What a weekend!  I’ve been darting from retailer to retailer, mostly incognito, checking on stock and gamely rearranging copies of Chances into dazzling displays.  Then texting all my friends and family, requesting they do the same.  All authors do this…  This covert marketing activity had to fit in and around our school’s Mother’s Day Concert, my son’s kayaking birthday party, to friends on Saturday pm, a day behind the scenes at Brands Hatch on Sunday and then friends to stay Sunday pm…  Somehow we managed to make sure Twig the dog had lovely long walks (we found a muntjac skull – and also the first bluebells of the year down in our woods) but Nathan the horse had sunny days off, mooching around in the paddock.  I think he was delighted.

Today, I went into London to do radio interviews – I love doing these, just me and a mic in a soundproof room, chatting to radio stations up and down the country!  Hullo Gloucester!  Hullo Nottingham!  Hullo Solent!  Remember, I spend most my working life with people who don’t actually exist (however much I love to feel my characters are real…) so around publication time, I love chatting and gadding about.
I’m thrilled to have been invited back by Matthew Wright to his wonderful Channel Five show, The Wright Stuff - and I’ll be appearing as a guest this Wednesday morning.  On my way home, via Kings Cross station, I caught sight of one of our lovely promotional posters for Chances.  So I took a picture.  I think the passers-by assumed I was a tourist thrilled by the sight of Upper Crust…
“Would you like a fab new paperback novel with your egg mayo baguette, madam?”

Tomorrow the whirlwind continues.  For me, though this is my 11th novel, I’m as excited as I was when my first novel, Sally, was published in 1996.  I love my downtime too – and there’s nothing more leveling than sitting at the kitchen table alongside Felix, trying to pretend I know what his maths homework is all about.  Or racing Georgia down to our woods to find that first, beautiful bluebell of the season.

Tags | Chances, Sally