This week I am mostly …

• Thinking up titles for book 2. The problem with Threads being so short and perfect, with just the right double meanings, is that it’s almost impossible to repeat the process for book 2. There’s a fab title in the wings for book 3, but that doesn’t help right now. I’m emailing the Chicken House people daily with ideas. They’re being very nice about it …
• Wondering how Katie Price can do this to her kids when it is PERFECTLY OBVIOUS that Peter Andre is the best man she’s ever going to meet and she’s lucky to have him. Is she doing this purely for the publicity? Well, she might be, but I can’t imagine he is THAT cold-heartedly calculating. Is he? Sigh.
• Trying not to make book 2 feel like too much of a travelogue. Feeling torn between working on research (travel, fashion … it could be worse) and working on the characters. In book 1, I tried to make sure that every single line counted. They never did anything just because I had a spare sentence hanging around. I feel the pruning shears coming out.
• Trying to ignore my garden, which has become twice its size in the last fortnight, and needs as much pruning as the book. But isn’t going to get it.
• Re-reading my favourite bits of June Vogue. Not the body bits, which (sorry, Alex Shulman) I don’t find that interesting. But the ‘how to make a couture-looking jacket out of a thirty quid piece from Next, tea-dyed (sic) and fluffed up with a lace collar’ bits. Wow wow wow.
• Telling myself not to buy the sexiest cushion (yes, they really exist) I’ve ever seen with some of the proceeds from the German sale of book 1, which I probably won’t see for a year anyway.
• Choosing carpets.
• Choosing wallpaper.
• Choosing bathroom flooring.
• Trying to cuddle my sons more and refrain from thinking about plot complications and title issues for book 2 while doing so.
• Trying to cuddle my husband more. Ditto.
• Wondering how I get in to the St Martins degree shows in the summer. I guess you just turn up.
• Being VERY ANGRY that Jerry Hall has lost her autobiography contract because she won’t kiss and tell enough about Mick. It’s not even her kissing they want, but other people’s kissing and the ‘devastating effect’ it had on her. Can’t you just be a phenomenally successful model, mother of four, actress, all-round interesting person and ex-wife of a rock star and write about that? Is that not enough for today’s readers? Do you have to include stuff you probably don’t share with most of your close friends, because you’re too nice and decent? WHAT WERE THEY THINKING? I’ll buy the book, Jerry, promise, and the nicer it is, the more true to your character it will be and the more I’ll like it. Mick can wash his own dirty linen in public if he wants to.
• Starting to book tickets for various plays we Really Ought To Go To, and feeling too tired, after all the writing and carpet-choosing and cuddling, to imagine actually going out. Why do I live in London? Oh yes, so I know I can go, if I want to. Another day.
• Watching Wings, by Aprilynne Pike (thanks, Justine) wing its way up the NYT bestseller charts. That woman is doing some PUBLICITY. She has now set the standard for what a debut teen book can do. Too scary. Can’t compete. Still happy with my 3 books on a bookshelf (public one, not my own) in September. However, if anyone wants me to do a reading …