Beginnings

Because I was up to my eyeballs in rewriting chunks of my present book at the time, I omitted to mention what a fab Winter Party the RNA threw in London at the end of last year. Loads of interesting authors, all with agony stories to tell. I was delighted to find out that quite a number of them had tales of being 'advised' by agent/publisher to ditch the opening of their book when it starts with the heroine/hero as a child.

Why? I hear you ask.

Well, I have experienced this 'advice' myself. It came as an unpleasant shock but I understand the wisdom of it from a reader's point of view. They want the story to be in the here and now, not a load of back-story. But clearly it is part of the process by which a writer gets to know her/his own characters, to understand what rocks their boat and how they will react in the events that are about to unfold.

It's always hard to chuck out episodes that you sweated blood over but that's what agents and publishers are for - to make you ruthless with yourself. So having got your motivations and childhood traumas all worked out in the opening chapter, my 'advice' to budding authors is 'Bin it!', and get on with the story.

Back to the party. It was good fun and wonderfully incestuous with all the book crowd full of encouragement for each other, while wondering fiercely whose sales were topping whose. The proceedings were further enlivened when a charming agent I was talking to fainted on me in mid-sentence. I know authors yack on about writing till boredom glazes the braincells, but really!!

New Year

I want to wish a Happy New Year to you all. It's got to be better than 2009, hasn't it? Here in Devon, UK, it has started with pure blue skies and a beaming blissful sun, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it's a good omen for the year ahead. I heard on the radio today that it's official - we are to call it "twenty ten" rather than "two thousand and ten". Two syllables shorter. How lazy can we get?

I had a long and delightful Christmas with two weeks solid of family visitors and their three adorable cats. Charades, Pictionary and Articulate won hands down in the 'playing silly games after too much Sauvignon Blanc and Baileys' stakes, but even while performing an inspired ET charade with my finger pointed up in the air, my unfinished book haunted my mind. So now I am relieved to be back at work, hurtling towards the end with Valentina determined to make life difficult for me.

I want to say a massive thank you to my publishers, Little Brown UK and Berkley USA, for being so patient and so gentle in their enquiries as to when the book will be finished. If they're panicking, (which they undoubtedly are) they are showing no sign of it to me. I breathe easy.

Happy 2010 to you all.

Focus Pulling

The last month has vanished in a blur of writing, interspersed with dashing down to the beach to ensure my legs still function, and the mandatory eating and sleeping (both badly). But a couple of highlights leap out at me. Firstly because they were fun and secondly because I learnt something from each of them.

The first was a meet-and-greet for myself and three other authors at our publisher's swish offices on the Embankment in London. It involved meeting a whole bunch of the team of Little,Brown UK who are responsible for making our novels appear on the shelves of the bookstores and supermarkets etc. Magically they transform a dog-eared manuscript into a bright and glossy book. I chatted with editors, copyeditors, cover designers, people in PR, in marketing, in UK sales, in overseas sales and many more. Plus, of course, the CEO herself, the impressive and charming Ursula Mackenzie. What a back-up team I have!

Sometimes when closeted in my study for weeks at a time, glued to my keyboard, writing feels a very solitary occupation, so it was good to be reminded that it's not. This lovely team of young people is bursting with commitment and energy to keep my books rocking and rolling. And they are used to authors. They understand our weird frailties. It's great to know there's a safety net out there - even if it is wielded with an occasional crack of the whip!

The other highlight was when I gave a talk at a Book Festival in Appledore. Dreamy blue skies, the sigh of somnolent waves and one of the prettiest little seaside towns on the north coast of Devon. The perfect setting. The Festival was warm and welcoming, expertly organised by Carol Saumarez and her band of enthusiasts. I had a great day out.

So what did I learn? That I need to get away from the shackles of my desk more often. I have a tendency to narrow my focus to my writing, a real bad habit. So I'm widening it - taking in the state of my kitchen cupboards and my cat's claws. Both are crying out for attention!

Which means I now have a new new motto: Just write - but hey, don't forget to lunch. Those authors I told you that I met at the meet-and-greet? Bernie Strachan and Louise Candlish. Together we're widening our focus on to a tasty crabmeat roulade and a colourful pinot in London's Covent Garden. Wish us luck.

