The Difference Between Delusion and Illusion

So ten days into the new career, do I feel different?  Yes, I feel like a little round plastic thingy, maybe yellow, maybe red, with a line of string tied around my waist – otherwise known as a yo-yo.  My initial bravado of selling my writing was swiftly followed by an attack of inferiority complex and then the burdening weight of responsibility that when people read my books they are expecting the truth.  The first two peaks and troughs seemed to have levelled out now but the responsibility still lingers.

I also felt this almost overwhelming feeling that now I was publicly trying to sell my name that I had a reputation to uphold.  Now I know this is a delusion of grandeur but what if in the far off future somone says ‘No, I’m not going to buy Hannah Hooton’s book; I saw her littering at the train station’?  In my defense I do try to avoid littering and what can you do if there are zero bins at the station?  This public persona delusion seemed to fold pretty quickly when the day after At Long Odds went live I was slipping and sliding the half hour walk to the station at an icy six o’clock in the morning to catch the Cambridge train so I could attend eighteen hours of university and commuting.  Oh yes, I was in a really chirpy mood.  A group of youths, yelling and tripping over each other, approached and the one girl draped herself over me breathing toxic fumes into my face.  Did I think of my author’s reputation at that moment?  No, I was thinking how ridiculous it was to be still out drunk at six o’clock when I was on my way to work.  So in no uncertain terms I told her where to go and shrugged her off.  She then replied with some surprisingly imaginative insults.

Walking away, I thought that it was really quite ironic.  I don’t recall ever telling anyone to eff off unless I was joking.  I chose to curse publicly the first opportunity and really mean it not 24 hours after becoming published.  Now, I’m under no illusions such a thing would have a long term detrimental effect, or indeed have an effect at all – the girl was obviously never going to recognise me again – but it did make me wonder.

That’s the psycho side of becoming published for the first time.  The other side is the facts.  I’m not about to list my sales numbers etc., but I am amazed and thrilled by just how well received the free promo weekend went for At Long Odds.  It has resulted in some lovely reviews on both the US and UK amazon sites and my latest addiction is checking the Kindle Charts to see if it has moved in the last five minutes.

Naturally, my WIP is feeling ignored and unloved.  To make it feel better I completed another chapter (hit the 40,000 word mark – hooray!) and played around with Title and Chapter headings.  Oh, and I found a new picture for my hero, Rhys Bradford.

In other news, I’m preparing to do the last edit and polish of Keeping The Peace and finding someone capable of designing a cover to do it justice.  With any luck that’ll be up for sale at the beginning of April*.

As part of my degree course myself and two other students made our first ‘movie’ on Monday.  Untitled as yet, it is barely a minute long, is one continuous shot (project requirement) and runs to the soundtrack of Postman Pat (not project requirement).  Not Scorsese-material yet, I grant you, but if you ignore my dodgy camerawork and Mark’s dodgy acting and everyone’s dodgy idea of mise-en-scéne, then I think we did all right.  We’ll find out soon enough.

*deadlines have never been my friend so consider that date tentative

Book Release and Film Capture

It’s so tempting to start each new blog post with ‘Crikey, look at the last time I blogged! I’m so sorry I haven’t got on my soapbox for three and a half months.  It’s because of...’ and then insert a list of lame excuses.  My only excuse this time is that I’m instinctively lazy when it comes to blogging and do you really want to hear how my Christmas went?  No, thought not.  I will say though I hope you were at Kempton Racecourse on Boxing Day.  I can’t remember the last time a horse winning made me cry like Kauto Star did in the King George...  Oh yes, I can it was when Kauto Star won at Haydock Park earlier in the season.  That horse is turning me into a wreck.  If he wins the Cheltenham Gold Cup, I shall need to be hooked up to a saline drip.

What this post really should have started with is an apology to the lovely Clare Wartnaby.  She very kindly nominated my blog for the Liebster Blog Award.  So totally undeserved I feel, I never found a way of saying thank you and before you know it, weeks and months have gone by and I felt too embarrassed to speak up.  I can feel the guilt shawling me as I write this.  But Clare really is a great gal.  If you haven’t checked out her blog already then I’d recommend you do here.

