Category: My books

  • 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…

  • Baby Dear…

    It’s not long to go until Baby Dear, my new ‘book baby’ is out there in the world – I hope to have the cover on the blog very soon (it’s brilliant, thank you, Bloodhound Books!). Meantime, I’ve been thinking a lot about babies… how you worry about them… all the funny and wonderful and…

  • Cheers, slàinte, and prost!

    It’s a triple book celebration today here in N.E. Switzerland – one of them entirely by coincidence. First of all, happy publication day to The Saturday Secret, my first-ever feel-good, romantic-ish collection of short stories. I’ve been wanting to do a charity book with my stories for a while, and this is it. All 2017…

  • Books Without Borders….

    Standing in my living room this morning, I can see into three different countries. Switzerland, Germany, Austria. It’s fun, living in borderland. In summer we take the ferry across the lake to Friedreichshafen once or twice a month, to stroll along the promenade there, admiring the mountains back home in Switzerland. (We’re too close to…

  • Worst-Case Scenario…

    Imagine, for a moment, you are old. Your partner is gone now; your children are living their own lives far away. Your health isn’t what it was, and the technological world of today is often confusing. You are lonely. One day, the phone rings. You answer, hoping it might be one of your children. But…