24 hours

The usual chaos of my life was made somewhat worse this past week as several random events intersected and I narrowly avoided being in two places at once, which is why I’m glad to have reached this sunny Saturday morning when all I have to worry about is whether Jacques brings in the mouse I [...]

March is the weirdest month

And so I continue to lurch through the month, casting aside half-edited novels and leaving rooms strewn with half-read newspapers and piles of post I haven’t had time to read. Today was the day I was meant to catch up on all that before plunging into the turmoil of another working week, again with the added [...]

the luxury of time

For some reason I thought staying away from home in a hotel in London for a couple of nights would give me lots of spare time to write. This has not turned out to be the case, although thanks to East Coast trains I will have an ‘extra’ hour on the train since today the [...]

new start

I feel as if I’m making a new start, with blogging and with writing, because I’ve had a bit of a break from both. Of course I have been doing other nice things… Canal du Midi at Agde – a cool green place on a hot day (a lovely holiday on the Languedoc coast, right [...]

a time to write and a time to mull

[This has nothing to do with the island of Mull in Scotland!] I haven’t been doing much writing lately, in fact it has been a struggle even to think of something to post on Twitter. The thought of sitting down and working on a novel is enough to make me feel ill. This is only [...]

the lure of the big city

I’m off to London later today, ostensibly to visit 2 museums on Monday. But after arranging this, I found that there’s a Who Do You Think You Are? event on at Olympia, so I will be packing a hastily assembled folder of family history into my bag along with the usual netbook, something to read [...]

a source of inspiration

I was out last night having dinner with the Edinburgh NaNoWriMo group – purely a social occasion, no writing involved. However, I found it a great source of inspiration being with other writers, and on the way home on the bus I resolved to start editing my 2008 NaNo novel which is a historical story [...]

all the old familiar places

So here I am back in the conservatory while raindrops fall on the glass roof above me. It hasn’t been warm enough to sit here for very long, but today the weather is fairly mild – though wet and windy. Even my Italian car has finally consented to go out without complaining about something. What [...]