Last weekend saw my nan's 90th birthday, and I wanted to post a few photos I took of some old photos my mum dug out for the occasion, which show my nan as a young girl back in the 1930s and 1940s. The family got together in my home town to celebrate the occasion and it was lovely to see everyone gathered in one place, which is something quite rare these days. When I was growing up, my nan's house, which was then my great-grandparent's house, was the hub of the family, shared by my great-grandfather and great-grandmother, my great-aunt and great-uncle and my nan pictured here. I wonder now how they all managed as other family members also lived in the same small Victorian terraced house with them at some point, but that was before I was born. Imagine the scene from Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with Grandpa Joe and you'll have a pretty good idea of what it must have been like. I look back on so many happy times spent 'down nan's' with great fondness, and a degree of sadness that all things must inevitably change. My nan still lives there, although by herself now since her mother, my great-grandmother passed away, which was at the grand old age of 101. Longevity certainly seems to run in the maternal side of my family!
Click Sargent charity fundraiser update.
The date has been set for the 10-day 'Get in Character' eBay auction, where authors are helping to raise funds for this very worthy charity, and winning bidders get to have their name, or the name of a loved one, immortalised in the author's next book. The auction starts at 8pm on Thursday 26 February, and I'll be posting a special blog soon with more information and links when the auction goes live. I hope you'll drop by and make a bid. In the meantime, here's a LINK to the CLIC Sargent website where you can find out more, and see the list of all the authors taking part, which includes Lee Child, Jodi Picoult, Peter James, Jojo Moyes, and Andy McNab, to name just a few.
Book news.
Readership of my series has been growing at a very good rate so far this year, thanks in no small part to the recent promotion of To the Grave and now for The Last Queen of England, which has been in the UK Kindle Top 100 since the promotion began at the start of the month. It's both encouraging and gratifying to see such interest in my work. The Last Queen of England is currently at No.65, and is still on sale for £1 until 28 February. Thanks to everyone who has bought a copy and helped to keep it there.
On the writing side of things, my next book, the 5th Jefferson Tayte Genealogical Mystery is coming along nicely. I've just passed 30,000 words, so I'm almost a third of the way there now, and the past narrative is only about three weeks or so from completion. I'm going to send a sample to my editor once that section is written, and I'll be keeping my fingers crossed that she likes it. Then I can reacquaint myself with Jefferson Tayte as I work on his part of the story, which I'm really looking forward to. As always, I can't wait to tell you what it's all about.
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