I wrote a while ago about a couple of Patricia Highsmith's novels that I read, partly by default (stuck on holiday with a broken kindle, reading whatever was available) and then by choice. I was puzzled by the main characters in both The Blunderer and Strangers on a Tr...

My daughter gave me Shirley Jackson's We have Always Lived in the Castle to read and I must say that I haven't quite got into it yet. But it led me to a short story of Jackson's that gave rise to huge protests and vilification for the author, as well as praise, when it...

I'll start right away by making a confession: I've never been to Rome. I have visited Italy on several occasions, and Sicily, which I absolutely fell in love with. But Rome I have not set foot in, nunca, never, mai. This is a dereliction of duty to art and culture whic...

Today I'm running a blog post that was first published on the website of the fabulous Linda Hill's website, which you can find here: https://lindasbookbag.com/

Thanks to Linda for her support of authors everywhere, including me! 

“The past is a foreign country: they do t...

And sometimes that price simply seems wrong, especially when it comes to books. I'd love to know what all of you readers out there think. I know that more and more of you are checking out my site from America, Australia, the Republic of Ireland and even more far flung...

The students at the first school I taught at, where I did my Teach First training, almost all spoke English as an additional language - around 90% of them, to be precise. Their presence reflected the history of the world's recent wars, like stratum in a rock. There wer...

A short post today, which will reflect the title in more ways than one. It was back to work this week, the first full week of term and first my husband, then me and now my eldest daughter, succumbed to a horrible fever / vomiting virus which left us feeling dead on our...

Trends in book genres come and go, don't they? Remember the tsunami of misery lit that swept the land around the time of Angela's Ashes? Chick lit, whilst never far away, rises and falls in popularity like the tides and, to continue the aquatic imagery, crime fiction s...

     A few people have asked me recently where I get my ideas for my books from. The answer, in a word, is everywhere. Ideas are all around us - sometimes I don't have any for a while and then a whole load come at once, but the one thing about writing that I never worr...