Tempus fugit

The days are growing shorter. The nights creep in, stealing more than their fair share of my hours, and summer is fading fast. I find this alarming. Not that I don't like autumn - I do. I love its muted colours, its smell of damp earth, and all the kids going back to school instead of clogging up my favourite bakery. But autumn heralds the dreaded D word. Deadline.

It is approaching at a frightening speed. Guilt has taken up permanent residence in my lap and if I skive off for the day to yomp over Dartmoor or amble across a beach to watch the cormorants' amazing feats of underwater breath-control, I suffer for it the next day. Not long ago I heard a successful crime writer say, 'I don't agonise over it. I just write.'

So that is my new motto. Just write.

Displacement Activity

Displacement activity seems to be the order of the day. This morning I have been penning an interview for the Book Queen Club website about The Concubine's Secret/The Girl From Junchow. That means removing my thoughts from the pincer grip of my present book (title - The Jewel Of St Petersburg) and sliding them back into Lydia's convoluted mind. I know Lydia so well it is like falling into the arms of an old friend and I am enjoying pondering the interesting questions posed by Queenie C, my interviewer.

I've also just finished a short story that I was invited to write for a UK woman's magazine. As this was the first short story I had ever attempted, I found it a challenging exercise, vastly different from novel writing. This is just a sliver of time in someone's life. I especially adored the fact that I could see my way through the beginning, the middle and the end all in one day. Bliss! Can't wait to see it in print in September.

You see what I mean about displacement activity?

Glory Days

Now that The Concubine's Secret/The Girl From Junchow is safely fledged and out of the nest, I am able to focus once more on the new book I am writing.

It is the prequel to The Russian Concubine - telling the story of the struggles of Valentina's young life during the glory days of tsarist Russia. The story of how she meets and falls in love with Jens Friis, a red-headed and red-blooded Dane, against the fierce opposition of her parents. At the same time the rumblings of the Revolution are growing louder in St Petersburg, as Tsar Nicholas II, the Imperial Duma and the Social Revolutionaries are at each other's throats.

So as you can see, it's still Russia I am addicted to. I'm having fun writing about a period of extravagant glamour and opulence as a change from the bleak austerity and grey harshness of the Stalinist regime. The tsar's court was an extraordinary hot-bed of intrigues, plots and rampant dissolution that made its UK cousin's court look positively monastic in comparison.

But the book is not going smoothly. I chivy myself with reminders: 'What book ever does?' and 'You've been here before!' Bitter crumbs of comfort. But it doesn't make it any easier. There is always a stage in a book when I get depressed, and right now, this is it. Little worms of doubt burrowing into my brain.

Do readers really think a book just flows out as smooth and creamy as milk from a cow? Don't they realise it's like slitting open your veins and watching your life-blood drip on to each page?

The Concubine's Secret

Today is Publication Day in the UK for The Concubine's Secret (titled The Girl From Junchow in US). I keep thinking I'll get used to this, the launch of my latest book, that I'll learn to take it in my stride as an author. But it doesn't get any easier.

It's still as nerve-racking as the first time, this whole process of letting one's beloved brainchild take its initial tottering steps. And I cannot shake my addiction to popping into book stores to check that it's on display, to loiter around the front tables, seeing who is - or more worryingly, who isn't - picking it up. The temptation to thrust it into shoppers' hands is strong, but I resist.

WHSmith is doing me proud with a special promotion of The Russian Concubine and The Concubine's Secret in a pack together and I love the idea of both Lydia's stories going out hand in hand. They belong together. Writing a sequel was a risky step, but I learnt a lot while doing it.

One of the main delights for an author when writing a book is getting to know the main characters, watching them develop and feeling them grow. You inevitably fall in love with them with all the passion and heady excitement of a new relationship. But when I came back to them for the sequel after a year's break, it was different. We were old friends by then, had been through a lot together, so our relationship had changed.

It's a bit like having children and one day you look at them and realise they've grown up, no longer 'trailing clouds of glory'. You have to adjust. Form a new relationship. And that's what I did with Lydia, enjoying seeing her mature but grieving the loss of her childish innocence. I needn't have worried though. She still led me on a wild and convoluted chase, took me to places I hadn't planned for, and swept me up in the intensity of her love for Chang An Lo.

I loved writing The Concubine's Secret but the time has come to let go. That's what I'll be doing when on Saturday (4th July) I'll be signing books at Torbay Bookshop, Paignton, Devon.