If I was even vaguely marketing savvy I should also probably have already mentioned my novel At Long Odds is now out on amazon as an e-book.  Woohoo!  There’s something about writing blog posts that unleashes the secret metaphorist in me and I can’t help but write in bizarre disguises of reality.  I was going to compare At Long Odds’ launch to attempting a pike to double twist somersault off a 6 metre board but since I never had the guts to do anything but divebomb off the 3-metre board, I don’t actually know what that’s like.  I do know however what’s it’s like to unleash my imagination on an unsuspecting audience though now.

It’s bloody scary.

‘You write about horses and love? Are you the next Jilly Cooper?’ I’m asked.

Noooo. As much as I’d like to adopt that tag, I think anybody looking for a Jilly Cooper read should go read Jilly Cooper.

‘Are you the next Fiona Walker?’ they then ask.

Noooo again.  But only because I’ve never actually read any of Fiona Walker’s books (sorry Fiona - I will, I promise).

At Long Odds is all me.  I hope you’ll give it a bash (not too hard though, they’re really strict on whip use these days).  If you honestly don’t think you can, then tell someone who you reckon might enjoy it.

When it was available as a free download it got some great reviews so without trying to blow my own trumpet too loud, it can’t be that bad, can it?  Each £1.98 (minus tax) goes towards the Hannah Hooton University Fund since the loan which the government deem acceptable for students to live on only keeps me in home and food eight months of the year.

In other news?  Not a lot, to be honest.  Well, nothing that would be of riveting interest to anyone but myself (I have an eccentric taste in interests I’ve found).

Oh, I did go see War Horse at last.  Well!  I waited impatiently for about a year for that film to come out and all we get is Equine Lassie?  I’m sorry, maybe I’m being too harsh - it is a family film after all.  I just feel that after the massive build-up it had, it fell a little short of the mark.  It had its moments, don’t get me wrong but it didn’t hit the spot which triggers the waterworks.  I had much the same impression after watching Secretariat back in 2010 - they’d turned a gritty but magnificent horseracing tale into a chocolate-chip Disney ice cream cone.  I rewrote a partial script of Secretariat for one of my film modules last semester and received a first for it.  Take that Disney.

Okay, I’m going off on a tangent so I’d better stop there (you never know, I might be looking for work placement with these production companies someday if I get this degree).

Cheers for now and hopefully it won’t be another three and a half months before the next exciting thing happens in my life.

A Bomb Scare, An Engagement and a Mature’s Outlook on University

Look at that date!  I can’t believe I’ve been at university for almost a month now. Somebody tell me where time has gone these past few weeks (I’d love to ask the guy who looked like David Tennant’s Dr Who but after seeing him every day for the first week, I haven’t seen him at all since… I’m now beginning to wonder)?

Freshers gathering for free welcome braai

 So what, you might ask, is it like being a first year undergraduate student when you’re thirty?  It’s ageing, to put it simply.  My combined degree of Writing and Film Studies I think is considered pretty cool and an ‘easy’ way to get a degree (that’s not why I’m doing it by the way), so I think there is this expectation that you just lounge around watching the latest Hollywood blockbusters and writing a couple of stories.  Nuh-uh.  Yes, we watch films – but quite often you wouldn’t touch them if they were the last in the rental store.  Happily, I’ve been surprised by how much I’ve enjoyed them so far – Buster Keaton’s silent movies from the 20s and a rather chilling black and white movie called The Night of the Hunter come to mind.  To give myself a treat while at the same time calling it ‘homework’ I went to the cinema to watch Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.  Considering I spent the first hour marvelling at how much one of the actors looked like Ian Hislop (I always thought he was a one-off) and it took me three-quarters of the film to work out everyone’s names and that Control was actually a person and not a department, I could easily have scratched a bald spot into my head if it went on for much longer.

My question to ‘What if I miss my disitation deadline?’ was answered at the beginning of my second week.  Phone the uni and tell them there’s a bomb in a microwave at the front of the building.  That generally distracts people away from their work and makes everyone within a mile radius evacuate the area.  I was in the middle of a Visualisation, Research and Storyboarding seminar when the friendly warden stuck his head round the door and said ‘Out!  There’s a bomb!’  Our lecturer was much calmer although I think I preferred the warden’s attitude to preserving life as we were then instructed to pack up, save our work and switch off our computers.  Sorry, bomb scare or no bomb scare, I was not going to endanger my life a moment longer for the sake of a Photoshop collage.  I was out the door in pretty snappy time and down in the courtyard with the rest of the building’s congregation for a couple of fags and a gossip about what was going on.

