Brilliant feature from Lucy Mangan at The Guardian. “Do you know how I long for a… a female figure somewhere, somehow, who is not a total drip, who may have and who is yet not defined by her emotional weakness and other incompetencies. Like a real woman, perhaps.” Choir, preaching to, etc. I wrote The [...]

A few people have emailed me to ask how I wrote The Dating Detox – how I plotted, and if I have any writing tips. With novel-writing, as with everything else in life, I specialise in intuitive improvisation (AKA, winging it). So if you read this post and think ‘this chick knows nothing’, you’re right. [...]

I’ve noticed that there are a lot of would-be authors out there waiting to get signed. And I thought I’d tell you exactly what I did – timeline, cover letters, absolutely everything, as you might find it useful. If you’re just here to kill time, please scroll down. There was a post on drinking a [...]

My Dad rang yesterday to ask, in a very serious and concerned voice, if any of ‘The Dating Detox’ was true, “because if so…” – if so what, I never got to find out. I assume a team of vigilantes would be flying in from Hong Kong to wreak havoc on a handful of unsuspecting [...]

So, I saw copies of The Dating Detox in all the bookshops in T1 on my way to Ireland yesterday, and didn’t have the thrill I thought I would. Odd, huh? I’ve only had two book-related thrills, actually. One was when Laura, my now-agent, rang to say she liked my first three chapters and could [...]

Where was I? Oh yes. On drinking. I like pubs. I also like bars. I like everything in between. And so, here are my five favourite places to drink in London this December. (I say ‘December’ because I’m feeling festive and wintry, and the places I’d go in April or August are obviously, totally different, [...]

Here’s the thing. I have huge trouble with names. Even minor characters can prompt a 20-minute slack-jawed space-staring spell. Baby name sites don’t help, and if I start looking through other books for inspiration, I just read them. If I think of a friend’s name – Marcus! Jackie! – then I think, holy shit, I [...]

I read an interview once with someone who said he read Bleak House every year, at Christmas. The sophistication! Kind-of-but-not like how I used to read Polo by Jilly Cooper every time I was dumped. Now these days, I’m with a nice young man and we’re getting hitched, but I still read Polo about once [...]