Breaking news...

Big exciting news... My latest novel is going to be displayed on a giant media screen on the Aston Expressway AND WHSmith will be stocking Split Decision in their stores!

I can't tell you how excited I am! I will be standing there gazing up at the display for hours on end no doubt.

People often ask what it is like to see your name on a book or to hold in your hands something that you created. The answer is that its a strange feeling. A novel is a piece of work that a novelist doesn't just write, they imagine it into being, so to hold it finally in your hands is rather surreal, almost magical, in the truest sense of the word.

I will keep you posted about the advertising date and perhaps you will be passing by at just the right time...

I know I will :)

Thanks y'all!

Thanks to my publisher P'kaboo and my agent Paul Thompson; to all my friends and lovely book buyers. Split Decision is now out as an ebook. The paperback is coming soon. I'll keep you posted.


Sorry if I have driven you half mad with my fretting and constant talking about my engrossing characters but now you have the chance to see what all the fuss was about.

I would like to say that the time has come to relax but you know me, there's another book in the offing now, so if I were you, I'd reinsert those earplugs fast!

Happy Reading.

Wakey, wakey!

There are not enough hours in the day for me at the moment, so for the last three weeks I have been going to bed at midnight and getting up at four am in order to get everything done. Before you feel sorry for me, I must point out that this is entirely my own fault. I have stupidly co-ordinated events so that everything has now come to fruition at the same time!


This is not a problem however, as I am currently so filled with nervous energy that I could light up the whole of Bromsgrove if they wired me to the grid. But like an athlete after the competition, or a rock star after a tour, I know that very soon, when the need for all this activity is over, I will slump, exhausted and wiped out, for at least two days.  Right now that seems a small price to pay.

 
So what is the cause of all this hyperactivity? Partly my decision to move home. As you may be aware, I have been longing to do this for some time. So I bought a new house. But not just any old house, oh no, not me! I bought a house where the doors do not actually close in the door frames [to my shame I did not realise this, having actually not tried to close any of the doors], where each and every door lock was broken, where there was no door to the en suite bathroom [I know!], where there was a smallish kitchen but a large utility... and an endless list of other strange things.


Yet I LOVE the new house. It is full of potential and possibilities that have been all but exhausted in my present house. So I set a team of builders to work on it. And they are really cracking on. So much so, that I have been forced to speedily decorate my current house and put it on the market, with a view to possibly moving to the new house once it is completed.


But as we all know, with a new house comes even more running around, setting up things, so between all this, life has been popping up its funny little head, reminding me that I have other commitments too - a family birthday party to organise, a holiday to book, five chapters left in the current book to write, other work commitments and, dare I suggest it, a social life! On top of all that, I have also been informed of details of the book launch for Split Decision, which of course coincides with all of this.


Maybe one of the most difficult things I am doing at this moment though, is wrestling with the moral conumdrums and issues which have presented themselves in The Owners, Volume VII: Hunter's Moon. God help me, I have always been an eye for an eye sort of person. I have striven to rise above this my whole life, for I truly believe that train of thought is detrimental to the soul, but being a female born under the astrological sign of scorpio, of short statue, and raised in Glasgow, it was always going to require a lot of effort to be ambivalent let alone magnanimous when I felt wronged.


And  I see a couple of this book's characters having the same problem. What has happened with the story has shattered their world so completely, that they are finding it difficult to stem the tide of hatred that wants to flow from them. And with every word I write, I feel their pain. They want me to set them loose, to allow them to wreak havoc upon others, as it has been wreaked upon them... so here is the latest snippet:-

There was the bigger picture to think of too though. There was the thought that one day, when she was a grown woman, questions about this night would arise and he would be forced to say that he had stood back and let whatever happened, happen.


I would love to tell you that this book has a happy ending, but I fear I would by lying. All I can say [and I am as much in the dark about the book's conclusion as you are,] is that it is sure to be exciting!


So for now, happy reading and I'll catch up with you soon.


Carmen.