I was chatting to my husband recently about the sad state of primary education - too much testing, too much pressure, no time for creativit...

I'm still glowing from a recent weekend away up North. The first stop was at the waterfront in Newcastle to see the Millennium Bridge. ...

It's a strange thing, but Sally Howe and I have both just returned from a trip to California. While I was there, I went to talk to a bo...

title? When you are in a bookshop looking for a book to buy, what makes you pick up a book and read the blurb on the back? Is it the cove...

Every woman should have a shed – in which to put her man. Men are at their best when viewed from a distance. If I lean out of my study win...

Someone - Diane Shipley , a freelance journalist and reviewer and co-editor of the popular website Trashionista - has given me a blogging a...

Wendy, a dear friend who lives in San Francisco, sent me this photograph. She knows that I'm still a new enough published novelist to ...

Well I did say that readers of this blog are reticent, but really! Nothing in the comments box. Either you are 1/ the most incurious people...

I just saw a section on another writer's website called Frequently Asked Questions , in which she listed questions that readers often as...

This is for new readers of this blog (as the post has already appeared in the December archives)... Sue’s View When I suggested to Jane t...

She's back from her op and she begged to be allowed to do a few postings on her blog, so what could I say? Click here for the first .

Plotting for Beginners was published in the US at the beginning of July. The US edition contains a glossary at the back for American reader...

Sally Howe, heroine of Plotting for Beginners , has posted her last blog today. She's going into hospital for a partial knee replacement...

If you're new to this website, you may be interested to read how Jane and I co-wrote Plotting for Beginners . If so, you'll find a p...

Yes, yes, my editor likes Zuzu's Petals . She likes it a lot. So all being well, it will be published next year, and then you can tell ...

That's it. I have finished Zuzu's Petals and sent it to my editor at Snowbooks . Will she like it? Watch this space. (AArrgghh......

"So what is it like, living with a writer?" an old friend asked my husband yesterday. "Very difficult," he said. ...

Occasionally I find myself living in Sally's world - i.e. the world of Plotting for Beginners . This happened yesterday, when I got a p...

After months of thinking of nothing but my new novel, I'm having a break. Three writer friends are reading it, and while I wait for thei...

Oh, I have to stop tinkering with ZuZu's Petals ! I have been editing the new book and rewriting bits and I now have three writer friend...

A couple of weeks ago I gave the first draft of my new book to three trusted friends to read and comment on and now the jury's back. The...

I've just finished the first rough draft of my next book. Yeah! At the moment it's called Zuzu's Petals , but by the time it...

When we launched Plotting for Beginners last May, Rony Robinson of BBC Radio Sheffield interviewed Jane and me about how we came to write t...

If you would like to see photographs of the places that Sally Howe mentions in Plotting for Beginners , go to Sally's World.