Prue Leith, Author of The Gardener, Leaving Patrick, Sisters, Transita Publishing, books by older women, books for older women

Writing is such a peculiar obsession! You don’t want to do it, and will find a million excuses not to do it, but if you don’t write, you feel restless, guilty and unhappy. I rather agree with the thought that there are quite enough books in the world already, and thousands of really good ones, and hundreds of books of pure genius, so why do I think I have to clutter up the shelves with mine? God knows. My agent once told me that the trouble with writers is first they just want to get their first novel finished. That’s their whole ambition. Then they want it published. Then they want it to be a best seller. Then to be made into a film.

God knows there are easier ways of making a living, but there are millions of us, tapping away, trying desperately to write better and better novels.

Click here to buy A Serving of Scandal and Choral Society (both published by Quercus). But my earlier novels are now out of print so you need to get them from Amazon who generally have copies, both second hand and new.

I wrote my first novel at 55, and, at 69 I published my fourth, with number five, A Serving of Scandal following a year later.

Readers often ask if I am really writing about myself. And in a way I am. All three women have aspects of me in them, but a lot of characteristics that are totally unlike mine. Lucy is a food writer, which of course I've been for decades and Joanna is a business woman like me, but approaching business in a much more businesslike way than I ever did. I guess Rebecca is least like me. Maybe that's why she is my favourite character, though she is certainly not everyone's. My P.A. Francisca was driven mad by her irresponsibility and determination to have a good time.

So it's a love story -- or several love stories, but also a story about facing old age: sensibly, bravely, or not at all. I hate to use the hackneyed phrase but it's a story of self discovery. And, of course it's a story about the power of female friendship.

If you'd like to read the first chapter Click here. Or you could read a paragraph or two about the moral-booster that singing can be. Click here Even watching the faces of people singing, or reading about singers can lift the spirits!

This is my latest novel, which I’m delighted to say is selling really well. The last one made the breakthrough into supermarkets, with Waitrose alone selling over 6,000 copies. So when the paperback of this comes out, I have ambitious hopes for Tesco, Sainsbury’s et al! Meanwhile it has the sexiest cover yet seen on any Prue Leith novel, don’t you agree

This is my first political novel, but there is precious little of politics in it. It is a tale of the damage the press can do to a principled politician, and the damage power does to him. It is a tale of love, gossip, scandal, betrayal --and cooking.

Please be my critic! If you are feeling really generous, and have read any of my novels and liked them, could you post a review on the Amazon website? I’m told that is the way to spread the word that I’m now a novelist not cookery writer!