Because of the scare, our class overran and because I’ve just discovered the miracles of Photoshop, I stayed on to work on a book cover for At Long Odds (see below for my handiwork).  And while I love living in Norwich, when you drag your feet across Cambridge’s platform 5 at 7 o’clock in the evening, knowing that you’re not going to get any dinner or even a coffee until 9, it becomes a bit of a turn off.  On that particular evening the train carriage was fairly empty and I spread myself out at one of the tables.  A couple sitting opposite me caught my eye.  They were sitting close together, cooing and crowing over the empty bottle of vintage 1983 champers.  My first thought was ‘Oh God, I don’t want to be sat with a couple of drunk people when I want to read my book’.

But there was something different about these two.  They were dressed very smartly.  His tie was loosened.  He was in a state of half-consciousness and was falling asleep on his partner’s shoulder.  She, on the other hand, was glowing – not literally like in a Stephanie Meyer book – but there was some radiance of happiness humming about her like a force field.  I looked closer.  She was twisting a diamond ring on her wedding finger and gazing at it.  It was too small and her finger was red and creased where she was trying to make it fit.  Every now and then she would give a big heartfelt sigh and look tenderly at the gently-snoring man slumped on her shoulder.  She caught me peeping over my book at her and beamed at me.  I felt genuine happiness for her – I wanted to congratulate her, give her some wise words of wisdom that she would remember for the rest of her life and recount them to friends in years to come as being uttered by the stranger on the train.  Unfortunately, Britishness for respecting one another’s privacy has really rubbed off on me and I settled for giving her a pleasant smile (plus I couldn’t think of anything particularly wise and memorable to say).  Her phone conveniently rang – family congratulating her and her fiancé on their engagement – and I got to hear the whole story without having to ask.  It brightened my evening and made the hour and a quarter trip back to Norwich less gloomy.

When people politely ask how uni is going I’m a bit stumped for an answer and I’ve miraculously remastered the teenage shrug.  It’s different, some of it is interesting, and it’s time consuming (university that is, not the teenage shrug).  Although I am genuinely enjoying it, it’s brought my own writing to a grinding halt.  The writing muscle is still being flexed with plenty of short stories and scripts for homework exercises but the stand-alone sequel to Keeping The Peace has not been touched in nearly three weeks – hmmm, so much for that 1,000 words a day target.  On the bright side, I’ve come up with an idea for the next book so I have something to work towards when the cogs get turning again.  In the meantime this is what I made in our Photoshop class: At Long Odds – to be e-published next month.

A New Chapter or Six

What happened to Katie Melua? You never hear of her these days yet as I’m trawling the web for suitable tracks to accompany the new book-venture, I’m having to stop myself from lumping her entire collection into my soundtrack. Take a listen to this as you read:

　
Where were we the last time we left off - I promise if I had anything of any interest I’d do more regular updates but alas, my life continues to coast along. Actually, I don’t know if I’d like it if my life became manic. For one, I don’t know how my writing would cope. When I moved to Norwich almost a year ago to the day, it took me a good fortnight to find my writing rhythm again. I think it’s something to do with feeling settled - plus I kept getting distracted by the big ass spiders that inhabited my new bedroom (I have now moved from there and have two cats so spiders are no longer a problem).
Anyway, I digress. Oh yes, last time I was telling you about my holiday in Malta (go there those of you who haven’t, go there again those of you who have) and telling you the continuing saga of At Long Odds and Keeping The Peace.

Just to keep you up to date, nothing exciting has happened on the book front. Keeping The Peace is with some publishers but they’ve been very quiet in the two months they’ve had it. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. Sorry, I’m a pessimist (leads to less disappointment when things go wrong), it’s probably a bad thing. In the meantime, I’ve started Keeping The Peace’s sequel and am six chapters in. This book has been a bit of a wake-up call. I presumed that when Keeping The Peace turned out to be relatively easy to write in comparison to At Long Odds, it was because At Long Odds was the first proper (note: proper - not the three books I wrote as a fanciful teenager) book that I’d written and therefore still learning the ropes. I assumed that the ropes had now been learned when Keeping The Peace flowed like Victoria Falls onto my screen. Great, I thought! Book number 3 will be even easier!
Cue squealing brakes. Not so.
This book - I haven’t even been able to settle on a title yet and that’s usually the first thing that comes - is like having to drag Dominic West up a hill to a remote cottage. Exhausting and painful, yet each time you look at him or think of what’s to follow when you eventually reach the cottage, it makes you carry on. I shall be very disappointed if I reach that metaphorical cottage with my metaphorical Dominic West and find my only reward is metaphorical tea. So even though I’m only six chapters in I’m already praying the end will have enough oomph to leave the reader with that warm fuzzy feeling inside.

