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.

You can buy The Gardener from this site. But as the other two are now out of print, you need to get them from www.amazon.co.uk where there always seem to be plenty of re-sale copies in circulation.

Three Single Women

I wrote my first novel at 55, and, at 68, have just delivered my fourth, Choral Society .  It’s about three women, all single (one divorced, one widowed, one never married) who meet in a singing class to sing the Messiah.  I wanted to explore, since I am definitely "in that zone" myself, the problems of late middle age and looming old age, and also allow my characters to develop and change in, I hope, surprising ways. Young people think old people are past the stings and arrows of emotion, love, loss and fury, but believe me, they are not.  

Readers often ask if I am really wriing 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' a story about the power of female friendship.

Please be my critic!If you are feeling really generous, and have read The Gardener and liked it, 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! How about a taster of my new novel? I think I have finished it, but have no idea if it’s any good. I’ve felt like this about all the novels until I see them in print, and then they seem to get miraculously better so I end up rather proud of them. But this one makes me nervous as hell. So any comments gratefully accepted. Click here for the first chapter and let me know what you think.