Back to work!

Hallo!

It's a very long time since I wrote this blog and I'm very aware of it; but I do have an awfully good excuse which is that I've been writing my next book. It has been a long long task, given the length of my books (and this one is longer than ever, despite my best efforts to make it shorter). A lot of research, a bit of rewriting, (two of the major characters wouldn't do what I expected--this always happens, but it was worse than usual this time) and then a fair bit of editing. But it's done now, it's called The Decision and it's being published in September and I've put a photograph of its cover on this blog for you to see.

Covers are so important--not just to look good and stand out on the book shelves and all that sort of thing, but also to suit the story and please the author. It is after all a bit like dressing your child; it's not just that you want him or her to have lovely clothes, they need to be right. I mean, a frilly dress, however delightful and sassy, won't suit a tomboy; and a smart shirt and trousers, however stylish, won't do for a little chap who should clearly be knocking around in board shorts and t-shirt. So with book jackets: they need to look romantic, or intriguing, or exciting in every way, they need to catch the personality of the book, and that includes the photograph (if there is one), the type face and even the colour of the title. The Decision has a lot of glossy white and red; I will leave you to guess at its mood from that.

I'm not going to tell you what it's about just yet, but what I will tell you is that it's set in the sixties, and much of it in the world of fashion, which I was very involved in myself at that time--I was actually the first fashion editor of an iconic magazine called Nova--and writing about my heroine's life on a rather similar magazine was incredibly exciting and brought it all very vividly back. I still possess a few things with the Biba label and can remember trying things on behind a screen on the pavement outside the first shop, because it became so impossibly full inside.

Oh and I will tell you the heroine's name: it's Eliza. And that she is, at the start of the book that extremely old-fashioned creature a deb, but becomes very thoroughly modernised very quickly both by her career and the man she falls in love with. And that really is all for now.

Lots more to come though.....

Penny