As I say, PHEW, the Mail ran a review of TPO in their books pages yesterday and it was LOVELY! Quite nervous about the weekend as there are a few more reviews coming out and The Observer tomorrow which is making me quake a bit. We shall see…

One of the many wondrous things about this week is that it’s been galvanising, so I spent much of yesterday in my local coffee shop writing the final scene of book 2. That doesn’t mean I’ve written the rest of book 2 yet. I haven’t (it’s due at the end of November). But I seem to write books in the way that people do jigsaws: make a framework and then fill the bits in from there, piece by piece, in different areas of the puzzle. I’ve plotted the most emotional or biggest scenes of book 2, as I did with TPO, and am working backwards and forwards from there. I’m sure it’s deeply unscientific. I’m sure Tolstoy wrote in a much more efficient manner. But each to their own, right?