Life at Mulberry Cottage continues to make me smile and, this week, it was super smiles as we bought our first Christmas tree and decorated it with all the pretty gold, purple and pink decorations I’ve been collecting over the past few weeks and it looks lovely!  I can’t wait to show it off at the little party we’re throwing next week.

On the writing front, I’ve been scribbling down my thoughts about moving to the countryside and I hope to publish Escape to Mulberry Cottage some time next year so you can read all about it then.  And exciting news for my Jane Austen addicts’ trilogy – it’s going to be published in Russia!  I’m so thrilled and can’t wait to see my first book in Russian!

I can’t tell you how much fun it was to write this trilogy and it means the world to me to see them doing so well especially this week as it is 200 years since Jane Austen’s first book was published.  Happy Birthday, Sense and Sensibility!

The book is set in beautiful Lyme Regis and you can see some of the photos of the settings here.  And there have already been some lovely reviews for the book – check out the gorgeous quotes.

It’s really touching that London has decided to help me celebrate by putting flags out everywhere!

Oh, all right!  Perhaps the flags have something to do with a certain royal wedding this week!  Anyway, if you haven’t already overdosed on romance with all this talk of weddings, stick your nose in my new book!

There is a competition for UK readers to win a signed copy here.

I’m so looking forward to 2011.  It’s a very special year for Jane Austen fans as it’s 200 years since her first publication – Sense and Sensibility – and I’ll be doing my bit to celebrate this.  In June, I’ll be speaking at the Worcester Literary Festival and, in July, I’ll be giving a talk at Jane Austen’s House Museum in Chawton.

I’ll also be kept busy with publications.  The Perfect Hero comes out at the end of April in the UK.  It’s my second novel about Jane Austen addicts and is set in Lyme Regis.  This will also be the first year that I’ll be published in the US with A Weekend with Mr Darcy coming out in July and Dreaming of Mr Darcy (the US title for The Perfect Hero) coming out in October.  Very exciting!

And, on the home front, we should be rescuing our ex-battery chickens soon.  They should be arriving any day now …

Oh, and a house move is on the horizon too.  At long last, we are swapping the London suburbs for a more rural setting: beautiful Wiltshire!

The first in the series,  A Weekend with Mr Darcy, came out in the UK in September but I’ve just been sent through the line edits from my US publisher so I’m going through it again for them for publication in late 2011.  The second, which is coming out in the spring in the UK, is now going to be called The Perfect Hero and I’ve just finished all the edits on that.  Meanwhile, I’ve just begun writing the third, Mr Darcy Forever.  I’m about 20,000 words into that and it’s proving great fun although I’m writing it totally out of sequence!

So there you go – three books at once!  Oh, and I’ve just written a synopsis for a totally unrelated project too!

The Jane Austen House Museum features in a couple of chapters in my book and I’ve had many happy trips to the village whilst researching my story.  Here I am in the beautiful garden with my book.

After a visit to an art exhibition and a very late lunch with family, we went on to Cobham Heath where Molly had a well-deserved walk.  The light was glorious on the green and golden bracken and we spotted loads of toadstools including the wonderful fly agaric which I always call the Disney Toadstool!  Aren’t they amazing?

Wednesday night was launch night for my dear friend, Christina Courtenay, who’s book, Trade Winds, is out now.  Here I am with Pia and some other writer pals.

Thursday was my blog day at Austen Authors which was enormous fun.  It was lovely to connect to so many writers and readers who are all as obsessed with Jane Austen as I am!

Friday meant another trip to Bath as my husband had four beautiful paintings in an exhibition – one of which was ‘highly commended’.  I also had reason to celebrate myself on Friday as A Weekend with Mr Darcy was in the Heatseeker’s chart at number 10!

I also got down to my rewrites on Friday for Dreaming of Mr Darcy – the second book in my Austen addicts trilogy which is to be published in the summer.  And then Saturday was a lovely day out on the south coast where we went chicken-shopping (I’m now the proud owner of some very fine galvanised feeders!) and painting and walking (Roy painted whilst Molly and I walked).

Next week looks a little quieter but there’s another book launch to look forward to.  Now, I really must get back to those rewrites …

The writing has been going well too and I’ve just finished the second book in my Austen addicts trilogy, Dreaming of Mr Darcy.  This is the one set in lovely Lyme Regis and I had so much fun researching it.  The next one, Mr Darcy Forever, will be set in Bath and I’m looking forward to spending a few days there next month when the Jane Austen Festival is in full swing.

And the big news is that we’ll be welcoming home some feathered friends in the autumn.  We’re rehoming some ex-battery hens via the amazing  British Hen Welfare Trust.  I’ve been wanting to keep chickens for ages and can’t wait to welcome them to our little patch of suburbia.  It’ll be like a scene from The Good Life here!

My novel centres around a new film production of Jane Austen’s Persuasion and it was fun to explore the settings of previous film adaptations.  Here I am on the very steps that Austen’s characters would have descended as well as the lovely Rupert Penry-Jones who played Captain Wentworth in the most recent adaptation.

Lyme is rich in literary history and, if you want to find out more, book yourself on a tour with the wonderful Literary Lyme.

It was a real treat to be able to walk along the Undercliff each morning and to follow the River Lim to Uplyme.  The bluebells were just beginning to open and there were primroses and violets along the paths and – everywhere – the incredible smell of wild garlic.

One of my favourite places to walk is Stonebarrow.  The sheltered footpaths above the sea always remind me of a Rosamunde Pilcher novel.

Here I am at Stonebarrow with my trusty copy of Persuasion.  Alas, I didn’t meet any Captain Wentworths in Dorset but I had plenty to write about my own wonderful heroes.

And I even managed to do some writing on the beach at Charmouth.  It’s always great to write in situ but it was absolutely freezing.  I really did suffer for my art that afternoon!  Still, I got my scene.

And no trip to West Dorset would be complete without a visit to the Donkey Sanctuary where you can get up close and personal to the residents!  I dropped by their wonderful shop to let them know that the sanctuary has a special place in my romantic comedy Molly’s Millions. 

Here’s me with the gorgeous Little Pippa.

There was, however, one distraction with being based in Lyme and that was the proximity of some very nice shops!  Book shops, boutiques and bakers were a particular weakness and one boutique I fell in love with was Frills which is definitely worth a visit if you want to find something a bit special and – if you go – look out for my books as they’re going to stock some lovely holiday reads soon!

If you’d like to see some of my hubby’s beautiful paintings from the trip, visit his blog here.  I love those lasers!

The research has been so much fun.  As well as reading all of Jane Austen’s wonderful novels, I’ve been watching all the TV and film adaptaions again and visiting Chawton, Winchester and Bath.  And I’m really excited about the week in Lyme Regis we’ve booked where we’ve got an apartment overlooking the Cobb.  Sometimes, writing is so much fun, it couldn’t possibly be considered work!