…But I try not to let it go to my head. I acknowledge the receptionists and PAs who now seem to know my name whilst giving them what they want; mournful, sultry looks full of endless, aching sadness. Luckily, this is my natural expression.

I sit at the table with Sid, Chris and the suit whose name, I think, may be Jason. If it isn’t, it should be. Other suits sit a respectful distance away, and I keep my shades on because I have an excuse. I myself am wearing a jet black suit.

“Well, Christopher,” Jason begins, but stops when I toss a fat A4 envelope onto the table. “What’s this?” he asks, opening it.

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I'm not the sort of writer who carries a notebook around with him at all times, or has one in every room of the house, so I can scribble every single fragment of an idea down the very moment it comes to me. Typically, I'm quite laid back with ideas.

There are times though, when I need to make a note of an idea. I've been known to text it to myself, or leave a message on my own voicemail. Occasionally, when out, I've asked a barman for a piece of paper and a pen.

The other day I found one such note tucked in my wallet. Ooh, an idea for a story, I thought.

And you know what it said? What this idea that was too good to not write down was?

It said: "Man cooking a turkey. In a kitchen."

Hmm. I don't think I'm quite the genius yet, am I?

Anyone else had any daft, or cryptic, ideas?

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I decided to take a bash at this year's Debut Dagger, run by the Crime Writers' Association.

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Funny, how it comes around. The sun is shining. It's freezing cold. I've written 150 words of flash fiction for this week's challenge at WriteWords, and I'm pretty excited about them. Won't post just yet, though. Waiting for the first flush to fade so I can get a perspective on the piece. It's my trademark 'ambiguous', and that doesn't always translate the way I want it to. So I'll let it simmer for a while.


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Lord H and I popped along to the Candlemas service at St Mary's today - all very civilised and they did stuff with candles too, which was nice. It doesn't always happen. Lord H lit the one we were sharing and I blew it out the two or three times we had to do the ritualistic candle thing. Well, one has to cater to marital strengths: Lord H is an enabler and I am a destroyer. Naturally ...

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I suppose it's possible that some writers love plotting, but I'm not one of them, or not yet. Indeed, three years ago, I swore I couldn't plot for toffee (not that anyone was offering me any toffee at the time). It's one of the reasons I believed I'd have a hard time trying to hack it as a crime writer. Then I wrote (in fact, co-wrote) an opus that exceeded a quarter of a million words, and surprised myself by managing to conjure the illusion of progression and, moreover, by bringing the story to a definite conclusion. My co-writer, a wise and wonderful woman, told me not to get hung up on the notion of plotting - 'What is plot, anyway? Just a series of coat-hangers, one leading to the next.' She was right, too. There's an art to arranging those hangers, though, and it helps to have most of them in place before you get too deep into the process of writing. That, at least, has been my experience. What do other writers find? Care to share a few tips? I'll go first.


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Spent this morning editing The Gifting, which went something like this:

11am (ok ok, it was really 11.30am but hell I deserve a lie-in sometimes ...): the archetypal Z-list author weeps over her keyboard, sobbing that she'll never be good enough, she doesn't understand her own plotting, she's a hopelessly bad writer and she doesn't remember anything she's written before in the ruddy book so how can she make it all come right now? Ah, same old, same old then ... Lord H stands behind her, massaging her shoulders and moaning in sympathy ...

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"There's no one left. Soon I will stop. Soon ..."

Tom McCarthy's second novel, Men In Space, is a masterpiece. A painting on the white wall of a gallery that opens itself layer upon layer as you inspect it.

And there lies its greatest weakness. For it is a novel that by the very nature of reading spans days, weeks, months depending on the speed of the reader.
For whilst a painting can be observed in one glance and then explored whilst remembering the image as a whole, Tom's book fragments into separate satellites that orbit around each other obscuring the overall image.
The reader becomes lost, disorientated.
And as each satellite moves majestically through space following perfectly formed trajectories, under Tom's masterly use of words, the story stays elusive.

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Ye gods but I haven't stopped today. Played golf with Marian this morning as she's now returned from her trip to New Zealand - which sounds wonderful and I am hugely jealous! Still, it was lovely to be back on the course again, if only we could say the same about our balls (as it were). Lordy, we were rubbish, but heck we laughed a lot ...

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Dear Kitty,

I’m going out with my ex-boyfriend. I mean, he’s not the exact same person, but he might as well be.

I can’t understand what happened because I distinctly remember saying I was not on the lookout for another emotionally-stunted Capricorn with a Superwoman fixation...


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