Gone are the days when I wait up for the strike of midnight. New Year celebrations leave me feeling quite bleak. So much hope that mankind will change face and create some form of Utopia. Justice. Equality etc.

In an interview due to be published in The Sunday Tymes tomorrow, Royal dandy Prince Edward makes a confession that will stun his family, the theatre world, his long term lover Steve Richardson but most of all his wife, the ridiculously attractive Sophie Rhys-Jones.


Read Full Post

I have just completed a session with 17-year old Sarah Lynn who suffered from severe depression. Sarah believed she was a total failure and would never be able to change anything in her life. She also felt all her shortcomings were her own fault. Where, I ask myself, did such a young person acquire this negative and fatalistic thinking?


Read Full Post

Steven Hawking left celebrities stunned last night as he appeared to discredit Fang and Wu’s theory of Quantum Cosmology at Elton John’s annual AIDS benefit dinner.


Read Full Post

Whatever one says about the present government it would appear, statistically at least, that Gordon Brown’s Labour party is winning the battle with regard to Hospital waiting lists. However all is not as it may seem.



Read Full Post

Lord H and I were woken twice last night by some idjit attempting to ring us. In the end, we unplugged the phone, which I think we'll do again tonight. I really hate these automated calls from some machine dialling the wrong number. We get so many of the damn things. Sigh.

Anyway, today we've spent a large part of the morning getting up - it seems to take longer and longer these days - and a large part of the afternoon getting lost and mired in mud on Little Bookham Common. I was fine for the first couple of hours of this, but the third hour was an hour too far, m'dears. Especially as I'd forgotten to pack my fruit so was utterly utterly starving ...

Read Full Post

So I was thrilled to come across a Val McDermid volume as soon as we arrived at the accommodation, on the outskirts of Carmen del Puerto. It included two novels, called 'Crack Down' and 'Star Struck'. Even her single novels resemble half-bricks, so this was particulary good value at my favourite price : completely free.



Read Full Post

I have just come across this wonderful initiative from Kate of Kate's Book Blog. She is a short story fan and in an attempt to inspire others to turn more frequently to this most wonderful of forms, she is hosting a Short Story Reading Challenge in 2008. What does this mean? .......

Read Full Post

This really has been the most fantastic season! I just found out that my novel Unrequited has been nominated for Best Gay Debut Fiction by the Lambda Literary Foundation (US)

Read Full Post

I started responding to Writer Girl's comment on my previous post The dress code for bookshops, and other ways of annoying Brian Sewell, and it turned into something longer, so I'm posting it here instead. Talking about this business of branding authors, WG said

"My business brain cannot understand why an arrangement that would give authors brand recognition and a shot at a wider audience should be sniffed at."

My business brain agrees - not least because the brand stays with the author whichever publisher has the individual books - but my writer's brain can see why so many authors, with every desire sell books, are nonetheless very sniffy indeed.

Read Full Post