Sorry to have been off the radar for a while.  The combination of a writing deadline, lots of book events in the UK and Europe - and the twentieth anniversary of the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction - meant that my desk became a distant memory. It's the modern day curse of all writers, the fact that you find yourself spending more time talking about writing than you do actually, er, writing . . . After a wonderful weekend at the Lavenham Literary Festival, the next week or so brings a few more diary dates - tomorrow, at the Sussex

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After a month of celebrating The Taxidermist's Daughter, October brings a new celebration - the twentieth anniversary of the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction (formerly the Orange Prize). To mark this wonderful milestone, we are running a two week campaign in association with BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour to find the 'Best of the Best' of our last decade. It's a great opportunity to look back at our winners of the past ten years, remember why we loved the novels so much at the time and to introduce a new generation of readers to these exceptional books. Last week, the

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Well, well, well ... what an incredible couple of weeks. Talks, interviews, book signings, television studios, radio broadcasts, the business of having a novel published leads to thousands more new words being spoken, written, shared ... Apart from a sore throat (kidding), I've enjoyed paperback publication enormously. Highlights have been: lovely Eamonn Holmes at Sky Sunrise talking about both The Taxidermist's Daughter and the Agatha Christie story I was commissioned to write by the BBC to commemorate her 125th birthday; a sell-out event in my home town of Chichester in the local library; being filmed for the Richard & Judy

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