My first experiences of Brighton were literary, and though read around about the same time in my late teens, their depiction of the fashionable seaside resort on the South Coast were poles apart. Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock was set in the sleazy underworld of the town in the 1950s, a stark contrast to the Regency …
Coastal Walks
Back in April this year, once I had finished with my cat-sitting for Simba, I finally got some time to spend with Peter, one of my oldest friends, at his home in Hythe near Folkstone (which is near Dover on the south coast). The sun shone blindingly every day of my visit. We share a …
Cat-Sitting, Chilling and Taking Stock
For the last two years, before and after lockdown, I have been working full out with very little breaks between books. In February this year, Sarah Ferguson and I handed over our second book together (A Most Intriguing Lady, more on this soon), and I then jumped straight in to writing a Christmas novella which …
What I’ve Been Reading
Fiction I haven’t had a lot of time for reading in the past few months, so I’ve mostly been turning to comfort reads in my fiction, and continuing with three quite different detective series that I’ve been very much enjoying. A Winter Memory, Lulu Taylor. I met the very charming Lulu Taylor at the Yeovil …
Armstrong Family Tree, With all It’s Offshoots!
When I first dreamed up the Armstrong family for INNOCENT IN THE SHEIKH’S HAREM, I had no idea that they would still be popping up in my books more than twelve years later. I invented a self-serving, extremely vain patriarch in Lord Henry Armstrong, a bit of a pantomime baddy, and I made Celia, my …
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Writing Close to Home
LADY ARMSTRONG'S SCANDALOUS AWAKENING is out now. This is the second book in the REVELATIONS OF THE ARMSTRONG SISTERS mini-series, set in the mid-Victorian period. Mercy, my heroine, is a widow set on kicking over the traces and Jack Dalmuir, a self-made Glaswegian engineer, is more than happy to step in to help her. Ships, …
What I’ve Been Up To
The simple answer is, writing - so I've seen a lot of these lovely sunrises from my window, but not much else. Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York, and I have been working on our second book together, so for the last few months there's been barely a day when we've not spoken, emailed or WhatsApped …
What I’ve Been Reading
I don’t have a lot of time for reading at the moment, so I’ve mostly been turning to comfort reads in my fiction, and continuing with three quite different detective series that I’ve been very much enjoying. Hangman’s Holiday (Lord Peter Wimsey 9) by Dorothy Sayers is a bit of a pick and mix of …