Category: Author Life

  • What I’ve Been Reading – Fiction

    What I’ve Been Reading – Fiction

    I have endured very mixed results in my novel reading this year, especially since we first entered pandemic lockdown back in March, an experience I’m sure is familiar to many of you. I’ve DNF’d several highly-recommended books, which is unusual for me, I normally stick with books or at least flick through to the end,…

  • The Woman in the Ironed Mask

    The Woman in the Ironed Mask

    Don’t panic, this is not going to be a feminist reworking of Alexander Dumas famous novel. It concerns a contemporary phenomenon – facemasks. Not the politics of wearing them either, rather the making of them. I have a bag of scraps left over from sewing projects dating so far back that some of them probably…

  • What I’ve Been Reading – Fiction

    What I’ve Been Reading – Fiction

    I make no secret of the fact that I absolutely adore Kate Griffin’s Kitty Peck novels and I was looking forward to the last in the series, Kitty Peck and the Parliament of Shadows, with a mixture of excitement and trepidation. The novels are so dark that there was a very good chance Kitty would…

  • The King’s Jaunt

    The King’s Jaunt

    My current work-in-progress is set in Edinburgh in 1822, during the historic royal visit of King George IV, which happily has necessitated a couple of research trips to one of my favourite cities. A combination of circumstances brought the king to Scotland, not least a stand off between his current (and apparently last) mistress, Lady…

  • Pizza (not so) Express!

    Pizza (not so) Express!

    When I was a nipper (we’re going back quite a bit here – so far that the internal combustion engine had just been invented) pizza was an exotic ‘foreign’ dish. There were no ready-made pizzas available in the supermarket, though you could buy frozen versions from McCain, which came in a stack of six, each…

  • What I’ve Been Reading – A Kate Atkinson Special!

    What I’ve Been Reading – A Kate Atkinson Special!

    In eager anticipation of Kate Atkinson’s long awaited new Jackson Brodie book, I’ve been binge-reading her backlist and as a result, she has now firmly established herself as my favourite author ever. Behind the Scenes at the Museum is her first book, and the first of hers that I encountered (this is about my fifth…

  • What I’ve Been Reading – Fiction

    What I’ve Been Reading – Fiction

    I’m still trawling my bookshelves to unearth old favourites long overdue a re-read, and Possession by A S Byatt certainly falls into that category. I think the copy I have at the moment is the third one I’ve bought, but I reckon I’ve read the book half a dozen times if not more. This is…

  • Paris – On Foot and on the Page

    Paris – On Foot and on the Page

    The opening scene of my 50th book, A Wife Worth Investing In, is set in Paris where Phoebe, a wannabe chef, meets Owen, the man who (unbeknownst to either of them) she will marry two years later. Their paths cross in the Procope Café, which is a real place in St Germain on the Left…

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