Summer is definitely over. Down on the lake bank yesterday morning, I saw the trees are turning, and in spite of the beautiful sunshine, there was a bite in the air. Time to coorie in for autumn…
But before we get the big slippers out, here are a few bits and pieces left over  from the summer season.

Wedding Bells in Switzerland, the final novella in my series, came out, and the following day I spotted all five books in a nice little row in their category in the Amazon charts. Wrong order, but who’s counting?

Then there was Baby Dear. Amazon take great pleasure in showing it with the most unlikely neighbours, and this was September’s offering. I’m not saying that people who enjoyed A Very Hungry Caterpillar wouldn’t like Baby Dear too, but… Or maybe it’s cross-genre promotion. Gone with the Wind and Where’s Spot (the dog) were a couple of books further down, too.

On a more serious note, Alison Baillie, Louise Mangos and I were delighted to be asked to contribute an article on writing crime in Switzerland for The Woolf, the Swiss writing magazine. You can read the article (Death in Switzerland) HERE, and here’s the photo they used to accompany it, taken a year or two ago at one of Louise’s book launches.

The three of us had several more informal meetings too, along with our women’s fiction writing friend Cass Grafton, who also lives in north Switzerland. It’s always lovely to get together and talk about the ups and downs of the writing life, and if someone’s hit a problem with their plot, we usually find an answer. Here we are at our last meet-up in Zürich. (Prosecco is always involved.)

While we’re talking about writerly things, I’m totally in love with my new double-sided bookmarks. Big thanks to son 2 for his hard work on these, and also on the website. Top tip to other writers: if you have children, steer one of them towards IT when they’re at the career-choosing stage. You will never regret it.

We’ll finish off with another of yesterday’s autumnal lakeside photos. (Excuse the cranes; they get everywhere.) In the background you can see most of the Alpstein range, with its highest peak Säntis at just over 2,500m.