I started this book at the beginning of August, thinking don’t be too ambitious with the amount of work you can get done. Keep it manageable so I set myself the target of 7,000 words a week (I read somewhere someone saying it’s best to have weekly targets rather than daily targets - that way you’re not under so much pressure). I kept to that target for approximately 24 hours as I discovered just how uneasy this book was going to be. Nevertheless, I still have the end of the year as my overall target to have the first draft finished and I’m only a little behind (maybe 10,000 words behind but I’ve convinced myself not to panic).

Also having just read Amanda Hocking’s blog here, I am in awe of this woman. Yes, it’s all tremendous that she’s made so much money, blah-dee-blah, but her work ethic is incredible! I think some of her books have taken her two or three weeks to write (once all the planning and prep has been done). There is no way I could hammer out even half a book in that time, so hats off to you, Amanda.

Another thing about Amanda’s blog (I haven’t read any of her books but if her blog is anything to go by then they’re guaranteed to be hilarious) is that I now really understand how much hard work it is to self-publish. It certainly is not the easy way out. I’m under no delusions - I don’t reckon on becoming the new indie-pub sensation - but I still look at At Long Odds with great fondness and read the reviews it has received on fictionpress and it makes me yearn to self-publish it now that the traditional route has turned it down.

Plus, even though there is no evidence to show that book trailers do anything to increase sales, I really want to make a book trailer for it. But a proper trailer that doesn’t just comprise of stills. I want there to be actors. I’ve got the music (check out Miika’s music here, he is a genius) , soon I’ll have access to camera equipment and studios/editing suites when I start my film production degree. All I really need is someone to do hero Julien Larocque justice. He might be modelled on Billy Crudup’s character in the film adaptation of Charlotte Gray but when I think about it, Johnny Depp would be the perfect man to fill that role. Well, if he shaved off his goatee and cut his hair. So Johnny, if you’re reading this give us a shout if you’re prepared to do these things (for free I might add, I’m doing this on a student’s budget).

Billy Crudup

Johnny Depp

See the similarity? Plus, I have the feeling Johnny might do a better French accent than Billy (I loved you in Charlotte Gray, Billy - hell, you inspired me to write a book, but the accent slipped a few too many times).

In two weeks’ time, it’ll be Freshers Week at university. And according to Facebook everyone has only one thing on their agenda: to get completely sloshed. Let me put this in perspective for you: I’m going to see a Neil Diamond tribute concert with my mum this weekend and a walk on the beach. I’m only 30 yet I feel Freshers Week is going to make me feel twice that. I will let you know how it goes down. Take care.

A 30-year-old A Level student in Malta

Recall that sunset and the cloud cover metaphor I used a while back? Okay, think really hard - I realise it was a while back since anything was posted on my blog. To give your memory a nudge I was riding off into the sunset after securing myself a literary agent with my novel At Long Odds. The sunset then became overshadowed by cloud cover when unfortunately the publishing world weren’t as keen to take At Long Odds on as I was to foist it upon them.
Well, I think I might stick to that metaphor with the continuing saga since it implies horses and romance and - yeah, you get the picture, don’t you?
It would seem the horse I was riding off on has become lame. Is it worth saving? Maybe but it’ll be some place further down the line. Instead I’ve jumped on a shiny new steed in the shape of Keeping The Peace, my latest novel. It went through the nail-biting process of the Romantic Novelists Association New Writer’s Scheme (with two critiques) and under the sharp scrutiny of my agent. And the good news is I and Keeping The Peace appear to have come out the other side unscathed. Since it’s submission I think I’ve undergone more changes than the novel (see below).
And now we’re at that point again of waiting. Waiting for publishers to say those magic words. Going back to that metaphor, Keeping The Peace is a stronger, fitter, better-looking and more well-proportioned horse to be riding off on than At Long Odds. Here’s hoping it’ll last the distance (it had better because I’ve just started the sequel).

