Today, midway through November, as winter begins to set in hard here in northern France – I am at our home outside Paris, not down on the Olive Farm – it is a day of mourning, of remembrance. All across the UK and the Commonwealth, on this second Sunday in November, Remembrance Sunday, wreaths of…
I am writing this in-between note because, as many of you may know, THE FORGOTTEN SUMMER was published in paperback on 8th September. To celebrate its publication Penguin, along with the magazine Top Santé, has come up with a splendid competition. Here are the details: Winner along with a partner or friend is invited to…
I am very late with this Newsletter. It should have gone out at least a month ago, but this has been a very demanding year and time has given me no slack! The good news is that this morning I have delivered the first draft of my new novel to Penguin. This will release a…
I wrote my last Newsletter on 2nd February this year. It was upbeat after a successful France Show at Olympia and I was looking forward to the publication of my novel THE FORGOTTEN SUMMER on 11th February. The New Year was looking positive and full of opportunities. But life can turn in less than the…
I have just returned from my annual visit to London for the FRANCE SHOW held over three bustling and exuberant days at Olympia, Kensington. This one was particularly special for me because I was presenting my new novel, THE FORGOTTEN SUMMER, which is to be published on 11th February. The team working on the book…
Hello! Season’s Greetings. I don’t know about you, but I am winding down from a very busy year. Last week I was in London recording two of my books for Clipper/W.F.Howes who produce first-class audio books. The first, A SIMPLE ACT OF KINDNESS, was published as an e-book for Amazon on both sides of the…
Dear Friends, This is an exciting autumn moment for me. My new novel to be published by Penguin early next year has disappeared off to the copy editor; we are preparing for this year’s olive harvest which looks set to be a fine and not insubstantial one, organic, of course, and… ….today My new Kindle…
Hello from a very hot South of France. (currently 34C) The announcement of the news announced today in The Bookseller (link below) has been such a LONG time coming – I have been busting for three months to tell you. I have moved to Penguin Books. I am to be a Penguin author! I am…
Hello! Are you glad Easter is behind you? Ours has been wet although yesterday morning it cleared up and the sun is now shining and promises to remain with us for at least another week. Fortunately, the two days of heavy rain have really irrigated the land. It was in dire need of it. We…
Dear friend, This will be the briefest of Newsletters and will not contain a great deal of news! I am intending to deliver my new novel later today or tomorrow so I am DEEP in the world of my ‘lost domain’. As you can see from the photograph, I have recently returned from a week…
I am writing this from Biarritz, a seaside town originally put on the map as a holiday resort by Napoléon III when he built his beloved Spanish wife, Eugénie de Montijo, a two-storey villa set high on a windy bluff overlooking the town’s grand plage (largest beach). The villa still stands. Now augmented to five…
I am sending this from Rome where I have disappeared to for a few days to escape dogs, sheep (yes!), olive trees and all commitments other than writing. I have found myself a perfectly airy studio in the eaves of a hidden complex in one of the fabulous old ochre-toned Roman streets near the Spanish…
It is a special day today. A Publication Day. Hotel Paradise, my latest story for the Kindle Single store on Amazon, goes live. Hooray. We are all very excited about it. As with The Girl in Room Fourteen, it can be downloaded directly to your Kindle or phone or ipad or even your desktop, I…
It is almost Christmas although I have not yet begun to do very much about it. We are both still hard at work, attempting to complete all our commitments before everyone shuts up shop for two weeks. There is a quite a bit to wrap up after a year that has seen a great deal…
These last few blisteringly hot months have been packed with work. A few journeys undertaken but mostly I have been at my desk at the farm, scribbling away. These are the days when I appreciate how very privileged my life is. I have the liberty to begin as early as I want and to type…
We are at home and the Olive Farm is gearing up for my mother’s 89th birthday this week. I am going out later this morning to order the cake. We have a young couple from the States staying with us. They are on holiday from Morocco. Deep down in the south and close to the…
Around the world in eighty days… well, perhaps not quite around the world but it certainly feel as though I have not stopped travelling since I last wrote a Newsletter in December. Where to begin? Let me start with the US Tour because it has certainly been a highlight of this year so far. I…
It has been a while since I have written a Newsletter and I apologise for that. We have been building a new website and I had no idea how much time or energy this would take. I sincerely hope you will enjoy the results and that, once we have the teething problems dealt with, you…
I know that for those of you in Britain and Ireland, the weather has been lousy and for many in the United States, there have been floods or fires. So, I hope everyone is safe and well. Here, I almost hate to admit it, the weather is quite magnificent, as is the garden. Because we…
And what a spring! Weather patterns everywhere seem a little bizarre, a little extreme, don’t they? Friends tell me that England and Ireland have been experiencing a pre-Easter heat wave and now snow threatens! I have to admit that we have been enjoying well above average temperatures with some days reaching as high as 26/27°…