I’ve got to admit, I was a few days late sending in my manuscript, but if I hadn’t had to spend a Saturday stripping wallpaper so that the plasterer could come in the following Monday (tip: don’t arrange to have a new kitchen installed the same week as your deadline – madness!) I would have scraped under my deadline by the skin of my teeth. As it was, I still had about ten pages to go before going away for the May long weekend, so I didn’t in the end finish until I came back last Tuesday. In spite of having four full months to think about and write this book, it ended up with the usual deadline frenzy in the last couple of weeks. I do seem to need the adrenalin rush of a looming deadline to pull my finger out and get down to work, but it is exhausting at the time – and (I am reliably informed) utterly exasperating for my loved ones who have to put up with me while it’s all going on.

Anyway, it is done out of my hand for now, while I wait to hear back from my editor about whether she wants me to make any changes. In the meantime, I have started to think about my next plot, in the hope of cracking on with that book as quickly as possible. It’s not due until the end of July, but summer is already getting booked up, and I can see things getting very nasty later if I don’t get going now. So far, I have an idea which I got from reading an article about introducing a new partner to your children in last Sunday’s paper, and I have been fermenting that using my tried and tested plot development system, a technique I have not yet patented but which I am happy to share with you for free: first, pour yourself a drink, then light some candles, put on some music, turn out the bathroom light and lie back in a hot bath. Oh, and tell yourself you’re not going to think about anything. It always works for me.

I’m not quite ready to write anything down yet, but I am turning the plot over in my mind as I get through some of the jobs that have been piling up while I was in writing mode. Everything is covered in dust after having the old kitchen ripped out, so I have been doing a lot of cleaning and washing up (having not yet worked out how to use my exciting new dishwasher) or tidying the cupboard in my study, and these are all good mindless tasks that allow one to ponder tricky issues like ‘why would she agree to marry him?’ or ‘why on earth doesn’t he just tell her that?’ My next step is to give the hero and heroine names – often much harder than it sounds, especially when you’ve run through all your favourites, often several times over in the cases of heroes. And after that, I’ll write a rough background to both characters and a tentative plot outline, before embarking on the first draft … I’ll be back when that’s done!