Busy, busy, busy

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Biba platform shoes, 1970s, V&A Museum

Sorry for no blog posts recently (!) but I have goodish reasons!

Since the RNA Conference - which went very nicely, thank you, and at which I was shortlisted for the Elizabeth Goudge Trophy for Different Rules, I've actually been writing.

(Writing, of course, does go on, even when we are busy doing other things. That absent look in a writer's eye? They don't mean to be impolite. They are writing.)

Anyway, Different Rules is resting, pending comments and suggestions, so I started on an idea I had for a Woman's Weekly serial. Only Dancing has such a complicated structure that I discovered it was easier to write the whole thing rather than explain it to my editor. This is really not how you write a serial. Fortunately it worked, she liked it, and it will appear in the magazine early next year.

But...

But...

But I really like this story and I wanted it longer.

So I've doubled it in size and I still like it, but contractual obligations mean I can't publish it until next year, so this one has been set aside to rest as well. (Only Dancing is what the shoes in the photo are illustrating, by the way, but I'm afraid you'll have to wait to find out why.)

Which leaves the problem of what I'm going to put out THIS year.

So I have dusted off my very first serial, An Ordinary Gift. I still like this one too, but oh, it is crying out to be expanded.

Going in...

Penny Plain - the final episiode

The final part of Penny Plain for Christmas is out this week, featuring a heroic charge through the snow, a nativity with provisos, a real baby birth in a church and a happy-ever-after. Now how could anyone resist that?

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Happy Christmas reading!
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Penny Plain 4 - part three

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Part Three of Penny Plain: The Christmas Present is in the current issue of People's Friend. Items are still going missing, the mystery of the WW2 wedding photo deepens - and Leo's son arrives to spend Christmas in Salthaven.

Only a couple of days until the final episode is out!
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Penny Plain 4 - part 2

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Sorry - blogging late again. You only have a couple of days to buy Part 2 of Penny & Leo's Christmas serial before the new issue comes out on Wednesday.

Go on, you know you want to. It's not often that you find boats, petty theft, Nativities and car boot sales all appearing in the same story.
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Penny Plain for Christmas!

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The fourth Penny Plain serial starts this week in People's Friend and - as the illustration below shows - it is a Christmassy one!

You need to be quick, though, as Part two will be out on Wednesday/Thursday!
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Penny's back!

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The first part of the third Penny Plain serial starts this week in People's Friend magazine. In this mystery, we are introduced to Penny's son Noel, whose girlfriend Caitlin is having trouble with graffiti at her family brewery.

Various characters from previous serials make an appearance, along with a few new ones.

Hope you enjoy!
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(People's Friend issue dated June 22nd 2013)

Fairlights - the final episode

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The fourth and final part of Fairlights is out now, in which the Fairlight once more comes into its own.

Before it can do so, however, Sorcha has to face every single one of her nightmares. And even then, it may not be quite enough to avert tragedy.

Happy reading...
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Fairlights - part three...

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Third part of Fairlights is in this week's issue of Woman's Weekly.

 In this episode, we find out some of what happened in the space where Sorcha's memory has gone missing. She also finds a set of accounts of the Fairlight (the beacon on top of the pele tower) which raise more questions than they solve.

Only one more episode to go now.
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Fairlights - part two

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Today's Woman's Weekly contains the second part of Fairlights (I know! Where did the week go?).

In this episode it becomes apparent that something is very, very wrong with Sorcha's memory.

Warning: contains open spiral staircase
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Fairlights!

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My new serial starts today in Woman's Weekly (12th February issue). It is set in a house on a cliff above a fishing village.

Sorcha Ravell's family has lived at Fairlights for generations - now Sorcha is moving back to turn it into a boutique hotel.

But when she gets there, all is not quite as she remembers...

My thanks go to artist Jane Human who has created Fairlights exactly as I imagined it. I was just SO thrilled when I opened my copy this morning and saw the artwork for the first time.
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'Fairlights' teaser

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Where does the time go? I've been struggling with a cold, but even so...

This is just a small teaser for next month's serial, to start in Woman's Weekly in the February 12th issue. It is the gatehouse at Roche Abbey and through that (mercifully locked) door is the most terrifying spiral staircase I've ever seen.

You can find out how I wove it into Fairlights next month...
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Written on the Wind - the finale!

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The final episode of Written on the Wind is out today.

