Fiona

It has been over a year since I updated this website - shame on me! Many apologies to all those who have continued to check in, and to write to me via the email service - plus all those newcomers who have stumbled upon the site and found it trapped in time. I do try to get back to everyone who
contacts me eventually, but rather than update individually, it makes sense to finally write some news.

My latest book, Four Play, is due to be published in hardback in October of this year. Starring the character Dilly from previous Lodes novels, it is a breathless whirl from heartbreak to match-make to true soul-mates in three months. It was a wonderfully cheering book to write, and I put another book - Going, Going, Gone - on hold in order to do so because I decided that I wanted to write a more straightforward and heart-lifting romance.

The past year has been one of huge change personally. Sadly, my marriage ended last summer, and writing during the difficult and stressful months that followed was very hard at times, but Four Play was a great antidote to the gloom and will, I hope, prove just as enjoyable escapism for my readers.

Even more happily, as I wrote the story of two characters inevitably falling in love with one another, I found myself going through the exact same process in real life. It just goes to show that love can be right under your nose where you last expect to look for it. I hadn’t imagined that I could find happiness so quickly after such heartbreak, but I couldn’t be more thrilled that I have – and it has certainly helped restore this romantic novelist’s faith in happy endings.

Meanwhile, I am now writing Going, Going Gone again and hope to have it finished by the end of the year, ready for publication in summer 2007. At its centre is a treasure hunt held by a local Lodes valley auction house, and at least one character stands to find a lot more than money waiting for them at the end of the trail.

At home, all my menagerie of animals are healthy and well – the foal that was born last year is now a strapping grey yearling, full of mischief. No doubt he will appear in a book in the not too distant future, along with all the other sights and sounds I pick up as I nosily dog-walk and hack my way around the village for inspiration…

Tags: