Go see Anna.

I’m helping Kate Walker celebrate her 50th book by joining the party on her blog.

Visit to congratulate Kate, read her excellent guest blogs and for a chance to win lots of goodies (including my All Work and No Play…)!

Phillipa won for Decent Exposure! Go to her blog and congratulate her!

Tessa Radley is celebrating the release of her first novel with Silhouette Desire, Black Widow Bride, by having a blog party with lots and lots of guests and lots and lots of chances to win books and other stuff.

I’m up there today, here, but check out all the authors writing on the topic of new things and change, by visiting her blog.

I’m going away tomorrow until Tuesday, to visit Anna in the Lake District.

I am going to force her to read my book and play with my baby.

It’s incredible what you have to pack when you’ve got a small baby. Pushchair, baby carrier, baby bath, changing mat, bouncy chair, blankets, towels, nappies, moses basket, various emollients, about a ton of clothes as he poops and drools constantly. His equipment weighs at least ten times as much as he does.

I’m leaving my husband at home and he’s going to have a great time in an empty house, playing his guitar and going out and watching as much football and making as much noise as he pleases. (I bet he misses us though….especially as I’m taking his laptop with me.)

Have a great holiday weekend everyone and I’ll catch you when I get back.

Paranormal romance writers Kathy Love and Erin McCarthy have done something cool…

They’ve got a vampire band!

Both Erin and Kathy are writing books about members of the band. They’ve set up this excellent website about it, too, with blogs from members of the band. It’s interesting to see what an undead musician thinks about life…

The whole thing is lots of fun so go check out The Impalers!

It is always very satisfying when a friend sells their first book.

It is even more satisfying when that friend is your critique partner and an AWESOME writer. Even more so, when the book is the book she has loved for years and years. And trebly more so, when you were the one who nagged her until she revised the book she had loved for years and years and submitted it to publishers.

All of that has just happened to Anna Lucia. And I feel quite extraordinarily smug. So go visit her, here.

I’m guest blogging over at Kris Starr’s blog today. She foolishly let a bunch of us run rampant on her blog while she’s away.

Here are some photos I couldn’t post on her blog…

Kris Starr with Labatt’s (Lisa Cochrane and Michelle Willingham in background)

Kris Starr doing a wine-fuelled chair dance (I think she was still wearing her skirt at this point)

It’s about time I properly thanked the kind readers who responded to my two posts below about being stuck in the airport and about finding out we’re having a baby boy. I could do it in the comments section, but I love posting these lists of friends because they are really the best people.

So: Thank you Jenna Richard, Lis, Anna Adams, Lori, Wanda, Michelle Styles, Ray-Anne, Liz Fielding, Jessica Raymond, Anna Lucia, Kris Starr, Margaret McDonagh, Jenny Haddon, Kate Walker, and Saskia Walker for your sympathy and good wishes for me and the baby while we were stuck at the airport.

Thank you Michelle Styles, Dee Tenorio, Karen, Jessica, Rosie, Sela Carson, Mags, Chris M, Nell Dixon, Kris, Jenna R, JM, April, Liz, Sahndre, Julie Day, Anna A, Amanda Ashby, Anna, Sue/MsCreativity, Lynette Rees, Cat Marsters, Jude, and Lis, for your congratulations on our little boy.

Wanda, JM, Lynette, Cat and Chris M, welcome to the blog if I haven’t welcomed you before.

Jenna, while I love the name “Cillian” for a baby, I think my husband will be a little bit suspicious if I call our son after one of my celebrity crushes. Though I think I’ll be trying to get the name “Owen” past him. Heh heh heh.

(And no, he wouldn’t be named Owen Cohen. “Cohen” is my maiden name. I am not that cruel.)

JM, I do not yet know Hugh Dancy. Must check that one out. Especially as my next hero is named Hugh.

Sue/MsCreativity, I am SO glad you enjoyed DELICIOUS. You said: LOVE Elisabeth and Angus, and I also love the way you made every secondary character count too. (How did you manage that without having them take over the book?!) I don’t suppose there’s a future story for Jo brewing?

If you check out this blog post about Delicious, you’ll see how I designed the secondary characters to be echoes of the hero and heroine. Even the chickens.

And yes, Jo’s story is coming out in October. (Jo is the heroine’s best friend in Delicious.) It’s called MARRIED IN A RUSH and you can read more about it here and order it here!

And speaking of friends and books, Sela Carson has a book out this week at Samhain, a sexy, funny paranormal novella called Not Quite Dead. Check it out!

Coincidentally, my husband is also in France, in Paris, with work. This is also unfair but as he doesn’t like my posting pictures of him on my blog I won’t try to find one of him looking bored and constrained by clothing. He tells me he tried snails today for the first time. Lucky him.

Meanwhile, I’m still in Reading.

I wrote this morning and then spent the afternoon doing laundry and reading Arthur and George by Julian Barnes. I’m enjoying the book thoroughly; it’s a novel based on the life of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and one particular incident where he sought to clear the name of a wrongly-accused man. It hits on several of my (obsessive) interests: Doyle (the creator of Sherlock Holmes), Victorian England, and 19th-century spiritualism. Originally I had quite a bit of stuff about the history of spiritualism in my novel Spirit Willing, Flesh Weak, but I had to cut it for the sake of pacing, and I’m wondering, inspired by Barnes, if I could use it in another, wholly different type of story. The wheels are turning, though when I’d have time to write that book, I have no idea.

Then I went to see The Da Vinci Code which was pretty much the stupidest story I’d ever seen in my life but I went with a good friend (who assures me the book is much better) and the company more than made up for the film’s deficits.

Today is Kate Walker’s birthday. Kate is a Queen of Harlequin Presents/M&B Modern, and a dear, dear friend of mine. Go to her blog and wish her a happy birthday!

Today is Anna’s birthday.

Whether you know her or not (and if you don’t, you should), go to her blog and wish her a happy day!