A new place, more website stuff, and a clone

Current work: fiction
Listening to: Alison Moyet
Reading: Nicola Cornick, Unmasked (this one’s a real treat)

Mills and Boon have set up a social website (aka the UK version of the eHarlequin boards). It’s here if you want to go and check it out. The site launched yesterday afternoon, and I’m so looking forward to it – I enjoy going to the eHarl boards (even though I don’t go there as often as I’d like – dear lovely ed, I am not playing on the internet: I am working, honest) and I’ve made some really good real-life friends as well as cyber-friends there. I’m hoping to do the same here.

Website: thanks, everyone, who took the trouble to answer my website dilemma yesterday. I’m working on a revamped books page which I’ll put up at the end of the month – after my deadline! The plan is to show thumbnail covers, plus clickable links in a list (newest title first – and linked books have been separated out from the standalone ones) with dates. I’m also planning to do three booklists rather than the single one I have at the moment – i.e. one for the UK, one for the US and one for Aus/NZ. (Do I need a fourth, for ebooks?) I'll split the ‘coming soon’ section into three, so it’s tidier and you don’t have to look through a whole column to find out when my books are coming out in your country. So hopefully it will make life easier for readers…

As for the clone: I’ve wanted a clone for ages, and now it seems I might have one… with a twist or two.

We spent yesterday playing board games. Madam beat me at Scrabble (though currently we play so that we can see each other’s letters; I’ll swap letters with her if she can see a good word but doesn’t have what she needs, and we try to open up the board rather than have a tedious defensive game – but we’re at the stage now where she can see the word on her own instead of needing hints from me). And then she suggested something that surprised me. ‘We could play in French. Look, I’ve got tête.’ Ye-e-es… and the circumflex? ‘That’s OK. We’ll just pretend it’s there. But I’ll tell you how it’s spelled properly. You could do German or Italian if you like.’ Honey, apart from numbers, you don’t know any German or Italian. ‘That’s OK. You can teach me.’

Uh. She’s EIGHT.

Mind you, at eight years old, if I’d had an adult at home who could speak another language then I too would’ve suggested playing in French. She announced to her teacher last week that she’s going to be a writer when she grows up (she’s done that with every teacher since she turned six – just like her mother); she’s writing scifi stuff (which I did at her age); and she makes me buy her lots of notebooks (hmm… I used to be very fond of those Challenge books with the carbon paper in the middle). She also has three reading books on the go – one by her bed, one in the car and one in her schoolbag. (I have one by my bed, one in the kitchen and a couple in my office.) And school has given up making her do the reading scheme and is letting her read whatever she likes because she moaned about being bored and got her mother to write a note… (This is getting very spooky. Snap.)

And she ran a stall at her school’s fundraiser last week. (OK, so I don’t do it right now – due to the difficult stuff in my life, I don’t have time to breathe, let alone anything else – but I’ve done fundraising since my student days.)

The big difference between us is that she’s inherited the style gene that bypassed me.

I have a feeling that my mini-me could really take over the world.

Plan for today: it’s going to pour all day, so we’re off to the cinema to see ‘Bolt’.