11,10, 9 - and 50

Current work: Rome book, second revisions
Listening to: new Coldplay album
Reading: next on TBR

Eleven years ago today was a very, very special day – the arrival of my littlest. (This is her with her big brother when she was a couple of days old - we'd just arrived home from hospital.)


And on her christening day with me (at the party afterwards - I'd changed her into another dress). This was one of my dad's favourite pics.


She’s connected to the other numbers, as well – because if you fast forward a few weeks to her first Christmas, she was in hospital with bronchiolitis. I’d just been writing an article on the subject and I knew the worst-case scenario. Seeing my baby on oxygen was tough, especially as it was during my difficult time of year. (I hate the teen days of December.) The only way I could get through it was to start writing my first medical romance and pretend it was happening to someone else.

Ten years ago today I had ‘the call’ from M&B. DH was in the bath. I answered the phone, then walked in to tell him, sobbing. He sighed and said, ‘Look, you know you can make it. Just start writing another one and try again.’ I had to explain that that wasn’t why I was crying - they wree happy tears, and we were going out for dinner for two reasons that night!

Nine years ago saw my first M&B on the shelves and a launch party at Ottakar’s. (I was reminiscing about it with Jenny Haddon on Friday; she was the organiser of the M&B author lunch and I think vice-chair of the RNA, so she came to the launch to support me, and ended up having to stay at ours for the night because the weather was so bad that the trains stopped running.)


Fifty? Well, I’m just finishing off second revisions on my 50th M&B. Set in Rome, London and Vienna. And again that’s connected with littlest, because she’s part of my research team and never minds where I take her. Better still, she has the writing gene, so she understands how my head works and why I want to see certain places/do certain things.

Happy, happy birthday to Chloë.


And happy anniversary to M&B and me :o)