Happy Christmas

So, who enjoyed the summer?

Today I took the She-Devils shopping for new school uniform - winter uniform - but I also had to buy a couple of birthday cards. First thing I saw in the card shop? Christmas cards. Something is seriously amiss. Maybe there's nothing wrong with the weather at all...perhaps there's no such thing as global warming. All that's happened is retailers have surreptitiously changed the calendar, one day at a time over the years, so that summer is now aut...well, you get my drift.

Thankfully, during the holidays, we spent lots of time in a place of no rain. Andalucia - just outside a beautiful mountain village, away from the hustle of the coast although near enough to indulge in a few water sports, and with a welcome breeze each afternoon. Think al fresco dining, swimming, sailing, barbecues without umbreallas, tons of reading, happy She-Devils and a nearly-seventeen-year-old son who slept most of the time (to correct the deficit of the last year, he said), whether it be in bed, in the pool or on a sunbed. He did, however, stir rather early on exam results day. Bleary-eyed, he asked me to drive him to the nearest internet cafe. So we trundled off down the mountain along hair-raising dirt tracks clinging to precarious slopes only to find that the whole town's internet was down. We stood and stared at each other, wondering what the Spanish for 'well bloody get it working again' was. Not to be outdone by some hapless Spanish road-digger with a wayward shovel hacking through a cable, we blew about fifty quid and half an hour as Ben managed to log onto the net with his mobile phone. As the results filtered in, his eyebrows raised, a smile formed (quite hard to do after only eighteen hours sleep) and he began nodding, as if he might even be proud of himself. Quite casually he told me that he'd hit straight A* and A grades in all his GCSEs. Go Ben. And his English result was in the top ten in the country. Go Ben again. Proud? Me?

Anyway, what this means is that he must have been studying in the Easter holidays and not messing about on Facebook all that time. Maybe he actually believes me when I say it's...erm...a waste of time. But I suppose I only say that because I'm still not sure what it does. I try, honestly, to use it...but can't. I am officially FaceSpatially-Challenged. I just don't get it. I don't want everyone to see all my photos or know what I was doing today or if I'm interested in men or women or what my religious/political views are. Anyway, what's wrong with the phone? Or popping in? Or sending a card? Remember those flowery notelets you'd get at Christmas from a distant aunt and use them all up writing thank-you notes on Boxing Day? I liked them. Which brings me back to cards and the wretched Christmas display in the shop. This year I'm going to call it Deadlinemas. I will decorate the tree with Post-It notes saying 'Will you make it?' or 'Really? Another coffee?' or 'How many words a day do you call that?' or 'Haven't you even thought of a title yet?'. A black crow could sit in place of the star.

As you may have guessed, I have an end of year deadline for my next novel. Well, it's a little after actually, but I like to give myself a fail-safe. I'm halfway through writing this one and as wonderful as our holiday was, I was kind of looking forward to getting back behind the keyboard. It's another emotional thriller, as yet without a title, but it's all hanging together very nicely in my head - all plotted but with enough room left for the characters to throw in a few surprises of their own. I often wonder what the covers might be like for my books and, of course, having a title helps this visual process. Talking of covers, I received a nice surprise while in Spain when my agent phoned to ask if I could approve the new paperback cover for Unspoken. (Out in Feb 09.) So I went to the little internet place in the mountains when the cable wasn't broken, and I was blown away by what Headline have come up with. I knew it was most likely going have a different cover to the hardback and, while I love that cover too, the new one certainly packs a punch. It's very 'thrillerish', quite dark - visually and emotionally - and a big step away from the paler, perhaps more feminine covers before this. But a change of image is good. People do judge books by their covers and, initially, why not? A lot of thought, money, meetings and expertise go into producing them. It's the initial lure for a potential reader. It hints - no, actually, shouts (or should) - at what lies between the pages, and, like everything else in retail, there are trends and fashions that come and go. I love my new cover and it's actually making me look forward to Deadlinema...I mean, Christmas this year. Just two months after that and I'll see it on the shelves. Publishing schedules move pretty slowly - or rather everyone just plans very far ahead - and so I find myself wishing my time away just to see the next one 'out there'.

So, meantime, it's on with nameless novel and hopefully real soon now I'll have a shiny new website upon which to display my new cover. That is if I can still afford the designer's rates hint hint BJ :-) And get off Facebook, boy!

xx