Category: My books

  • Visiting Yorkshire and – new book!

    After the fraught journey to get to Leeds, I settled down in my hotel and started the week’s busy programme of book and family events. First up was meeting writer Carmen Radtke, who was on the blog a few months ago with a post about Australia and missing brides. We spent the afternoon on the…

  • The Cold Cold Sea – a book with many covers…

    During the writing process, I’m not sure what I was expecting to see on the cover of my second book. It had various working titles along the way, until The Cold Cold Sea came to mind while I was looking at photos of Cornwall one day. I suppose I thought my book would look something…

  • New land…

    It’s been months since I joined Instagram. Yesterday, after months of trial, getting cross, error, and giving up, I finally worked out how to get pics onto my account. You have to use your mobile phone. For someone hopelessly devoted to larger machines –  desktop or laptop or even netbook; I’m not fussy – this…

  • Feel-good fiction for Doctors without Borders… special offer!

    It feels like a long time ago since February, when my charity anthology, The Saturday Secret came out, published by Fabrian Books. 2017 profits from this book are going to Doctors without Borders, who do excellent work where it’s needed most. Last spring, I sent the first Fr.200.- off, and since then the money’s been…

  • Spooky old house revisited…

    Back in the nineties, I spent a week with a friend who had just moved to Biddenham. It’s a good area for a visit from Switzerland – Bedford just a hop down the road, and Cambridge and London less than an hour away. I made the most of my UK shopping and culture week. One…

  • An old book and some new/old friends…

    I was in England over the weekend – a flying visit from Zürich Airport to London Luton, and it was my first-ever Easy Jet flight. I was pleasantly surprised – my knees didn’t touch the seat in front, there was an empty place beside me both ways, and we took off and landed punctually. From…

  • Pictures of a story…

    Most of my books have relatively vague locations. Somewhere in Yorkshire… a few miles from Newquay… between Glasgow and Edinburgh… Chosen Child, however, is set in lovely St Ives, and the main action in Death Wish takes place in Glasgow, in the Langside area, where I stay when I visit my old home town. In…

  • Weather mixed…

    Back in the day, a summer holiday postcard from friends or family was an almost daily occurrence. I remember my mother having a long row on the mantelpiece, and I would stand on tiptoe to see them all. Most were of UK destinations, and most contained a reference to the weather. Weather lovely!! Or: Weather…

  • Summer…

    At long last we’re getting shorts and t-shirts weather here in N.E. Switzerland, and it’s lovely. Breakfast on the balcony overlooking the woods, birds singing and wasps buzzing – okay, maybe I could do without the buzzing wasps. Here’s a sunshine pic of the woods today, at 6.42 a.m. exactly. Even sunnier was my mood…

  • Come back, Madame – all is forgiven…

    Remember your French class at school? I do. At least, I remember the class. I sat beside one of our six Annes, with two others in front, and we had Roddy up the back who kept us all amused with clever remarks… What I don’t remember much of is the actual French, which is a…