We dediced to have a family day out to Durham yesterday. The kids loved York Cathedral earlier in the year, but even though Durham is right on our doorstep, we’ve never been.

(read full post, with terrifying pictures, here)

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I’ve decided that I would like to be Sarah Waters. Damn the woman, she just gets it right every time! I’ve finished reading ‘The Little Stranger’ recently and although it doesn’t have the shocking plot twists so familiar to anybody who has read her ‘Fingersmith’ novel, it does have the usual heady combination of evocative scene-setting, warped and memorable characters and a subtle but hypnotic growing tension towards the climactic scene of the novel (yes, you can tell I’m a book reviewer, can’t you?). Best of all it’s just so damned readable – on the sofa, in bed at night, in the garden by day – it doesn’t matter where you pick it up, you’re bound to be sucked in and forget about your surroundings. This is the sort of writing that I out-and-out envy. There’s no point hiding it – I’m jealous as hell. And so few contemporary authors really have this knack of churning out brilliant novel after brilliant novel and never running the risk of doing the same thing or becoming boring. Waters has stayed quite near to the era she used in ‘The Night Watch’ in this new novel but that’s where the similarities end. It is also, as somebody pointed out, her first novel not to include lesbianism. I can’t say as I noticed. I was entirely caught up with her slightly obsessive and maybe even a little unreliable narrator and the crumbling aristocracy of ‘Hundreds Hall’ where most of the action takes place. So few authors can be entirely fresh and captivating with each new book.

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If it seems I've been blowing my own trumpet a bit loudly of late, please let me explain. This has nothing to do with ego and everything to do with attempting to boost my confidence, a writer's most fragile asset. Mine took a serious drubbing recently and if I've resorted to roll-calling every small success it's only because I need to feel I'm making progress, no matter how minor it might seem to the rest of the world. The real success story has been my new routine of rising at 6am to write for two hours every morning. This has meant the new novel climbed to 22,000 words in two weeks with the result that it now feels like a novel and not a series of randomly related words under a title I keep changing. I'm not saying this first draft is great or even good. I'm under no illusions about the hard graft which lies ahead. But I've turned a corner, got stuck into something new, started over. Alongside this, the small successes themselves count for much in terms of my confidence; they validate my decision to pursue this craft. Perhaps they shouldn't. Perhaps the craft ought to be enough in itself.

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Thank you to everyone who entered my mini-competition. A quick reminder of the theme:

What is the plural of synopsis?
Or, what is the collective noun for synopsis?

Not surprisingly, you all knew what the plural of synopsis is: synopses. So a point to everyone, and not a silly answer in sight!

More worryingly, the mere mention of the word sent everyone running for the gin bottle.

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This post is partly a response to Sam Tonge’s: Don’t tell me to write for fun.

Lots of people paint for pleasure. They have no expectation of ever selling a painting. Some of them are bashful to even show you their work. It’s nothing, really, just something I do to kill the time now that the kids are at school. They keep the canvases in the outhouse, next to their husband’s abandoned guitar, in the part of their property they never got around to redecorating. After many years completing level sixteen of the art classes at the local night school they might secretly take one of their canvases along to Prontoframe and then tack it up on the wall, but only if their supportive husband insists, and they only hang it in the abandoned, almost outside lavatory, the one that nobody ever visits. They don’t stick a price tag beneath.

Others learn to play the piano. They pay for lessons, but they don’t expect to be paid when they play. They might consent to perform for the family after a second glass of sherry-flavoured courage, when the tree is twinkling and carols are demanded. They have absolutely no anticipation of striding into the Royal Festival Hall to bow before the adoring throng of black polo necks.


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Special Birthday Post
A very warm welcome back to my very good friend, the super-talented Tania Hershman, who's here to talk about things one year on (and is also here to talk to us about a free book giveaway...).

Tania, September 1st is a bit of a special date, isn’t it? Can you tell us why?

It's the first anniversary of a dream come true, a dream I have had since I was 6 years old. It is the day, one year ago, when my book, The White Road and Other Stories, was published, the day no-one can ever take away from me, the day I became an author.





What’s happened over this last year?

It's been quite a rollercoaster year, the highs were very high, but they came with some pretty bad lows.


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It's The White Road and Other Stories' first birthday today. Wow. What a year! My great writer/blogger colleague and friend Nik Perring. has interviewed me about that first year over at his blog. A few tantalising snippets, and then down to the Free Book stuff...

Because I am published by a small press, Salt, even though they are amazing and they made me this beautiful book, most of the marketing and promotion was and is down to me. And I have no clue about selling a book! Well, perhaps now I have a bit more of a clue. So, basically, I made it up as I went along. I built a website for the book, I set up a Facebook Page, I organised a hectic 11-stop Virtual Book Tour where I was interviewed on 11 blogs over 11 weeks about everything from my love for science to writing and religion.... I cajoled as many people as possible into writing reviews....I obsessively checked my Amazon rankings, searching for some indication of whether what I was doing was working. And whirring through my mind, all the time, was: “How can I sell the book? How can I sell the book?”

To find out the biggest surprises of the last 12 months, and more, pop in to Nik's blog...........

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Deborah Durbin has been a freelance journalist for 12 years, contributing features to numerous publications including My Weekly, Fate & Fortune, It's Fate, Natural Health and The Daily Express. She is also the author of 12 non-fiction books. You can visit her website at www.deborahdurbin.com, and her blog at http://deborah-durbin.blogspot.com/



So far this week I have learned that if you mix strawberries, mint, lemon juice and a little milk powder together you can create the most marvellous, natural face-pack. I’ve also learned that if you apply honey to a burn, it will heal much quicker and it will also prevent scarring. I now also know that a study carried out in the Netherlands found that by drinking three to four cups of the nation's favourite drink you can reduce the risk of heart attack and stroke by up to 70 percent.

As a freelance journalist this is the best part of my job; learning about things that I might never have had the opportunity to know about and it amazes me how much trivia I now know – I think I would make a good contestant on Who Wants to be a Millionaire?.

I mainly write for the women’s lifestyle market, so it covers quite an extensive range of topics: in my 12 years as a journalist I have covered a diverse amount of subjects; from Native American Astrology to 50 facts you never knew about chocolate and almost everything in between.


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Most writers know the feeling that our fictional characters have lives of their own, but I never thought when I set out to write A Secret Alchemy that one of my characters would turn up on Twitter. A Secret Alchemy was published in April, and in the last couple of weeks Elizabeth Woodville has been tweeting. Philippa Gregory just published a novel based on her, and has been promoting it by this extremely twenty-first century means.

Neither of us is the first, of course. As I've described elsewhere, it was seeing Shakespeare's Henry VI plays which set me thinking about Elizabeth, and my first attempt at her was over a decade ago: it's got easier for all of us since then because two modern biographies have been published. Sitting in the Young Vic I instantly remembered Josephine Tey's 1930s description of her in The Daughter of Time as "the indestructible beauty with the silver-gilt hair" (hope I've quoted that right - I don't have a copy to hand). And I know of at least Sharon Penman's The Sun in Splendour and Rosemary Hawley Jarman's The King's Grey Mare, which focus on Elizabeth, and no doubt there are more: dozens, if you include novels centred on others of her extended family. Follow "Customers who bought this also bought..." and you'll get the idea. I haven't read Gregory's The White Queen, though I've admired the cover, and it's a great title. Indeed, I haven't read anything by Gregory since her first novel many years ago, so I can't even make an assumption about what it's like.

Certainly I've never 'studied the market' or read books because they're successful (that way lies the writerly suicide of tangling with the market for ropes), but only because I fancy them.

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