One of the greatest pleasures of the writer's life is meeting other authors. It is fascinating to chat about this and that - how the imagination finds its way, how vague ideas become substantial ones; as Auden said - how 'relevant thoughts occur' and not 'lip-smacking imps of mawk and hooey'.

I was delighted to read Danielle Trussoni's book Falling through the Earth on a plane the other day - I am still in the midst of publicity tours for the paperback release in the UK and many hardback launches of Sepulchre - and really enjoyed it. It reminded me a little of the beautiful poised style of another writer I know, Jason Goodwin, although in quite another area of writing. Danielle's book is a memoir while Jason's recent work is detective fiction. That said, he has also written extensively in history and travel, so perhaps that's a good training ...

Anyway, Danielle and I met at a writing festival in Sozopol in Bulgaria on the beautiful Black Sea coast. Now how did that come to pass? More anon ...

A bientôt

Kate