And so there comes a time in every writer’s life when she must stop googling, twittering, face booking, emailing, writing the odd sentence and actually promote the book. My lovely PR people, Midas [midaspr.co.uk] have set up a number of radio interviews for me to talk about Valentine. On the one hand I am of course thinking hurrah! The more people know about my book, the more people might actually read it which is sort of what you want, but on the other is the fear of sitting in front of the microphone and going completely blank and mute or else babbling. As a former radio producer I should know all about radio, but actually I have never been interviewed. I have always been the other side of the glass partition, producing the interview and quite often thinking get on with it as the guest went off on one!  So I did what I usually do, which is panic, and witter around for a while before taking decisive action and booking someone to do a session of media training with me. The someone was Ian Peacock, who I used to work with back in the radio day and who now runs his own media training company [talkconsultancy.com] Ian was brilliant at getting me to think about what I wanted to say and how I wanted to say it and did a number of as live interviews with me.  He also said it was fine to gesticulate and move around during the interview – anything to make you feel more relaxed. And I do love a bit of gesticulation when I talk.

I can’t find a picture of me gesticulating in the present but here is one I made earlier – in fact when I was 18, love the earrings, shame about the eyebrows, still at least they have not been plucked into oblivion. And the hair – a product of henna-  which if I recall was a bit like sitting with a giant cowpat on your head for the best part of six hours only to end up with a hair that had only slightly changed colour but had a v healthy shine, if one could only ignore the odour…Anyway I have just done my first two interviews one for my local station – BBC Surrey and Sussex, with the very friendly Allison Ferns and one for MANX Radio and the equally friendly Bob Harrison. Now I have about six more to go….

I was v pleased with the reviews of Valentine on Amazon. It is so lovely when you know someone has liked your book and has got the humour, and as I read them I was saying ‘That’s so exciting!’ when Twin One burst my bubble and said, ‘That’s not exciting, swimming under water is exciting.’ Ah well…Children can be so cruel,  I said nothing and ate their stash of Oreos…Twin one is on the right and yes in their world it is normal to wear swim wear as day wear….

Hi, just a quick one to let you know that I will be talking about Valentine on Thursday 23rd July at half past six at Borders in Brighton.

As I am now heavily into writing Carmen, my second novel, I will have to re-read Valentine to make sure I don’t start talking about Carmen instead! Of course I am already panicking about all the important questions like what to wear…..shallowness, thy name is Rebecca, or indeed BeccaFarnworth as it has to be on my new twitter account. Becca I can live with but I will not tolerate a Becky..not ever…

I am thinking I probably will go for my red dress, as pictured. My friend Claire took this when we were messing about and experimenting with poses for a newspaper article and told me I looked good on the stairs! I feel it might be to do with the flattering angle…On the subject of the red dress, I was rather disconcerted the other night when I saw that the former tennis player Tracy Austin was wearing the same dress on TV. Not at all sure what I think of that…And just seeing her again brought up my whole teeth fixation [only people of a certain age will get what I mean, as Tracy wore fierce braces as a teenager] which I share with my character Lauren. I never wore a brace as a child, and should have. I have even gone as far as seeing an orthodonist and having all the x rays done to wear train tracks, only to back track at the cost…

Anyway if you’re in Brighton do come to Borders.  My friend Alison is already teasing me that it will be like that episode in Sex and The City when Carrie goes to San Francisco to give a talk [really to see Big] and the guests are only interested in the dog, Mr Winkle who is  following her…

Russell back in the day.

Last week I saw the film, State of Play, which I was a bit dubious about as I had so enjoyed the TV version and also because it has Russell Crowe in it and he arouses strong feelings in me. I can admit to a major crush on him when he was in Gladiator and LA Confidential and pretty much anything before he porked up. But it is painful for me to see the transformation. So, State of Play starts with Russell driving in his car and looking like, well, a trucker! He has long hair, chubby cheeks and he is eating some kind of horrible snack that looks like it could be wotsits. I am forced to console myself with Cherry Garcia, thinking that by the time the film finishes I will have porked up as much as Russell. But as the film develops something happens – almost imperceptibly a bit of the old magic comes back and I’m back to loving him for being, so well, MANLY! And I now I see that he is getting buff for Robin Hood, so I can look forward to that confident that there will be no wotsits or hamster cheeks.

