I’ve just finished typing up the second draft of my fourth novel.  Trying to decipher my own handwriting made my eyes ache, but I’m pleased with what I’ve done.  I started this thing back in April, when I was enormously grateful to receive an Arts Council grant to allow me to do so.  Since then I’ve been working away at it as fast as I can, in between looking after my little daughter, and am soon to embark on draft three.  Now that I’ve made some progress I’ll be sharing some of the writing experience here.  I’m going to have to figure out how to talk about it without being too specific about the story – at the moment anything in the novel might still drastically change – but I hope to find a few useful things to say.

In the meantime, the publication of my third novel is finally on the horizon.  THE TREES will arrive in the spring, and this is a story I soon can be specific about.  I can’t wait for you all to set foot in the forest I’ve been lost in for the last few years.  There are things that whisper there and things that creak in the dark, things that howl and things that watch you through the undergrowth.  Don’t trust the paths and, whatever you do, don’t trust the trees themselves.