Today is Labor Day here in America, where I've been for the past two months. Tomorrow is back to London and back to work. Looking back at the last post I put up here, I realise I've taken the entire month of August off from blogging and also from all work, entirely....

These are precarious times for Cambodia. Just a few days ago they held their Presidential elections. The ruling party, CCP, and the long-term President, Hun Sen, won again, not surprisingly. But there are widespread allegations of serious irregularities and...

As usual, I am spending my summer at home: at my home on Martha's Vineyard, that is. Off season (as we like to call it), I'm at my other home, in London. And for the past three years, in the winter, I have worked in Cambodia, a place where, quite inexplicably, I also...

Waiting is the hardest thing, as the old song goes. To be honest, I haven't looked at the manuscript of my new book for over eight months now! It's an incredibly long time, though I knew it would be. I knew it was in a queue along with the other manuscripts being...

Not much to say right now, except.....and a little Kermit thrown in at the end can only help, I always say.PS More serious content will resume in due course -- i.e. when it starts to rain again or I get tired of the beach 🙂

We are told not to judge a book by its cover, but we all know that it is the cover which leads us to pick a book off a shelf in the first place. It is the look of a cover which leads us to be intrigued and without that initial intrigue, the brilliant and beautiful...

I'm off to my annual site shift, changing my headquarters from London to Martha's Vineyard. How lucky can a girl be? I love my beach girl persona, and what better way to prepare myself than to get the Beach Boys on the box? To be honest, I wasn't a huge fan when I was...

thanks to worldteamjourneyAn interesting question for writers which continually rears its annoying head. I had the latest conversation on the topic last week after the performance of Dreams of May and it got me thinking. It's clear to me that the answer for theatrical...

I'm writing this on a rainy Saturday afternoon, looking ahead at what will be a rather crazy, fun, fascinating, exciting and nerve-wracking week. I'm writing this on Saturday because as of tomorrow I won't have one single moment to raise my head and look around until...

Almost  a year ago to the day, I wrote about the movement for libel reform here. In a country which prides itself on civil liberties and human rights, the fact that we have had to struggle so long and hard to ensure freedom of speech is, quite frankly, appalling and...

What do you get when you mix an American, an Australian and a New Zealander?  orAn American, an Australian and a New Zealander walk into a bar.....Either way, these three women are no joke and they have, out of the goodness of their huge hearts, taken it upon...

I'm still on the road with minimal ability to post here, but I wanted to refer you to this beautiful ezine full of photographs, illustrations and creative writings from and about Asia. The fact that my novel, A Clash of Innocents, is mentioned in it has nothing to do...

This wondrous journey back in time is a good way for me to connect with you today as I'm, again, miles away from London, but also on my own little journey of nostalgia. My son is graduating from University this week. So that's it. No more kids. They're all grown up....

And now for something completely different....Hadley Freeman, The Guardian columnist and author of the popular "Ask Hadley" fashion column, has written a collection of essays called, Be Awesome.This is not the sort of genre I usually discuss here, but this book is so...

This week has seen the announcement by Salt that they will no longer be publishing single author poetry collections. This is big news in the poetry world because Salt has published over 400 such titles over the years and has championed the work of many talented poets...

Back by popular acclaim!  I suppose that really is true. So many people have asked when my one-woman show, Dreams of May, might be produced again that I've found a way to stage another performance of it — the first in London for over 5 years!  I hope all of you in the...

One of the wonders of living in London is the enormous amount of literary events that are on offer. Here is one that I knew nothing about until I read about it on Michelle McGrane's terrific poetry blog, Peony Moon.  And shame on me for not knowing about it...

Over the past couple of months I've written a few posts about various aspects of preparing for the publication of my next novel. It dawns on me that some might be interested in having me put this all together in some coherent fashion, so I decided to create this...

The blogging world has brought many wonderful people into my life. One of the most compelling is Satya Robyn. Many might recognise her as the writer Fiona Robyn but one year ago she changed her name as part of her ordination as a Buddhist priest. Today she is...

I often write about how much I love far-flung places like Cambodia and Ireland and The States, but I often forget to talk about how much I love what is right on my doorstep. Isn't it always the way? Shame on me. Well, on this Bank Holiday I found myself on my own...

The older I get, the harder it is to remember how old I am.  I can remember the year I was born; it happens to be a nice round number. But it’s the age. How old am I? That’s the hard part, but honestly, not because the age thing bothers me all that much (yet). I still...

In my last post I mentioned that my next novel will be published in January 2014 instead of September 2013, but I didn't say why. The reason has to do with the requirements of my publisher's book reps. So what's a book rep, anyway?Book reps are people/companies that...

One of my all time favourite titles comes from a short story collection by the great Grace Paley - Enormous Changes at the Last Minute. The past ten days have felt like that, and although some of the changes have been a long time coming, once they arrived it felt like...

It's been a difficult week. Margaret Thatcher was buried, but her death resurrected a generation of anger and pain. And, of course, someone for some still unknown reason exploded bombs at the finish line of the Boston Marathon. It doesn't make much sense to me to...

The research is done. The thinking is done. The writing is done. And hurray! The manuscript has been accepted for publication. Now what?I thought I'd make a list for all of us of everything that will need to be done between now and September, the time when my next...

I hate that question, and as a writer I am asked it all the time. The answer seems to change with time, with perspective, with lots of things. But I suppose one good way to know how to answer such a question is to see how I feel when an author has a new book coming...

Those of you who have been around the blogosphere with me for a while will know that my original obsession was, and continues to be, science. And one of my favourite science writers is Brian Clegg. I wrote about him most recently here. I'm happy to say, Brian has a...

...for now.Just to say, the pdf version of the magazine written by my students during the last Writing Workshop is now available from the Anjali House website here.You can read all about it and, if so moved, you can buy a copy to download for US$7. At over 50 pages of...

I've been given two good pieces of advice about how to deal with my return to London and my "Western" life. First, I was told to give myself a week to just stare out the window and allow all the different pieces of myself to find their way back together. The other is...

 As this year's trip draws into it's final week, we decided to take a short trip to Battambang. This is an important secondary city with about 100,000 people and a close history with France and China, especially in its architecture. Remnants of that history can be...