Well, my plan to have finished a 150 page draft by the end of March turned out as usual: I managed a hundred pages, decided it was all a waste of time, I would never be able to make a book out of it, my career was over, etc., etc., etc., gave up, and then started all over again. Although it feels like pointless rubbish, the first draft did make me realise that my heroine needed some additional motivation for her resistance to the hero, her estranged husband, when he turns up, so I had to think a bit more about what their marriage had been like and why it had broken down, and that turned out to be a useful exercise. I also felt that the plot as I’d originally planned it didn’t have enough focus to keep the tension going until the end, and I think I have solved that one too, although I may think differently when I do get to the end.

So I have drawn myself up a new timetable to finish by the end of April, although it is not ideal to be away in Scotland for a couple of weeks over Easter – I am going to take my laptop with me, but I never write successfully away from home, but will have to see what I can do. It is hard in any case to concentrate at the moment, as I had to have my beloved old tabby, Walter, put to sleep this week. He was the most beautiful cat, a big, long-legged, solid tabby with huge paws and cinnamon-coloured eyes, who liked to be patted like a dog, and who never once scratched or bit. He has been at the centre of my life for almost twelve years. Walter would never sit on my lap, but he liked to sit beside me wherever I was, and he kept me company through thirty books, sitting on the desk, always on the bit of paper I needed, and purring as he basked in the warmth of the halogen lamp. I miss him terribly but somehow it is worst when I’m at my computer, like now. Writing is going to be a much lonelier business without him.