Seasons

How are you all? Big excitement here when the beautiful proofs of 'The Christmas We Met' arrived. Everything feels real, suddenly, when you hold a book for the first time. It's hard to think about Christmas when it's still high forties and 90% humidity outside, but one of the amazing things about writing is the surprise you feel after spending a day lost in your story, in snowstorms and country houses, winter landscapes and log fires, only to find yourself in a desert. They don't really do seasons here. It's simply hot, or hotter. 

The summer feels far away, but there are mementos everywhere - shells gathered by my son in Cornwall sit on the desk, beside photos of Hepworth's studio in St Ives, and of Porthcurno (which is about as close to heaven on earth as you get). Flicking through the proof manuscript of 'The Christmas We Met' yesterday, I found grains of sand which had travelled half way around the world from that beach.

Meanwhile it's been lovely to hear from Canada that 'Perfume Garden' reached number five, and great fun to see photos sent by readers of it in the wild - thank you.  Back home, in a brief glamorous moment, I appeared in the NYTimes Style magazine with Basquiat. ("Who? Yeah, great, Mum. What's for tea?")

Children do a good job of keeping your feet on the ground. I finished writing a new book this week. Some small part of you still hopes for an Hallelujah chorus and popping champagne corks when you finish writing a book. Ticker tape? Balloons? No? Oh, ok. I mean, the idea for this story was planted in the late 1990s, during a conversation with an Irish writer in a pub in Greystones. Part of you thinks: fifteen years of thinking and tinkering around, and a couple of years of solid research and writing, and an obsessive month or two during which you have done little but think of this story and your posture has become chair shaped deserves at least a trumpet voluntary as the story goes off into the ether. But no. Deafening silence, and again: "Great, Mum. Where are my football boots" was the response.

But then, this moment makes it all worthwhile. When the finished copies of a book you've put your heart and soul into goes out into the world, it's no longer yours. It's already the readers'. Ten days until publication, and I can't wait to hear what you think. In celebration, I'm going to be welcoming a whole host of writers I really admire on the blog. They will be talking about their favourite pieces of jewellery, and the stories behind them - watch this space. x