In other news, I am now officially qualified up to Level 2 standard now after completing an Access course in Creative Writing, English Literature and Journalism. In some ways it doesn’t have the impact that having 3 As at A Level does, but in other ways the work was (apparently) the same difficulty level and was compacted into one year’s study instead of two, making it harder than A Levels. I don’t know. All I do know is that it was a terrific experience; I met some amazing people, both students and tutors and some might say most importantly, it’s got me the grades to get into Anglia Ruskin this September to study Writing and Film Production (is it wrong to tell people when they ask that ‘I’m going to study in Cambridge’? It’s not really lying after all).

And this monumental moment in my life, which usually occurs when people are turning 18 happens the week of my 30^th birthday*. I’ve bid farewell to those short carefree years of my twenties and am now preparing to settle down, behave, act responsibly and get published in my thirties - oh, did I mention I’m going to become an university student in a few weeks’ time? Maybe I’ll just concentrate on getting published in the next decade.

And to bring you more or less up to date with everything in my more than a little haphazard life, I’ll fill you in on the short holiday recently taken by my mother and I in Malta (by the way, this is where I underwent the ‘change’ I referred to earlier). That change came in the form of extremely painful sunburn followed by a beautiful if somewhat patchy tan. For ten lovely hot days, I felt like the island was honeymooning me and I’ve come away having fallen in love with the land and its people. If you’ve been to Malta you probably recognise this feeling. If you haven’t been, then I strongly recommend going. It’s the best place to unwind and just chill out (so long as you have the air-conditioning on).
The best thing that came out of that holiday for me was the inspiration juices it got churning again. I finished my final writing project/beginning and synopsis of screenplay for my Access course while relaxing in Ta Peter's Restaurant, which earned me a distinction and recommendation from my tutor to pitch it as a 6 part drama series to then be adapted into a feature film, using State of Play as an example.  Only if Dominic West or Tom Hardy act in it is all I can say.
On top of completing my course project, I had time to dwell on my next book.  It's slowly beginning to take a more solid shape, characters are becoming more defined and plotlines less blurred. I think holidaying in Malta is going to become an annual event for me (finances allowing of course. When I tell people I’m excited to be going to university in seven weeks’ time, I don’t mention the main reason is finally getting a student loan). And who knows, if I become tired of writing horse-themed novels, Malta isn’t a bad backdrop for a book. It’s just a pity there aren’t any horses there.

Anchored at Crystal Bay

Cocktails at Cafe Puccini

Cathedral in Mdina

　
*thanks for the party, Mel; I never thought I’d enjoy drinking sparkling wine and listening to John Denver on full blast quite so much.

Nags to Niches

The sunset that I was merrily riding off into in my last blog post has become obliterated by cloud cover. Otherwise known as rejection from publishers. Combine this with the fact Cheltenham Festival has come and gone with only two of my favourite champions retaining their crowns (that’s Quevega and Big Buck’s for those of you who follow National Hunt racing).
One horse that did catch my writer's eye though was Zarkandar.  And not because I want to write about him (give it time though) but because his career is almost a metaphor for a writer's.  In some ways, this young horse is a failure even though with only two races over jumps, he is already the Triumph Hurdle champion, with a record unblemished.
Why is he a failure?
By simple association. He is the half-brother to the great mare Zarkava, whose uncompromising speed burnt up the French racetracks and whose untainted career ended with a sound whipping of every turf champion from around the world in the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe in Paris. Zarkandar was not his sister all over again and didn’t have her acceleration to push him to the front of Flat racing’s field. Instead, he was sold and trained to jump. And here he excels. He is at the top of his game with plenty more years and titles to come. He was simply not suited to Flat racing.

Back to those two rejections I received last week: one said it wasn’t funny enough, the other said it wasn’t raunchy enough. Now for me, sexual prowess and sense of humour are attributes which I am more sensitive about than others (my sense of fashion has taken enough flack for me to wear crocodile skin and not notice the difference in texture to my own). So my confidence took a bit of a knock. But a couple of days and a few encouraging words from my agent and friends* later, I was willing to look at the rejections again with a more objective eye. After reading Sue Moorcroft’s Love Writing: How to Make Money Writing Romantic or Erotic Fiction, I deduced that At Long Odds, the book in question, is not a romantic comedy or chick lit or erotica novel. It is a contemporary romance. Here it fits perfectly, whereas as chick lit, it falls way short.  Just like Zarkandar fitted into National Hunt racing much more than Flat racing.

