Category: Author Life

  • A Tour of Mount Stuart on the Isle of Bute

    I have been visiting the Isle of Bute all my life on family holidays, and as you’ll know if you follow this blog, I am still a regular visitor there to visit family. My latest trip coincided with the Glasgow Fair holiday, when traditionally hordes of Weegies go ‘Doon the Watter’ for a break –…

  • Age Really is Just a Number

    I have always looked much younger than my age. When I was in my late teens and early twenties, this was a huge issue for me. I got refused entry to the cinema to see films that my younger brother had no problem being admitted to. I was forever being asked for proof of age…

  • London – For Business, But Mostly Pleasure

    The paperback of Her Heart for a Compass, the first book I co-authored with Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York, was released in May this year. To celebrate, Mills&Boon hosted a live Historical Book Club event at the News Building, so for the second time in the space of a few weeks I paid a visit…

  • The Great British Sewing Bee – A Hive of Inspiration

    My mum is a beautiful seamstress who once had her own made to measure dress shop. When I was wee, she used to make matching outfits for me and my doll (Tiny Tears at first, later Cindy – never Barbie). I got a toy machine when I was about five that did a simple chain…

  • Brighton Rocks!

    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…

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