Sarah-Kate Lynch

My cousin Matthew and his wife Barbara have been staying this weekend and we're having a blitz, as my mother would say, on words that drive us crazy. I loathe the over use of the word "awesome" because it used to mean something that truly inspired awe and now it's the what someone says if they like your trainers. (more…)

Lisa has posted a comment on my July 16 blog (God bless you, Lisa) suggesting I might have had a fine old time researching The House of Peine or House of Daughters as it is called in the US. She is correct. I had two lengthy trips to the Champagne region of France which is (more…)

This is just a quick check to see if there is anyone out there. In case you didn't realize, writers spend most of the time on their own, staring at a computer. For years this has been a one way street but now that I have worked out how to post comments, it need (more…)

I was lucky enough to talk my husband into coming to see Eclipse, the latest in the Twilight saga, at the weekend. We have quite a good system where I will go to things he wants to see and he will come to things I want to see. What he doesn't realize is that (more…)

I've just finished reading Anna Quindlen's Every Last One. I love her books and this one was no exception although I found that I cried a lot. Not as much as I did at the end of The Leisure Seeker by Michael Zadoorian - that was howling and soaking the pillow territory - but (more…)

The comment posted below Extreme Update is from my friend Corina whom I met while I was researching Dolci di Love. The book is set in a fictional version of Montepulciano, one of the most divine hilltop towns in Tuscany. As I was travelling there on my own, which is not one of my (more…)

Look, here I am again! And I found out about the posts too. Oh yes I'm all technological now, I am. Why I EXPECT BOB GATES WILL oops be sending me a letter any day now asking me to join his team of top, um, technological, ah, people in white coats with pocket protectors.

Anyway, on the subject of the book I have just finished, it is to be called Dolci di Love. What do you think?

Naming books is a funny old business. House of Daughters was originally The House of Peine in New Zealand but my UK publishers thought that sounded like a horror story. My argument was that they could look at the cover and read the blurb and pretty quickly find out that it wasn't but my argument didn't count for much so they changed it to House of Joie which was at least French but then at the last minute they thought no one would understand Joie so changed it to Joy.

Personally, I thought House of Joy sounded like the name Tony Soprano would have chosen if Ba-Da-Bing was already taken but there you have it.

My US publishers thought House of Joy as deeply uninspiring as I did and so we came up with House of Daughters, which I actually loved and wish I had thought of in the first place.

With my new book, my original idea was to call it Dolci for the Down at Heart although that was a bit of a mouthful so my agent Stephanie came up with Dolci di Love.

Gosh, I'm plum tuckered out after all this update. I had better go and get some rest in case Bill Bates's letter arrives and I have to iron my white coat and polish my pocket protector.

I have just discovered that far from being the Nelly No Friends I thought I was, there have been comments posted about my blogs but I didn't find them. I have now! But I don't know how to approve them! Do you see why I don't get Facebook? Or the microwave? I am behind the times but will remedy this because it's quite exciting especially as so far no one has said anything nasty.

I would feel a lot worse about not having posted anything in nearly a month if anything had happened in said month, which it hasn't. This is why I don't get Facebook. I would have to be making up so many things to make regular updates that I wouldn't have time to do anything else anyway, even if there was something to do, which there clearly isn't. Surely all the more reason to not be saying anything about it.

Anyway, I do have some news today which is that I have finished my book, Dolci di Love, and it is now in the hands of my publishers in New York. It'll come out in the States next summer and elsewhere - well, that has yet to be decided.

It's been a long time coming but I think it's turned out pretty well although it's also hard to know at this stage because I have read it so many times I'm probably not the best person to judge. I look forward to not seeing it for a while and then relying on my poor memory to forget most of it and be pleasantly surprised when I come to read it again. "Oh, so that's what happens!"

By the way, thanks to all the lovely people who have sent me such fantastic emails, mostly about House of Daughters. You would not believe what a difference hearing from you makes on days when I am up to my eyeballs in things going the wrong way in the book I am working on. It can be easy as you sit hidden away in a dark room with only your computer and the gentle snores of the pet pooch for company to forget that there are people out there who like what you do and who hope you keep doing it. Some days these emails are all that's between me and a new career slinging burgers, and I don't even eat burgers. So thank you. Really. Thank you.

Well, absolutely nothing has happened since yesterday although I have been hard at work on my new novel, Dolci di Love, otherwise known as As Yet Untitled. As the word "dolci" might suggest, it's about sweet things in Italy, with a bit of love (and heartbreak thrown in). I thought I had finished it earlier this year but it turns out I was wrong, so now I am due to really finish it this time by the end of the month and then it will come out in the US this time next year.

The good thing about it is that the dolci in question is a type of biscotti so whenever I get sick of sitting at my computer (not just a bit sick of it, I have to be really sick of it) I jump up and make biscotti and still consider that this is "work". I am experimenting with recipes but have rather stupidly not written anything down so I can't remember what I did differently last time. All I know is that sugar is good. And if you add flour and eggs and chocolate and dried cranberries and bake it twice, it is even better.