In which EVERYTHING is solved, sorted and explained. Hope you enjoy it!
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Written on the Wind - part three

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The third part of my North Yorks moors serial is now out. Annie is still trying to settle into Moor End House, but is hampered by not knowing what Luke and Rob are up to.

She finds a degree of peace amongst the trees in the grove, visits old Joe in hospital, and shows that she is determined to build her own life here.

Warning: features trees.

Birch, alder, willow, oak. Holly, hazel, apple, beech.
And the ivy to bind and the yew to watch.

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Written on the Wind - part two

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This week in my North Yorks moors serial, Annie is baffled by beautiful Luke and reacquaints herself with Celtic trees.

I love the illustration for part two: the way it waterfalls down the side of the page and pools in the bottom corner.

What Annie doesn't ever get to have - in print anyway - is one of my favourite things from Whitby: Botham's gingerbread loaf. Firm, dry but soft, melts in the mouth and intensely gingery. Exactly how gingerbread always used to be. Much consumption went into the writing of this serial.

13th March issue should be on sale Wed 7th or Thurs 8th this week.

Written on the Wind - part one

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Hooray! The first part of my new serial for Woman's Weekly is out this week!

Written on the Wind is about Annie Farrow - an artist who makes beautiful, stylised mobiles. Her dream is to create larger installations whilst supporting herself with her artwork, but this seems unlikely until her great aunt leaves her a house on the edge of the North Yorkshire moors.

However, Annie discovers that the wild seclusion of Moor End House doesn't quite provide the uncomplicated lifestyle that she'd thought it would.


Issue is March 6th 2012 - on sale 1st March!

(And yes that IS David Essex on the cover)

Penny Plain - final part

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The final part of Penny Plain is now out. All the loose ends get identified and tidied away neatly, just as they should.

I'm going to miss seeing the illustrations each week

A Wonderful Coincidence

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The story behind Part Three of this year's Penny Plain Mysteries is one of those  serendipitous coincidences that we are told never to use in our writing, because no one would believe it. But this one DID happen, so I did use it - albeit in a fictitious manner.

Earlier this year, when I was writing the second series of Penny Plain, I received an email through my website from Betty, now living in Canada, to say that she always had People's Friend sent to her from the UK and had thoroughly enjoyed the first Penny Plain story.

Betty in 'them thar' days

She went on to say that she had particularly liked the unusual jigsaw-code-breaking strand, and mentioned that back in the 1950s she had worked on aircraft crash data, trying to establish the weak points in the new aeroplanes then being developed.

At which point I leapt off my chair shouting "Yes, yes, yes!" and "FABULOUS!" and "I don't believe it!" Because - as I immediately emailed back to her - I was at that very moment writing the new series of Penny Plain which included a mysteriously crashed plane from the 1950s!

We have since kept up a regular email correspondance, and I was so grateful for the easiest research ever, that I wrote Betty - in very fictionalised form - into this week's episode.

Whetted your appetite? Good - go buy it.

Penny Plain - episode two

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The second part of The Penny Plain Mysteries is out today. This episode centres on the rather worrying goings on at Fellside Farm. I love the way the illustrator has captured a typical Lake District farm with the hills in the background.


And the ice cream? What does that have to do with the story? You'll never know unless you buy the issue.

Penny Plain rides again!

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Where is the year going? I delivered the second Penny Plain Mysteries serial back in the spring and thought of the November publication date as months away. Which it was, of course. So I forgot about it and got on with other projects.

So imagine my surprise when I opened up the first page of this week's People's Friend to find this! (Several other people in my aisle of the supermarket were likewise surprised. One lady rushed over thinking I was having a minor heart attack.)

It's the first time I'd seen the illustration and I love the way the artist (Ruth Blair) has got the characters just right.

It's another four part serial involving - oh, let me see - 1950s aircraft, the Women's Institute... and ice cream. And an overarching mystery and a few other bits and pieces as well.

You'll have to buy it to find out. Just like the lady in the supermarket.
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Ely serial - part three

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Part Three of An Ordinary Gift is now in bookshops and supermarkets. I've really loved writing my 'Ely' serial and getting the atmosphere of this island town into the story (no, really, it honestly was an island until the Fens were drained in the 17th Century - hence the name, "Isle of Eels") .

Amongst the things Clare comes across in this week's episode are a plaque to the Wisbech Martyrs

and a cannon presented to the people of Ely by Queen Victoria. [Note: very nice of her, but Clare and I can't help wondering what QV thought the people of Ely would do with it!]






Oh, and a priest hole with old, old, memories...

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