More news than I can shake a stick at!

Well.  Since my last blog, loads of things have happened.  Firstly, I appeared on Lemon Aid with the imp that is Keith Lemon (it's still available here for anyone who wishes to see it - just click on K by the magnifying glass to find Keith Lemon and I'm on after the first break on the Michelle Keegan episode).

It was never definite that I was going to be picked out of the audience, and I wasn't allowed to know what they were going to be doing to me.  I just wanted to look taller as I am sick of never being able to see anything when behind tall people.

To my side there in black with the tie on is the friend everyone should have btw - the formidable TRAZ. 

It was Traz who actually noticed that above our heads was a chair.  And yep - when it dropped, I was strapped in and lifted to his Lemon Drop height.

I was up there for 4 1/2 hours of shooting.  And what you didn't see was Keith Lemon throwing water and buckets of popcorn over me (the producer said 'I'd be offered some refreshment' - I thought he meant a sandwich!)  Poor old Traz was more covered in water and popcorn than I was!

Yes it was very high.  And what you also didn't see was Keith and I conversing whilst he was doing his Lemon Drops - and he offering me some designer shoes so I could stay being tall.  Or Russell Watson waving at me...sigh!

  And here they are!  Hot orange, impossible to walk on gold-soled shoes which are now sitting on a shrine in my bedroom and worshipped daily.

Then I moved house!  To the beautiful pile that is Compost Corner.  And it's bliss - light, warm, big, beautiful.  And to add to the family - we have a hamster called Monster whose house is bigger than ours!

I've also been FORCED by my publishers to partake in afternoon tea at the Potting Shed with our lovely competition winner (I use the term very loosely - some duties just don't feel anything like ;)

Then White Wedding was released - which is almost half-price in Amazon at the mo.

It went straight into the best seller list and yesterday I got my first TOP 10 - actually came in at number 7.  There was a bit of fizz popping in our house yesterday. 

And just to complete a very nice run of things - I have been nominated for the MELISSA NATHAN ROM COM AWARD.  I'm going down for a glitzy evening at the Cafe De Paris next month with my friend and fellow stable-mate Jane Costello who is also up for the award...

It would be a lovely award to win - the best actually - because Melissa was a friend of mine for many years but I get a trophy anyway - win or lose - and I've never had one of those before.  AND I get to meet Jo Brand.  AND I'm staying at the Waldorf - so I reckon even if I don't win I'm going to have a pretty good time anyway.

So that's it for a bit.  Just to say that for anyone who is thinking about coming to mine and Victoria Howards writing seminar but just needs a nudge well...

Neither of us got published until we were past 40.

We did it the hard way - no contacts in the  business, just working women with a dream to change our jobs to be professional writers.

We gave it our best shot and made it whilst holding down day jobs and I raised my family - single-handed.

This is the sort of course I would have loved to have gone on when I was a fledgling.  We've designed it so there is plenty of information (and hopefully interest) for anyone who wants to write other books too but needs pointers on discipline and networking.

It's for complete beginners to ask those fundamental questions AND for those a little bit further down the line.

Do come and join us and we promise you a fun, informative, jolly and scone filled afternoon.

Lots of love

Milly xx

What doesn't kill you...

They say truth is stranger than fiction, and trust me - it is.  I've been asked quite a few times to alter a plotline because it's not quite believable or relies too much on coincidence - and yet real life is full of them.

Take yesterday, for instance.  There I was - celebrating the end of a rugby game in Wakefield (I say 'celebrating' - my son's team were hammered!) and by the coffee bar, I spotted one of those faces you just never forget, because it's burned on your brain for all the wrong reasons.  It belongs to the guy on the left in the jeans.  To say I felt a seismic rumble inside me is a slight understatement.  The man in question was the biggest lying work bully I ever had the misfortune to meet.  He was responsible for a lot of misery for a lot of people, drove decent, talented people out of their jobs and nearly caused me to have a nervous breakdown.  In the end the company, who ignored all his hallmarks of bullying eventually got rid of him.  Alas he ended up walking away with a nice pay-off rather than an ignominious boot up the backside, but I do hear that the building breathed a sigh of relief when he left it for the last time.

I confess that I've never ever wanted to draw back my fist and thump someone as much as I did yesterday - for so many of my friends who suffered under his 'regime', for the young designers he publicly humiliated - and for my kids, because he took food out of their mouths.  I stood there, savouring the thought of seeing his jowls judder after a perfectly placed right-hook, of declaring to a room full of people just what a viper was in their midst.

And it would have been a magnificent scene in a book.  We all love those moments in  a story when justice is served out in a big fat portion.  But, for every delicious thought of revenge came twenty quite different ones.  I would know why I was striking out, but all my audience would see is a  short deranged nutter attacking a man standing chatting with a coffee.  And what if I missed and ended up hurtling past him and nutting myself on the wall?  And if I did make contact, nothing surer I'd be arrested. In a book, I would be heralded as a hero, the judge would understand, the press would laud me and the arresting policeman would fall in love with me.  In real life, I wouldn't be able to direct a thing.  There would be no 'literary license' to ensure it all ended happily.  He'd walk off the innocent in all this, smug and possibly with some injury money from my coffers.

So I had to press my nails into my hand and be satisfied with the fact that he spotted me and ran off outside as if his arse was on fire.  At least I am left with my dignity intact, no criminal record and - as nothing is ever wasted when you're a writer - I have the memory of the biggest volcanic eruption inside me to tap into the next time one of my heroines bumps into someone that makes her blood boil.

Because of him I hit rock bottom seven years ago.  But at least when you hit the bottom, you have something to either fall onto or use it to propel yourself up.  I did the latter - which is why I'm just about to launch my seventh book and books three and four have a very true picture of office bullying in them. I was determined that I wouldn't be ground down.  I read somewhere that the best revenge is success - and it is really.  And you can't get ignominiously arrested for it and carted off in front of your children.

Writing is therapy.  We are gods of our created worlds.  Alas not of the real world, but at least us writers have a brilliant ability to wring more out of our life experiences than perhaps any other profession.