I’m back here in Sheepwash Devon at the wonderful writers’ retreat run by Deborah Dooley. This is my third visit here and I was very chuffed to find that Anne Tattersall whom I met here last year is back again too – along with two other lovely people – Nico Vince (star of the movie Hell Raiser and writer of a collection of soon to be published horror stories) and Michellle Pearson (writing a cracking children’s fiction work for the under 12s). We were joined this morning over breakfast by Elise Valmorbida, author of The Book of Happy Endings, who was visiting the Arvon Writing Foundation just down the road. I don’t think I have ever laughed so much so early in the morning.

What’s great about coming here is that Deb does everything, so all you have to think about is writing. All the tasty food is home cooked and she and husband Bob bend over backwards to make life easy for their writing guests. I spent today re-reading what I’ve written so far and added another 2000 words, – so I’m now at almost 45,000 which feels like half way there. Tomorrow, apart from going for a walk (no doubt in the rain) I can just write, write, write.

The other great news this week is that a literary agent, Tina Betts, of Andrew Mann Ltd has agreed to have a go at getting A Greater World published. Hurray! I will be meeting Tina on Tuesday – also an opportunity to update her on progress on the new book, Kurinji Flowers. I want to have a serious crack at getting the first draft completed by then – and it’s so quiet and conducive to writing here that I’m sure that can happen. Deb’s guests seem to have a great success rate (all this clean Devonian country air?) – Anne also got an agent to represent her this week and many other recent guests have had publishing deals.

Time for bed!