Catching Up with 2023

This year so far has been one which neither my partner nor I will forget in a hurry, after he had to spend six weeks in a hospital seventy miles away from where we live. I wasn’t planning on doing so much travelling in deepest February and March, and the persistent cold of this year didn’t make anything any easier.

However, nothing, fortunately, lasts for ever and we are now back in base and looking forward to spring and summer on the sunny Devon coast – well, sunny for some of the time, anyway! My new book, ‘Diamond Val’, now has a scheduled publication date of May 28th and as we approach the day, details about it will start to appear on the site and it will begin to be available on various booksellers’ sites. ‘Diamond Val’ is the tale of how an able and successful businesswoman struggles to keep the business set up by her and her husband not only flourishing, but functioning in the humane way that was originally envisaged before her husband’s death and the concerted attempts by some members of the senior management to take control.

‘Diamond Val’ will be my fourth novel and my eleventh published book. As the year progresses, I will once again be entering a few fiction competitions, partly to try and give some extra publicity to the book and partly because I enjoy the challenge of them. There has already been one success, but the competition is not completely finished yet, so I will not mention it until all the formalities are over. 2023 got off to a problematic start, but things are already developing more interestingly and it might yet be a year to remember for a few more constructive reasons.