As a writer I tend to use actors or models as the basis for many of my heroes. My son was appalled when I had the American actor Paul Walker [Into the Blue, The Fast and the Furious] as my screen saver, as he was the inspiration for the hero in one of the novels I’ve ghostwritten. Son then got his revenge by then making my login icon a dog [which I still can’t work out how to change]. But apart from outraging minors, the leading man thing does have unforseen consequences. Josh Harnett was the basis for Jack in Valentine, well bits of him anyway, and so to get him in my head I ended up getting out lots of Josh Harnett movies from LoveFilm, without really bothering to check what they were about. Which is why I found myself watching his vampire film, 30 Days of Nights. Husband, half way through, ‘Why are we watching this?’ ‘ Oh it was recommended, I say breezily, not wanting to admit that I needed to ogle Josh, who let me down badly by wearing an enormous puffer jacket throughout. I know it was minus 20 but really! Then there was my emotionally shattering Mark Ruffalo experience [the only man who can look sexy in a moustache if you ask me]. I decided he was good leading man to have in my head, did the usual mass order from Lovefilm. And so it was that I ended up watching My Life Without Me – yes, I know the clue was in the title – a heart wrenching film about a young mother with two young daughters who is diagnosed with cancer and has just two months to live and decides as well as recording messages for her daughters’ birthdays [are you crying yet?] she will do ten things she has never done before, including sleep with a stranger. So yes, she gets to sleep with the lovely Mark’s character, but it was just the once and nothing could make up for the rest of the film which traumatised me for days. It was a lesson. Now I always the check the plot of films I’m about to order…

Don’t know why I’m smiling, I can’t walk in these shoes!

Last week I took delivery of my advance copies of Valentine and have been sending them out to friends. It’s quite something to see the novel that was in your head for so long venturing forth into the world all on its own. I want to say chin up, look after yourself. Don’t let those other books bully you! Valentine has a bold cover which I think is good and I love, love, love those red shoes. My editor let me choose them for the cover shoot. They are shoes I could never in a million years wear. Victoria Beckham is reported to have said that she can’t think in flats. I am the polar opposite, I can’t think in heels, or rather I can but I am only thinking one thought – these shoes are killing me, when can I take them off? Which makes for limited conversation. It was not always so. But tragically some four years ago I was in a well known DIY store looking at kitchen floor tiles and resenting the whole activity, would much rather have been somewhere like Fired Earth sourcing lovely terracotta, when a whole stack of stone tiles fell on my big toe! I’m not sure if it was broken as a result but truly it was never the same again. My heel wearing days were O.V.E.R. And I have borne a grudge against my kitchen floor ever since. But every now and then a pair of heels seduces me and I give in to their siren call, wear them once, have to change into pumps within the hour and they stay in my room, testimony to a lost time. But in honour of Valentine’s publication I have purchased a pair of red suede wedges. A wedge is much easier on the toe than a stiletto heel – I’ll let you know how long I manage to wear them.

Hurrah! I got through the Easter break without mainlining on chocolate or stealing children’s eggs, so feel quite virtuous. Actually chocolate doesn’t do it for me anymore – I’m definitely more of a savoury than a sweet. Besides I get enough extra calories from my great love/ indulgence/life support machine – or wine as most people refer to it. I had a truely mortifying moment recently, when I was learning how to up load material onto this blog and the lovely person who set it up for me, told me just to type in anything in the subject box to see if it works. Other people might have written something clever, pertinent or witty, a quote perhaps from their favourite book, a line of poetry, or maybe they might even have whipped up a quick haiku. I wrote wine. In my defence it was nearly 7 pm and I had a glass of Prosecco fizzing cheekily away in front of me. When I later googled to check the blog was there, to my horror half way down the list of links with my name came Rebecca Farnworth wine! I mean, I wouldn’t mind but I have really cut down lately. And why? Was it reading all those articles about women of a certain age, drinking way over the limit each week? Alas it was not, even though I do so hate to be a cliché. It was my 21 year old personal trainer [ha ha that makes me sound like an uber yummy mummy and I’m so not] who said that I would be cheating myself and him if I didn’t cut down. Readers, I was ashamed to be put on the spot by a youngster. I stopped drinking wine in the week and only allowed myself alcohol at the weekend. At the end of the first week when I had my first sip of Sauvingnon Blanc it was like that scene in Trainspotting when Ewan Mcgregor’s character shoots up and Perfect Day plays… Alas, I have slipped since, but console myself with the thought that at least wine is legal…