There's currently a man in my bathroom lying on the floor (and there's no blood covered spanner lying next to him I hasten to add). Pardon me for being excited, but it's been a long time since there's been a man lying on my premises.



He's actually fitting a new bathroom, so I've taken the week off while this feta of modern engineering is carried out (and so I can keep nipping in and annoying him). I thought I would do something useful while he is here, so I am assembling two… Continue

Well, I'm home after a wonderful few days in Harrogate. The Festival was excellent, the panels were great, the evening events were fun...but most of all, the company was top class and I had much much fun and many laughs. Some random brief highlights, thoughts and comments:



I was SO chuffed to see Al win the Theakstons. It was a really strong field and any one of them deserved the prize, but, man, I was so thrilled for Al. And he was the only one that I would (and did) shed a few tears… Continue

Someone bet me after one of my most recent forum posts that I couldn't write a story using the elements I had mentioned in my post (an amateur sleuth with an aardvark called Samuel who's actually the ghost of Joan of Arc, a serial killer whose signature is a chess piece made of brie wrapped in a piece of Amazonian love poetry). Well, since I had a spare hour at lunchtime, I thought I would give it a whirl. There was nothing to say it actually had to be good, so it's…

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I'm going to Bouchercon in Alaska in September and, as part of the trip, I am doing the Authors To Schools programme. They send you out into the Bush (or, as I know it The Middle Of Nowhere) for a few days to a local school.



I'm going to a small town in south west Alaska with about 600 residents and which you can only reach by small plane or boat. Except in winter, when you can drive on the river.







I'm really really looking forward to it. My mum, however, thinks I… Continue