This week, the London Book Fair opened at Olympia and I was there on the first day. For the past few years, the fair has been held at Earl’s Court, but the very first book fair I ever attended – all the way back in 2001 – was at Olympia so it was great to be back at this fabulous venue although the great glass roof acted like a massive greenhouse on the hottest day of the year so far! A few years ago, the fair wasn’t a great place for an author to visit unless you had arranged to meet a publisher or agent, but now there are lots of interesting talks and panels and I managed to catch the end of a talk by writer Deborah Moggach.

In fact, authors are so welcome at the fair these days that we have our very own HQ!

But the main reason I visited was to meet my new editor at Amazon Publishing and I took a very special ‘limited edition’ box of chocolates in for the team to thank them for all their hard work on my new book, The Rose Girls, which comes out in a few weeks.

I was especially excited to meet team members who’d flown in from Luxembourg and Seattle to attend the fair. It made my little trip in from rural Suffolk seem very tame.

Of course, no author goes to the book fair without catching up with a few author pals and here I am with fellow Amazon Publishing authors Mel Sherratt and Freda Lightfoot beside a fabulous poster of Mel.

It was then on to a lovely pub in Notting Hill for Amazon’s author party where I met thriller writers Mark Edwards and Casey Kelleher, and chatted to my wonderful pals from Notting Hill Press, Matt Dunn and Talli Roland.

Now, it’s back to the keyboard and Chapter 4 of the new novel …