So, it just goes to show how important identifying what your book is in terms of genre/category/market. As an unpublished novelist, unless you are unnaturally and constantly high on self-confidence, there are moments when you ask yourself who are you kidding? Who on earth would want to read - and God forbid, spend money on - stories which you have made up? These attacks on self-belief become more acute when you receive another rejection, the familiar thump of your returned MS landing on your doormat coinciding with your heart becoming lodged somewhere between your arches and your toes. More than likely, your writing is probably very good but you are entering a race not suited to your strengths. Send your manuscript to agents and publishers who you know are interested in the type of fiction you write. When making comparisons to other writers in your cover letter, don’t be overambitious and rattle off a list of blockbuster writers. Giving the agent or publisher high expectations will most likely result in them being disappointed and it won’t have done you any good at all. Living up to a pre-built reputation like Zarkandar had to do following Zarkava’s success, will probably end in disappointment.

The next Jilly Cooper? Well, it was flattering to be called that but do I honestly think it? I like to think I can create a good heart-warming romance around the horse-world but is it as raunchy and the humour as flippant as Jilly Cooper’s?
No.
That’s not to say it isn’t sexy or funny. They’re just different.

I am Zarkandar. Jilly, you are, quite deservingly, Zarkava.
　
　
*Here’s lookin’ at you, Twitter

Eat Your Heart Out Bridget Jones, Mine’s A Blog

So, here’s the thing.  The first few words debut bloggers cautiously tap out on their keyboards always have that edge of apprehensiveness.  There’s an almost tangible question hanging in the air saying
“Am I a crazy fool for blogging about my thoughts and other nonsensicalness when I know nobody is reading this yet?”
“Furthermore, do said musings et al warrant people’s interest?”
“Everyone has something exciting happen to them at some stage in their life but is it enough to justify a blog?”
As a writer, you are told time and time again "Get yourself out there, start a blog, get on to Twitter" (ha!  Already there!) but the first I’ve always hesitated at.  Until of course the obvious became, well… obvious.  A blog is not a diary.  It’s true, people aren’t going to be interested in my 16-year-old self’s entries* which usually read along the lines of “Rick passed me on the way home from football practice.  He smiled and said ‘Hi there.’  I’m sure he doesn’t have to go home that way and he did go out of his way to speak to me…”.  Needless to say, Rick did apparently have to go home that way and possibly the fact that I all but engineered our every meeting, meant Rick never did feel the way this starry-eyed love-struck teenager hoped.  Sucker.
 
A blog isn’t a day-by-day account of one’s life.  Unless a blogger jets around the world, flits between death-defying circus acts whilst working on NASA’s budget space-liner to the moon and part-times as Tom Cruise’s psychiatrist (yeah, I know he won’t get one), one isn’t going to be blogging every day.  Sometimes weeks or months can go by without anything blogworthy happening.  So here I am, willing to take a chance that something blogworthy will happen soon.  Why?  Because at round about this point in the history of humanity my life is beginning to take shape.  It’s taken nearly 30 years but the dream that I’ve harboured for the majority of that time actually has a texture to it now.  The texture is smooth, approximately 80gsm per sheet (of which I count 360), an off-white colour with a black chemical splattered over it and is otherwise known as the manuscript of my first book, the horse-racing romance, At Long Odds.
 
To cut a long story short, I went through the same rigmarole as every other aspiring author, learning the craft, redrafting, editing, getting countless rejections and eventually disposing of the manuscript in the bottom drawer labelled “Learning Curve”.  Then out of the blue last December, I received a phone call from a hugely-excited agent wanting to represent me.  Did I act calm, think things through rationally and keep my blooming career as a novelist a surprise to my family?  No.  I shrieked “Yes please!” to the agent, agreed to do everything she asked (in my defence and to her credit, everything she asked to be changed in the book were valid improvements) and before the light on the screen of my mobile had had a chance to fade, I was dialling my mother’s number at work, screaming “My book’s gonna be published!  I’m gonna be the next Jilly Cooper!”  The latter comment wasn’t met with as much glee as the first (don't worry Mum, I won't force you to read the sex scenes) but each to their own.

Now, my agent (every time I say that, a warm feeling swells inside me - it does have a certain ring to it) and I are awaiting decisions from various publishers.  This time, I’m determined to keep any good news a secret from my mum until I have that lovely freshly-printed and bound copy of At Long Odds in my hands.  Yes, this time I am determined.  Just watch me.

* This statement excludes my elder brother, Daniel.  When you told the parents what I’d written in my diary and subsequently got me grounded for close to a year, your excuse of ‘It was in your best interests’ still does not pass muster with me, even fourteen years on.