This year, I’m the Chairperson the Crime Writers Association (the CWA). It’s going to be a busy year, becasue I am also working for Edexcel, developing a new and interestingly innovative course for them. (We know we’re on the right lines, because the Prince of Wales has called it ‘an abomination’). As well as that, I am going to a Forensic Linguistics conference in Lodz in September – I am beginning to think around a character who is a forensic linguist, whose work is to look at the language of a crime and interpet that. I don’t know much about her yet, but I hope to soon.

The big event of the CWA year is the Awards lunch in November. This takes a lot of organisation and planning – there are plenty of people working on it, but any disasters will be my responsibility – so it’s a big deal. I’ll be able to breathe after 8th November – but I am flying to Australia on the 9th – twenty four hours of flying with a two hour break in Hong Kong. I’ll be seeing my niece and nephew for the first time – Joanna will be seven by then, and Nick is three. It seems terrible that I haven’t seen them before, but it’s hard to find the time to make such an extended journey.

I hope to have ‘Strangers’ finished by then. With a bit of luck, it will be with my editor, and then I can come back and get down to the rewrites. There are characters I will be sad to say goodbye to, particularly Damien, and Roisin. Maybe I should do what most crime writers do, and develop a series character. Maybe my forensic linguist would be the person. Watch this space.