The blog is back...

I've recovered my password, blown the dust off my blogger account and... hey, I'm going to try very hard to make regular(ish) posts about my life as a writer - and anything else that I feel the need to make public. I think that's my problem with blogging - it's just so public. As a kid, I wrote a diary. It had a lock. I hid it under my bed. Oh, the shame if my brother found it and read it. I'm naturally a private person and also not silly enough to believe that anybody actually wants to know what I had for breakfast or what colour I'm painting my hallway. Or maybe I'm just not trendy enough to keep up with such erm... trends.

Big breath and here goes... (hell, I have since last July's post to catch up with news)

I moved house just before Christmas. Very stupid thing to do with hindsight. Not moving house - that wasn't stupid at all. We love living in the 'city' and have great plans for our beautiful Edwardian townhouse. And we have shops and cafes and restaurants and a market nearby. Even leaving behind our old farmhouse in the country wasn't as hard as I'd expected. I miss it but the time was right to move. No, the stupid thing was moving exactly seven days before Christmas and not having done a single scrap of festive shopping. I have three kids, including two excitable girls (She-Devils) who had been excited since September about presents. But pulling together with military precision and dividing the war zone that was the shops soon netted a fine haul. We even bagged a Wii. Result. We ate Christmas lunch among the forest of boxes. We drank champagne from mugs. Friends and family picked their way through piles of furniture to visit us. We knew it was home.

January saw the delivery of my next novel. UNSPOKEN is out in hardback and trade paperback this July with the paperback a few months after that. I received the cover flats this week and even though I'd seen the artwork before, holding the finished article was very exciting. It is a truly stunning and beautiful cover. I love it to bits and will be very proud to see it sitting on the shelves. As soon as I'm allowed, I'll put it on my website.

BLOOD TIES did me proud and flew off the shelves after its September release last year. I can honestly say I was stunned by the sales figures. It's an unusual and somewhat humbling thought to know that so many pairs of eyes are reading words that I wrote! But my book really struck a chord with readers and I get very nice emails from all over the world to prove it. Apparently there are a few of the huge posters still up at various stations. The London Underground was thick with the BLOOD TIES campaign and my publicist, Becky, took me on a very energetic and hot tour last year to get photos. (See myspace for the evidence.)

BLUTSKINDER is the German title for BLOOD TIES. Blood children, I guess. The cover is entirely different to the UK look - black and creepy, almost a horror cover - but I like it very much. It obviously suits the market out there and sits nicely under 'krimis und thriller'. And I even had a TV advert for the launch of the German edition. Vox channel picked BLUTSKINDER as their 'Krimmi Tipp' (crime pick, I think) and ran a load of ads for a week or so during CSI, Criminal Intent and various other evening shows. If I was really clever, I'd somehow embed the commercial here to show it off. But seeing as I'm not really clever, you'll have to imagine the German chap's deep, gravelly voice saying something sinister about my book. The only bit I could understand was when he said my name. I played it over and over, as you can imagine.

A week or two ago I attended a Writing Industries Conference at Loughborough University, hosted by the East Midlands Literature Network. It was a busy successful day with a huge turnout of both industry professionals and writers dedicated to learning the craft and the business. The speakers were inspiring and the attendees were clearly keen to take advantage of all the knowledge on tap. Much thought had gone into providing a broad spectrum of expertise - as well as ordering beautiful sunshine for the day for outside coffee breaks. As expected, I bumped into lots of people I know - and for me, that's the attraction of writing conventions. It gets me out of my attic (yes, I have another attic study) and out there, with real people, other writers, talking about writing. Talking about stuff. Making me realise how time passes. Making me glad that it has. But still, making me think; making me smile. I should do it more often.

So now I'm turning my thoughts to a new book. I'm spending many hours researching, making notes, allowing characters to develop, mulling things over, and all the while, I'm desperate to write. But not yet. The pot needs to simmer a little more. Thing is, I hate not writing. A writer once said to me - many years ago now - that he felt 'odd, weird' if he wasn't working. That was in response to my unpublished-days-as-a-writer statement that writing actually made me odd, weird. But that has changed now. Switched completely. True, I once found it an immense drain and emotional strain to put words down. I'd do anything to prevent my fanciful and over-ambitious ideas being written - even though I was desperate to see my work in print. But slowly I developed, slowly I honed those 'writing muscles' (which are a fact!) and slowly, gradually I reliased that not writing, not having a project, a book on the go, made me feel odd and weird. And I don't like it. Not one bit.

So perhaps I'll just tinker with some opening lines. Play with some thoughts. See if they turn into a chapter.

Sam xx