This time of year is usually Launch Party time – but this year, I just didn’t feel like having one. I’m ever so proud of Home Truths but it was written at a time when shitty things were happening and it felt inappropriate to have an unabashed knees-up. 2005 had it’s ups and downs for me. I lost two people very special to me, to cancer. My father-in-law, David Sutcliffe, died in May and my beautiful friend Liz Berney died on Christmas Eve. They both loved coming to my launch parties – Liz in particular had a very entertaining knack of upstaging me on my big night. I just don’t feel like partying at the mo’.

Liz was perhaps the most sociable – and widely loved – person I’ve ever met. She made friends with such ease and people gravitated to her because she was such fun, so energetic and daffy and sensitive and kind. She was a member of a reading group – though she was usually far too busy and scatty to ever actually read the book in discussion! One time, she picked my 5th book, Fen, as her choice for the group. Sure enough, an hour or so before the group was due to gather, Liz phoned me for the low-down on the plot, the characters…and the ending!I am a member of a reading group too, though the books usually take a backseat to the M&S comfort-food and free-flowing wine. However, I did choose Love Rules for my group – because I’ve never been in a situation where I’ve been grilled about my work, or been able to hear differing opinions about it. Luckily, the girls were gentle with me – and all had enjoyed it (or so they said). In the autumn, I was a guest speaker at the South Tyneside Readers Day. This was similar to book group in that the audience had been given the book in advance. It was really stimulating for me – the readers knew the work inside out and made some really cogent points. In my group there were around 30 readers and the average age was probably pensionable…but Lordy what a feisty bunch! On occasion the air turned quite blue in our seminar room!
Also in the autumn, we launched Ladies Night – the last of the ‘Girls Night In’ anthologies that I’ve been involved with. I must say, I DETEST writing short stories – I find them sooooo difficult. How on earth can I cram a beginning, a middle and an end into just 3,500 words? I’d much rather have 125,000 words and 12 months to play with….
Home Truths was an a difficult book to write. For the first time in 8 books, I found the actual process really arduous. I won’t give anything away, but suffice it to say, Django is poorly. I suppose, the fact that life was imitating art, whilst I was writing, made it psychologically rather draining. In addition,
Love Rules was such a cinch to write – honestly, I would sit at my keyboard and feel little more than my characters’ typist – as if the entire book was being dictated to me. In contrast, Home Truths was actually more of a slog. Three heroines to juggle, sad things befalling them, characters I know so well but could not assume that all readers would know them too. I am proud of the end result and hope you’ll like it.
Now I’m raring to go with the ninth novel, about a jeweller called Petra Flint who sleepwalks, about a beautiful tanzanite passed down to her, about a musician called Arlo Savidge whom she once knew when she was a school girl….I can’t wait to see where this book takes me! I’ll keep you posted.
On the home front, my children fill my days (and usually hourly intervals during the nights) with their madcap chatter and beautiful view of the world. Felix started school locally and loves it. He has some wonderful little pals and the teachers are magnificent. There isn’t a uniform but Awful Mummy thinks there should be so I bought Felix a set of dark blue trousers and sweatshirts and light blue aertex shirts etc. Luckily Felix has little interest in sartorial matters and is happy to wear what ever I leave out for him. He doesn’t seem to notice that all his pals are in Spiderman tops and Timberland boots while he’s in John Lewis navy and sensible clumpy Start-Rite.
Georgia is a different matter. We have big battles where colour-coordination is concerned…and apparently sandals in midwinter and dressing-gowns worn over mermaid-costumes are open to discussion! She’s very very funny and very feisty too. She and Felix are chalk and cheese but they are no.1 in each other’s fan club. Sometimes I come across them simply sitting in the bedroom holding hands listening to an audio book, or lolling over each other in front of the TV.
A relatively new four-legged addition to the family is the very gorgeous Nathan. I went back to my riding a couple of years ago after a three year break. At that time, I tried to be all nonchalant with my old trainer, Souki – about how I wasn’t going to get emotionally involved and how I just wanted to ride when I felt like it and was no longer bothered with grooming and bonding etc. Souki humoured me. New to her yard was a very young Irish Sports horse who’d only just been backed. I rode him and of course fell in love with him though I was still playing the aloof card…until the day she told me someone else was coming to try him out. I couldn’t text her fast enough to say “I’ll have him”! So, the little-horse-with-no-name became Nathan (don’t ask – I don’t know…he just looks like a Nathan) and he’s a superstar. I’m not doing any competing this time – just enjoying him with no agenda. We’ve been doing lots of Natural Horsemanship which is so incredibly eye-opening and rewarding and I’ve really enjoyed doing Parelli courses as well as seeing Mark Rashid when he came over to the UK last winter.
Felix and Georgia love coming up to the yard as it is the one place in the whole wide world where they’re allowed to tread in poo. They put on their wellies and run to the muck heap saying “can we jump on this poo, Mummy?” They also think Nathan is madder than Mad Jack McMad because he eats his apples with the skin on AND the pips in one big gobble.
So, 2006 looks like it’ll be as manic as 2005. My daily routine is to take Felix to school, drop Georgia at nursery, peg it up to the yard to school Nathan, bomb back home to collect Georgia, change out of my minging jodhpurs, zoom off to the library, do 3 hours work before collecting Felix, do another three hours work until it’s bath-time, story-time and then, good lord, it’s already nine-o-clock news time!
I want to take this opportunity to say that I hope 2006 will be a year of health and happiness for my loved ones. And for you lot. And I want to say, to the women who are reading this page, please please please look after your health. Don’t take it for granted. We all think we do the right thing because we buy organic food and keep fit and don’t overindulge. But if your GP writes to you and says your smear is due, please go. Please. Do it for my lovely friend Liz.

Tags | Fen, Girls Night In, Home Truths, Ladies Night, Love Rules, McCabes