So, here I am, back staring at a blank screen and wondering how on earth I’m going to write an entire book before the end of November.  I’ve just emailed a three page outline to my editor, which is a huge step forward from yesterday when I only had two paragraphs, but progress or not, three pages still leaves me a good 50,000 words to go …

I’ve gone with the outback setting, but am dropping the baby in favour of two slightly older children, and concentrating instead on (surprise, surprise!) a ‘marriage of convenience’ hook.  The basic premise was worked out over a bottle of champagne on the train up to Edinburgh just before my birthday, so I have to give credit where credit is due and thank Diana not just for the champagne, complete with plastic flutes, but for all her ideas, which I duly scribbled down in a notebook but which turned out to be virtually indecipherable when I came to read them later.  Diana was insistent that the book should be set during the rains, but I haven’t been to the outback in the Wet, and although I can absolutely see the appeal of sitting on a verandah with the rain thundering onto the tin roof, I myself am more of a dusty track girl, and when all’s said and done, it is my book.  We couldn’t agree about names either, so I will have to break the news to her that the heroine is now called Bea and the hero Chase (I must admit I’m not entirely convinced about this, but I want him to have a name that sounds like a surname).

Now I just have to write it.  The first rough  (very rough) draft starts tomorrow, when I have cleared my desk of everything else that needs doing.  Updating this diary is the last niggling little job to do, so now I’ve got no excuse not to get on with it!