Just spent a week in Great Yarmouth. Had loads of fun with Matthew and his new chair. It certainly made the holiday a lot easier not having to push his old thing around. I should have included a picture of us in the Corn Mega Maze because there’s no way we could have ever taken his old chair in there. It was full of bumps and furrows, and we managed to get completely lost...

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A Saturday morning question for you, dear readers.
What is the plural of synopsis?
Or, what is the collective noun for synopsis?

Post your answers here, they don't have to be sensible.

The best will win a virtual trophy.

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One or two people have described my book as ‘gripping’ or mysterious. I’m not relating this in order to show off but because it’s about time I did a proper blog post about writing, so I thought I’d describe my process of building up tension and mystery.

Plot events, however exciting, don’t create much mystery on their own...

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Picture this – or rather me - last week, swimming in an idyllic cove (see photo) along one of the quieter parts of the Southern French coast. The sea had emptied due to an approaching (or so it seemed) evening thunderstorm. I marvelled at the distant forks of lightning, whilst my children swam out further to rock-pool. They had worked out an ingenious way of transporting their fishing nets by wearing the luminous net as a cap, as the long wooden handles rode the waves, trailing down along their backs. Struggling with the increasing depth of the water, my youngest eventually passed me his rod and I wore it in the same style as I swam out. The locals looked on in amusement.

Yet they had probably already chuckled. On unpacking my beach bag I’d discovered to my annoyance, that I’d forgotten my bikini bottoms. My husband had passed me his spare Speedos, insisting I’d look okay. Desperate for a swim I obliged, grinning as I came over all Daniel Craig and strutted into the brine in said swimming trunks.

Then whilst treading water as I chatted with my dad, something suddenly struck me, and our hoots of laughter echoed around the bay as I broadcast an imaginary – but perfectly feasible - newspaper headline:

“WASHED UP ON FRENCH BEACH, ENGLISH WOMAN STRUCK BY LIGHTNING, DRESSED IN MALE SPEEDOS, WITH A FISHING NET JAMMED OVER HER HEAD.”



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I've not written in my blog for a while. I know, I know, I am a lazy blogger! The major news recently is that I managed to finish editing the draft of my novel and it's presently under my agent's scrupulous eye. Anxiety is the name of the game here, as any writer worth their fingertips will tell you...

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For many writers Synopsis is a dirty word. And who can blame us? We're regularly told that we can't sell a book without one. This is told to us by people who in the same breath wish us to know that writing a synopsis is harder than writing a novel (it isn't and if it is then you're doing it wrong). Most agents insist on one. Some insist that it fits on one page which adds to the stress. To top it all, sooner or later we find out from a published friend that most agents and publishers don't even bother reading the damn things, or certainly not until they're read enough of the manuscript to be interested in the broad story outline.

I put the phrase 'the dreaded synopsis' into an anagram engine and it fed back Depressant Hid Sod Ye.

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'We're fairly full-up, but I think we can just about squeeze in an extra tent. You won't want a hook-up, will you?'

After trawling Internet campsite pages I was savvy with the lingo, so I knew the kindly site owner was talking about electricity. My kettle-boiler and lantern run on calor-gas, but in any case I didn't want to push my luck. With forecasters predicting a fine Summer and the harsh economic climate, it took some time to find even a 'squeezed in' vacancy.


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I’ve just had a bit of an epiphany.

Yesterday I took out my Submissions File. I haven’t looked at it for a long, long time, because I haven’t submitted for months. Yet its contents have cast a pall over my thinking, and my attitude to writing, for even longer. In it, I’ve carefully listed every agent, every competition I’ve subbed my novel to, together with all the agents I intend to sub to in future. Each agent has been researched through the Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook and – if they have one – through their website, with a note of what kind of submission each prefers. Beside each agent I’ve submitted to, a tick - which later becomes a cross as the novel is rejected.




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It's my turn, and pleasure, to be the host of today's leg of Tim Atkinson's virtual tour.

So, Writing Therapy, who’s it for and what’s it about?

Writing Therapy explores the use of language and the way it helps to shape both memory and experience. There’s something in it for almost everyone – authors, teenagers, readers looking for something just a little bit different – the lot. It explores the relationship between fiction and reality, and the extent to which we’re all the authors of our destiny.

On a narrative level it’s about a girl who’s read so many novels she becomes convinced that she’s a character in one. So it’s a book within a book, two books for the price of one! And that’s part of the fun. Because – just as many writing courses refer to great works of literature, so does the central character. She takes her cue from the books she’s read and – in taking them apart – constructs a novel of her own.

But Frances Nolan is a patient in a psychiatric hospital, too. So writing a book is her therapy as well. Her nurse takes the role of tutor, I suppose: feeding her exercises, getting her creative juices flowing and developing her writing.





Why did you write it?

Two things got me started: one, teenage mental illness and the stigma attached. A book in with a protagonist who struggles with depression and triumphs (writing a novel) might help someone, somewhere (so I thought). 10% of the book’s royalties are going to the charity Young Minds (www.youngminds.org.uk) though, so someone’s benefitting. Second, the way we all (especially bloggers, twitterers and so on) make fiction of our lives, if only in the editing. Where does fact end and fiction begin? That’s the central question in Writing Therapy.

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