London calling...

I`m just back from a few days in the big smoke - in fact, I had 4 meets in my diary and was late for every one. How do you Londoners cope with the trains? I was practically rocking, it was so frustrating. A fire in Battersea delayed the train by 40 minutes, and I was nose to armpit with several men, standing in a swaety carriage.
Also, no-one speaks, do they? Except for into their mobiles, though most people were texting.
When a pigeon entered the train I said, "Oh! Look!" and rather than looking at the bird everyone looked at me like I was nuts.

Anyway, I did meet up with the wonderful people at Legend Press, who are publishing The Woman Before Me in June. Oooh, I`m sooo excited! We talked marketing and covers and launches and I came away a very happy bunny (until boarding another train and realising that a happy face is interpreted as madness on the tube!)

Snow Day

You novelists with children will know what I mean, when I say Christmas just gets in the way of writing. I mean, I did my best, but frankly I was looking forward to school starting up so I could get back into routine. I`m a bit like a sodding racehorse with my training schedule, and get jittery if I`m off it...temperamental.

So, Tuesday I dropped the kids at the school gates and raced back to my comfy chair and laptop, switched on and loaded up. I`ve finished editing The Sacrificial Man & The Woman before Me, but I still have Family Snap to work on. I`m meeting Laura Wilson, my mentor, in a few weeks and want my first 3 chapters to sparkle. It felt so good to plan out my timetable of what chapters I`d look at each day and start honing words, but then...
THE HEAVENS OPENED!

Snow. Beautiful, isn`t it? Makes everything so clean, like a blank canvas.
And the children just loved being sent home early. I turned up at the gates with the sledge, and pulled it home, both kids on it, pelting me with snow balls and shouting `mush`. Hard work, but I consoled myself I was burning calories. "Faster, mummy! You`re too slow!" Perhaps that was when my joy started to falter.

Friday. Snow still around. We did a long walk, which was abruptly ceased when my son announced that he had no socks on! Imagine wearing wellies with bare feet. I marched them home, chastising him all the way with tales of Scott and frostbite. Miraculously, his feet felt toasty when I pulled the boots off.
We`ve had the video on, but now I`ve sent them upstairs (how can they have nothing to play with when Christmas was just 2 weeks ago?) and loaded Family Snap up again. But I feel guilty. Surely a good mum would be out there, sledging. Or at least rallying the kids into a game of Monopoly.
Hmmm.
Modern dilemma. Good writers make bad mums, discuss.
Who else saw the Enid Blyton biopic and winced?