Dear Visitor,

Since this is my February newsletter and it's almost not February any more, I have decided to let this one hang around during March as well, and do future ones at the beginning of the month. This is not laziness, honestly - the first one appeared when the website went live on the 20th of November, or thereabouts, which is why subsequent ones appeared at the same time. But it makes more sense to post them up earlier in the month, so that's what I'll be doing.

Anyway - I promised you a photograph of Frankie in his home-made bed, and here he is, waiting to be posted to someone who doesn't force him to live in a very small cardboard box. He's in there as I write - he's in love with it, and I can't take it away from him, even if it is now fur-lined. I have a back-up box waiting in the wings, but he won't give up on this one. He's got it exactly how he wants it - one edge is torn right down and acts as a pillow. And if he wants to stretch, he just sticks his feet through the gap at the corner. I think I'll get one.

Some people think that pets are child-substitutes, but when I think of Frankie - going out whenever he pleases, coming in at all hours, demanding to be fed and then promptly falling asleep - I know that he isn't a child-substitute. He's a husband-substitute.

I got an e-mail from someone in Australia asking if it was OK for people in far-flung places to go in for my quiz competitions, and the answer is yes. Wherever you are on the globe, please do have a go. And I have been inspired to do a quiz about the six populated continents to show just how international I am, so have a look at it. It's not difficult.

So what's been happening? Not a lot. The year is now properly under way, which is how I like it. I'm not fond of beginnings. It's the same with writing - I start at the beginning and work through to the end, exactly as people read it, but I never feel that I'm really getting anywhere until the first couple of chapters are out of the way. Then the characters begin to take on life, and I can see them properly. Of course, that's when any vague plot-line goes out of the window, because the one I had earmarked as the villain assures me that no matter how strapped he was for cash, he would never dream of harming a hair of his wife's head.

I have been known to fight against this, and insist that the character does what I say, but it doesn't work. However, it does mean that at the last minute I have to look at what I've written and work out which of the other people in the novel could have done the dastardly deed. And - spooky though it is - I find that very little needs to be altered to accommodate a new murderer. Throwaway lines turn into clues. Motives become clear. Of course it was him - it had to have been him all along. And even I hadn't realised, so there's a good chance the reader won't guess before the end. I think my novels are actually ghost-written by the characters.

And speaking of ghost writers (seamless, or what?)…I have returned to my first love, and have produced a new poem for you. Well - it's a song, actually, and it's better if you know the tune, but I'm sure you can find the tune elsewhere on the web. With apologies to Stan Jones, who wrote 'Ghost Riders in the Sky', here it is:

A Fleet Street hack, one stormy day,
Was walking down the Strand
Now he's based at Wapping
But towards Ludgate he was bound
When all at once a mighty crowd
Of B-list celebs were there
Posing in the ragged skies
Cavorting in mid-air.

Yippee-aye-ay, yippee-aye-oh,
Ghost soap stars in the sky.

Their Dolce and Gabbana shades
Their Donna Karen capes
Their limos black and shiny
And they're talking into tapes
A bolt of fear shot through him as
He looked up in the sky,
For he saw the writers poundin' hard
And he heard their mournful cry:

Yippee-aye-ay, yippee-aye-oh,
Ghost writers in the sky.

Their faces gaunt, their eyes all blurred,
With booze and cigarettes,
They're trying to meet a deadline,
But they ain't caught it yet,
'cause they've got to pound forever on
Those PCs in the sky,
Their printers snortin' fire; as
They write on, hear their cry:

Yippee-aye-ay, yippee-aye-oh,
Ghost writers in the sky.

The spectres shimmered past him and
He heard one call his name,
'If you want to save your soul from hell
On this ghost Street of Shame,
Then, journo, change your ways today,
Or with us you will write,
For ever, in first person,
Some dodgy soap star's life.'

Yippee-aye-ay, yippee-aye-oh,
Ghost writers in the sky.

Hope you like it! Number thirteen is at the vague plot-line stage, and I am going to have to face the blank screen very soon now, so I hope whatever ghost writers I have floating about in my subconscious come up with a good one.

See you in April.

Love,
Jill

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