back door I see what looks like the aftermath of a fight in a black pudding factory. I know a little blood goes a long way, but a lot of blood goes even further. Ma has fallen out of the greenhouse, gashing open a varicose vein on the frame and badly twistin...

At last some cheerful news! I'm delighted to welcome my fellow Choc Lit author, lovely Margaret James to Home Thoughts Weekly It's publication day for her new novel The Wedding Diary and here she is to tell us about it... Thank you for inviting me to be your guest today, Chris. It’s great to be here! I’ve always loved fairy tales . Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Snow White, Rapunzel – all those heroines waiting for handsome princes to come along and save them from fates worse than death (or even death itself) fascinated eight-year-old, unreconstructed, pre-The Female Eunuch me. I’m considerably older and more cynical nowadays, but I still love fairy tales, probably because they have such strong story lines and they’re so life-affirming. You, dear reader, can wish upon a star. You too can have your happy ending. I wrote my romantic comedy The Wedding Diary at a time when my own life was in meltdown. I was almost too scared to pick up the phone because I knew something els...

‘ Don’t pull,’ I tell the nurse who’s about to remove my stitches.  ‘I have to pull, or it’ll fester,’ says the nurse. ‘But, the consultant said – ’ Too late, because the nurse is now brandishing a pin-sized piece of purple, plastic thread and everything else feels, well, fine. It’s a little disconcerting to see the damage, but the wound itself has healed amazingly well in a week, and, as Tom reminds me later, what I’d forgotten was the consultant telling me to allow 8 -10 weeks for everything to settle. So, apart from waiting for the histology results, that should be the end of that little episode. What I won’t forget though, is how very kind everyone has been. Thank you all so much for thinking of me and for your messages here and elsewhere – it’s meant a lot to me. But most of all, do, please, look after yourselves.

Having devoted much of my recent worries to my sinuses, I wasn’t in the slightest bit concerned about yesterday’s appointment to see a consultant dermatologist about a tiny patch of red skin that’s been lurking on my upper arm… When my name is called , I breeze in and am greeted by two smiling faces; a consultant, about my age, and a trainee doctor. I present my arm fully expecting to be told off for wasting valuable NHS time and sent packing with a tube of cream.  ‘Ah,’ says the consultant to his trainee, ‘what do you notice about this lesion?’ Lesion, I think, is not a word I like, but hey-ho, this is doctor-to-doctor talk, so I listen to an explanation of stretching the skin and distinctive pearly edges, still waiting to be sent home in the next breath. ‘So,’ the consultant tells me, ‘what you have is a basal cell carcinoma, and I’d like to do something about it straight away.’ In that split-second a small part of brain screams ‘F*CK!’ and another prompts me to tell the...

On Friday morning I open the computer to see how Move Over Darling is doing after its stint of being available free for five days. To my surprise, it seems to be doing quite nicely. Goodness knows what hubris prompts me to take a quick look at Amazon Movers and Shakers, but, hey ho, I do … and see Move Over Darling at number one! Number one!! Of course, what goes up must come down, but it’s an amazing start to the day and as fellow author Valerie-Anne Baglietto jokes to me on Twitter, I’ll always have the screenshot. A little later Ma phones . She’s a passionate and clever gardener, as I’ve mentioned here before, and has finally decided to treat herself to a greenhouse. She’s had few sleepless nights worrying about all the practicalities of getting it fitted, but when the man turns up on Friday morning to lay the concrete base he has the same surname – quite a common name, it has to be said – as someone my dad once worked with and very much liked. ‘Are you related?’ asks Ma....