For the past couple of months, I have put my third novel aside and returned to my first novel that I finished some years ago, but only ever published as an eBook – with minimal publicity so that, no doubt, approximately 11 people read it….! Partly, my cautious approach to releasing this novel was sheer fear – how dare I think anyone would be interested in reading 300 pages or so of a novel I had entirely imagined and created?  I was hardly a novice writer when I wrote it with decades of publishing short stories with women’s commercial magazines...

Worthing was the setting for the UK Southern Book Show on Sunday October 28th – and it was a good day for making contacts with a lot of other writers and readers. For me, the highlight was delivering a talk on aspects of writing. I managed to cover: sources of creativity, exploiting memory for writing, characterisation and techniques of flash fiction – by going at a break-neck speed and with the support of a lot of hand-outs so that, hopefully, the audience members had something to remind them and to look back on once they left the room, a little...

There I was, at the alarmingly young age of 19, holding my first acceptance letter from a Conde Nast publication: the editor of BRIDES magazine had accepted my very first piece of writing submitted in the hopes of being published, a humorous article entitled SISTER OF THE BRIDE, and was paying me £15 for the privilege. I was launched! This was going to be easy, I thought. A career in freelance journalism to sit alongside a few years of teaching, after which I would abandon the classroom in favour of devoting myself entirely to the (manual at the time) typewriter....

Nine days or so in Crete back at our house, Blue Heaven, in Gavalohori, and there’s time to return to my new novel and actually make some progress.  Writing whilst looking out at the White Mountains in one direction, over the village and across to the coast in the other, somehow makes it far easier to focus then when trying to write at home with constant distractions of the phone ringing, an untidy house calling for my attention and the cats demanding to be fed!  (although we do appear to have a Cretan cat who likes to attach himself to...

Sunday October 28th – UK Southern Book Show at Field Place Barns,  Worthing,  looks as if it is going to be a dynamic and inspirational day for readers and writers alike – what better way, after all, to start the first of the long dark days of winter (clocks go back in the early hours of 28th …)than to come to the show, meet and talk to writers and readers, attend talks and buy some books to occupy those cold bleak evenings?  And why not get ahead with the Christmas shopping and find something suitable for your book-loving relative too? ...

Flash Fiction is a type of writing that I have only recently begun to try. I am not sure how long it has been around, but there certainly seems to be an epidemic of it – competitions, flash fiction websites, festivals, articles about how to write the best, what it truly involves etc etc – so that if you write it is hard to escape the feeling that you should really be having a go … And, of course, to state the absolute obvious, it doesn’t take up a huge amount of time to try. So if the main work...

My third novel, my ?work-in-progress,? does not yet have a name. There are several working titles, but nothing yet that feels quite right although hopefully, inspiration will strike before I finish ? But it does have a very definite setting ? London. London features constantly in the novel as most of the characters live there although Brighton also features from time to time. London as a setting, however, gives me every excuse to get on the train as often as I can to do further research. And in spite of the fact that I was born in London, come from...