News / Journal

Summer 2010

Well this Summer has hurtled by at a rate of knots, hasn’t it? Time for some pictures, I think,
to help recapture some of it! Here’s me and the lovely Victoria Connelly beside a mountain of cakes at the Harper Collins Summer party(no, we didn’t eat them all, though tempted!)

Later in July I was delighted to attend the RNA 50th anniversary conference held this year at
Greenwich. Absolutely beautiful surroundings, and the Old Royal Naval college is a truly
atmospheric venue. It wasn’t hard to imagine all the naval drills that would have taken place there
in days of yore. Anyway, a great time was had by all and much writerly discussion (and drinking of
wine) went on as usual. Except I didn’t drink very much wine because I had a workshop to run on the Saturday and given that the temperatures that weekend were running at 28-30 degrees centigrade I figured I’d already got my work cut out, just keeping alert.

Talking of writerly discussion, I was delighted to be asked by a group of local writers in Medway
to come and speak to them about my work. Not only were they a lovely bunch of ladies, they put
on a marvellous spead as well – so (belatedly) thank you to the Medway Mermaids! My talk at
Rochester library the following week was similarly well received and even better attended – there
seems to be more people every time.

Rochester being the location of my last book, I was interested to see Rochester Cathedral had
put the oldest written manuscript in English on display, for three days only. I duly toddled down
there with my son Jonathan to have a look. It turns out the Textus Roffensis was written by a monk in Rochester 900 years ago; beautifully scribed, I’d have stood examining it for a lot longer if there hadn’t been so many folk waiting behind me ,however the one thing that did strike me was I could barely recognise a word of it! Our language, like our landscape, is changing constantly, as is what we want to do with it I suppose.

On now to book four – as yet untitled – but well underway, and I hope to give it a good push as
we move into the autumn proper and there aren’t so many distractions around. Watch this space!

Lastly, for those of you who can read Italian (and those who can't!) here is the rather lovely cover for the Italian version of Pandora's Box - La mia Bambina, just released this month.

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