my new novel #TheHouseofPearls is out from @bookouture.bsky.social today! Available from Amazon here geni.us/B0GZZY1SWRau... and you can order the paperback from all good bookshops. & here I am in the garden before it got too hot (outfit not deliberately chosen to coordinate with book cover honest)

V happy to see #TheHouseofPearls popping up as reader recommended on #NetGalley ow.ly/EHZF50Z7Wgz! (This is in women's #fiction - also in general fiction.) Out on July 10 from @bookouture.bsky.social - Kindle preorder here: geni.us/B0GZZY1SWRau... (I am still too chicken to read the reviews!!!!)

Checking page proofs for #TheHouseofPearls! Last chance saloon 😮📖🤔🧐 - it’s out from @bookouture.bsky.social on July 10! And is on Amazon here if a Kindle pre-order tempts you: geni.us/B0GZZY1SWRau...

My new book is now on #netgalley! If an Oxford-set multigenerational timeslip story of family secrets and a mysterious old house (with a dash of magic) sounds like your cup of tea - then you can find it here: ow.ly/EHZF50Z7Wgz 🎉✨📙💍 @bookouture.bsky.social #booksky #TheHouseofPearls

Finale of Hacks was SO GOOD! Love it when a telly ending gets it stormingly right (can’t be taken for granted…)

Rain! Big fat splotches on the patio, and the lovely sound of it. Magic as the first snow of winter back in the cold old days. (I’m aware I won’t be saying this next week when heat gives way to routine downpour.)

Just read Cheryl Strayed’s essay The Love of My Life: www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/217... ‘Healing is a small and ordinary and very burnt thing. And it’s one thing and one thing only: it’s doing what you have to do.’

Also remembered what RiRi said when they asked her if she’d read 50 Shades and it made me smile. Big fat chunk of work to tackle today. There is no try, &tc.

Dew on the grass and birds singing like there’s no tomorrow. Iced coffee jug in fridge. Being up early on a heatwave bank hol Mon has early Christmas Day vibes, but all inverted.

V excited to share the cover of my new novel, The House of Pearls - out July 10 from @bookouture.bsky.social ! Single mum Elsa inherits a Georgian townhouse in Oxford from her estranged uncle and uncovers the mystery of her family's past. Kindle available to preorder now: geni.us/B0GZZY1SWRau...

It is so strange (and satisfying) how a story changes when you start writing it.

ah, The Pitt. So good so far, I think the best post Covid drama I’ve seen (in the way it handles the impact, and how things are in the aftermath)

… Devil Wears Prada 2 is SO fun and unexpectedly poignant too, esp for one who trained as a magazine journalist a zillion years ago. It’s so much about the painful decline of print and the march of the tech bros (justly lampooned & then dealt with by Meryl Streep)

Finally watched Chernobyl. It is as astoundingly good as everybody said. & as horrifying and haunting as you might expect.

OK, flashback pic. Taken by my OH. Cafe Flore, Paris, hot chocolate, November 2001 (I think.) Happy.

Hurrah! Have summer party to go to (thank you @bookouture.bsky.social) 🥳🎉💃

Clematis is doing its thing and hopefully at least some of what I planted today will sprout. Also still digging up bits of plastic windmills that my son used to love back in the day. & now wholesomely tired and have freckles.

(villainous and/or perfidious and wimpy)

Ouf, A Woman of Substance is SO much better than the Downton era tosh. This is definitely a time of villainous toffs.

ok so: feverfew, love-in-a-mist, borage and columbines. Hopefully some of them will make it and fend off the prowling slugs etc.

😍😍😍 spring doing its thing

I am not much cop as a gardener (oh hello, ghosts of lilac and ceanothus I did in), but I do like how things that appear to be dead may turn out not to be.

there is something ultimately reassuring about the dynamic of being schooled by Gen Z

For those who don’t know - Hacks is SO GOOD and Christina Hendricks is even more of a goddess than I realised (just got to her cameo)

though my housemaid ancestor did not mess with the aristo sons (bound not to turn out well), but sensibly waited and saved up until she and the coachman could afford to get married. My grasp on the history of all this is hazy, but I think it was at Painshill in Surrey (which is pretty fancy).

started watching new adaptation of quintessential rags-to-riches revenge drama A Woman of Substance (Emma Harte: 'The secret of life is to endure') & was put in mind of the little brass bell we have somewhere that was once used to summon housemaid ancestor by her bosses

I have been told that in novels by women my age (70s-born, 20s in the 90s) the ex-boyfriends are often called Simon.

Rule no 1 of writing is that if you call someone Will and change your mind, beware of ‘replace all’.

One thing I really, really like about what I do for a living is the luxury of sitting round inventing family trees. Especially the names. Though as I start on my tenth book I’ve totally forgotten which names I’ve already used. (No Alisons, I know for sure.)

At the point in writing where it’s a rush of names like people at a party who you haven’t got to know yet

It's World Autism Acceptance Day. Cuts coming in to the health element of universal credit will slash support available to #autistic people with #learningdisability who are unable to work, leaving many of the most vulnerable in penury. Which makes me think we have accepted nothing #WAAD

When generative AI was but a twinkle in a tech bro’s eye.

Just found (not quite at the bottom of a desk drawer) the Jiffy bag containing the long-ago printed-out MS of what later became my first published novel, which had been returned by an agent who’d rejected it. (And who through zeal or error or both, actually wrote to reject it another 2 times.)

Fantastic news in the UK today - the government has apparently ditched its plan to force creatives to 'opt out' if they don't want AI companies training on their life's work. www.thetimes.com/uk/technolog... 🧵 1/4

'Enshittification' is not a word recognised by autocorrect [have just introduced it to an 80something having tech headaches]

It is one of the pleasanter rules of life that a man carrying flowers must be smiled at.

this suggests the collapse in mental health care is one factor behind these horrifying statistics. The collapse affects children's MH services too, where young ppl wait years to be seen, & over-16s who are violent towards their parents wait too. Will govt now act? www.theguardian.com/society/2026...

I just registered 😊

today I met someone very nice who vividly remembered a book I published 12 years ago (and who I haven’t seen in about as long.) which was an out of the blue reminder that books have strange secret lives of their own.

You're not going to make any money doing this and no one is going to read it, so you must hope for a secret third thing to happen

Oooh A Woman of Substance is back, Edwin Fairley watch out!

May (or may not) contain me.

I'm in excellent company between these pages standing up for UK copyright protections for authors..

ps You can see the full list of authors involved at dontstealthisbook.com

The UK government is considering upending copyright law to benefit AI companies. Don’t Steal This Book urges them not to. Apart from the list of authors involved, the book is empty, representing the effect the government’s plans would have on authors' livelihoods. 2/3

We urge the government in the strongest possible terms to rule out legalising this large-scale theft. And to AI companies we say: stop stealing our books! buff.ly/cYnU2Mw #DontStealThisBook

...and represents the impact on authors’ livelihoods and the publishing industry that is expected if the government proceeds with plans it has floated that would make it easier to train AI models on copyrighted work without a licence. 🧵

Almost 10,000 authors have come together to publish an empty book protesting the theft of books by tech companies to train AI models. Titled Don’t Steal This Book, it is empty of text except the names of the authors involved.. 🧵

I WROTE A TIMESLIP! V excited to have signed with @bookouture.bsky.social for two more books and v happy to have written a dark twisty multigenerational family drama with secrets, lies, betrayal, heartbreak and a dash of time travel… Here’s the book deal announcement: bookouture.com/bookouture-a...

also a load of wine just arrived In a parallel universe I would definitely be tempted to