Photo: Kippa Matthews

Hello, and thanks for dropping by the site.  Before you ask…
No, I haven’t written a new novel recently.  By which I mean, nothing since ‘Picking Up’.  And, yes, I’m deeply embarrassed to admit this.  Embarrassed?  I’m mortified, terrified, stupefied by sense of failure, crucified by guilt, suicidal… 
Well, maybe ‘suicidal’ is over-egging the drama.  In fact, in many ways, you could say I’ve been having quite a good time this past couple of years: playing church organs, producing pantomimes, chasing pheasants, sewing curtains, re-learning to knit – you know, doing what might loosely be called living.  That’s as opposed to holing oneself up in a lonely garret, sploshing sweat, blood, tears and (strictly medicinal) whisky over the computer keyboard. 
‘But wherefore this long barren spell?’ I hear my devoted fans cry.  (All two of you, including Aunty Ella).  Good question.  I guess I experienced Writer’s Block, that scary phenomenon about which one reads with the ghoulish fascination inspired by tales of, say, poltergeists or a fatal addiction to slot machines – while smugly thinking such a dreadful fate could never happen to ME.
Except it did.  And I’m here to tell you it’s no fun. 
So how come I’m sounding – at least I assume I’m sounding – rather chipper now?  Partly because I suffer from terminal optimism, always have.  Even as I’ve chucked one brick-thick chunk of dying manuscript after another on to the literary scrapheap, a maddeningly perky little voice in my head has almost at once started cheeping that This Isn’t The End of The World (oh no?), that Tomorrow is Another Day (so what?), and that I’ll just have to pick myself up, dust myself off and…  etc.  I swear, if that voice had belonged to a person I would have been in the dock on a homicide rap years ago.
But I have to admit, with lip-chewing caution, that I do now seem to be big with new ideas.  There are, I promise, mountains of research around me even as I write.  So watch this space, and please – dear readers – don’t give up on me yet.  Either of you.
In the meantime, to any newcomer who has stumbled upon this site perhaps looking for one of my existing books, I have to warn you they are hard to come by.  Click here to learn why. 
Otherwise, do please browse the site to read about the books you, ahem, may not be able actually to read.  The Books page gives the background to them, Biography needs no explanation, articles and the odd short story are included under Journalism, reviews (only the nice ones, of course) under Press.  And Mike Jarman, the genius who set up this site, linked in a blog-diary column, which I don’t update as often as I should.
But enough of this self-abasement!  The new book awaits me.  And – who knows? – one day soon it might await you.  Fingers crossed,