Christmas!

Forgot to take pastry out of the freezer - nope, don't make my own - and now my annual mince pie production line has hit a hiccup. It will hit an even bigger hiccup tomorrow. A gulp in fact, involving a very greedy novelist and three small children. Will the mince pies survive until Christmas day? The jury's out.

At least the Christmas tree is up and, unlike last year, is not leaning like a drunk journalist at a Christmas office party. It's a beautiful tree, perfectly proportioned with just the right number of branches, like something from Harrods' shop window. In respect of its natural attributes I've restrained myself this year to a colour palette - how I love writing that line, Kelly Hoppen eat your heart out - of gold, white and red, rather than the usual exploding truckload of camp clashing shiny things. And, hell, it works! Less really is more!

I will remind myself of this fact as I reach for the last mince pie.

Have a wonderful Christmas!


Polly xxx

Shiny new jackets

OK, it looked handsome in the flattering bar-style lighting of the Oxford Circus Topshop changing room. I thought it was the one. But I have a feeling that despite initial attraction across a crowded shop floor my new blue jacket and I are incompatible. Something's just not right. We want different things. My jacket wants to itch my neck when I walk in a needy never-forget-you're-wearing-me kind of way. And I want to accidentally lose it but feel too guilty to just dump heartlessly, especially considering it cost me 75 quid. Also, have lost receipt, as you do for all things that you want to return but somehow, inexplicably, never do for things you want to keep - those receipts can hang around in the back of a purse for decades. Anyway, looks like me and the blue jacket are stuck with each other. As long as it doesn't expect fidelity.

The other far more exciting jacket in my life is the jacket of my spanking new reading proof of How To Be Married, my new novel coming out in March. I will get a pic of it up as soon I work out how.

And for those of you interested in such things...the drain is unblocked. But not forgotten.

Best,
Pollyxxx

when the kitchen starts repeating on me

It's rebelled. It's had enough of my smuggery. Enough of the endless late night half-pissed discussions about curtains - blinds, too clinical, no? - and gratuitous lunch invites just to show off. Yep, the fabulous new kitchen has stopped working, or more precisely, the drains to which kitchen is attached have blocked and are swilling up beneath the house like a goo monster from a B movie. It's been doing this for weeks turns out, only we put it down to a dead mouse or some such urbanite decomposing beneath the floorboards, as they do. (Then the stench got worse and worse.) Builders come, shrug and scratch their heads.

So we are awaiting a wire worm - no, no idea either - and a man with long, very long, gloves and an iron constitution.

Ooops...


In the meantime, you may notice some changes to the website because my brother's been tinkering with it and it now does swanky things I don't understand. (And if you're reading this on the website - so complicated, sigh - visit my blog spot too, where you can sign up to my feed. Look up. To the right. Yes, it's that B button...)

Thanks for visiting!

Polly xxx

I Heart Autumn

Love autumn. Love the crunchy orange leaves. Love the cashmerey things in the shops. Love the fact I don't have to expose toes for another few months. And really looking forward to day - four? five years away? - when husband and I can leave all the kids and visit New England for romantic autumn break. Realise that me and husband met seven years ago this September. Gone in a flash of three kids, four novels and two house moves. We didn't hang about!

Novels and sledgehammers

Blimey, there goes the kitchen wall! Forget concertina doors, there is now absolutely nothing between us and the back garden.

Ah, building works. As our old kitchen had begun to gang up on us, the broken tiles cutting the children's toes, the kitchen doors goadingly hanging off their hinges, there was nothing for it but to replace the damn thing. And I have spent the summer discovering that, yes, I AM the kind of woman who can get excited by a tap! I care, really care, what shade of grey my grouting will be. It's a whole new world of consumer obsession. Forget handbags, let's talk door handles.

Still, the novelty of trying to write while two Polish guys smash our house to bits is admittedly beginning to wear off. The day when 'the works' will actually be finished, much like my novel, seems so far off as to be kind of unimaginable.

I want to write The End beneath them both.

Hope you're having a brilliant summer!

Yup, hot now

Ok, take it all back. The heatwave IS here! Marvellous. Have brown toes. They look so much prettier in flip flops. Even have a reassuring strip of pink on neck, not good for the old wrinkles I know, but still, oddly satisfying. And justification to eat buckets of ginger ice cream... (Jude's is the best, no?)

With unfortunate synchronicity, have to go back to work after weeks of park-ambling, coffees and staring-at-beautiful-baby action. So, trying to be brave, I waved my youngest (little girl, 5 months) off with her nanny this morning and tried to concentrate on my page proofs. Was v hard. Tomorrow I hope will be better.

Anyway, I've had lots of emails enquiring about when my new book is coming out - thank you! In short, it was titled The World's Worst Wife but is now called How To Be Married and is coming out 1 March, next year, published by Headline. Really hope you enjoy it and it's worth the wait.

In meantime do drop me a note, about anything really. This site is still being splattered with spam so apologies if I don't weed out your comment from all the Viagra offers and reply.

Wishing you a wonderful summer.

Polly xxx

Pimms and brown toes please

Pimms. Factor 40. Brown toes. Not quite. The predicted heatwave is merely flirting with us at the moment, isn't it? Waiting for the big hot splosh of summer. Still, as the weather starts revving up, with somewhat unfortunate timing, my maternity leave draws to a close. It's been so lovely not working, rather too lovely actually. Must put work goggles back on.

This site is still being splattered with spam so apologies if I don't weed out your comment and reply. Join me on Facebook (facebook.com/polly.c.williams) or Twitter instead (www.twitter.com/pollywilliams.)

Have a fab summer...

A Good Girl Comes Undone

My new novel, A Good Girl Comes Undone is out this week. This is very, very exciting! I only got my hands on the finished product myself a few days ago. Nothing quite beats holding a new tome, all glossy and Proper Book-like. It's always hard to square with the Microsoft Word document from whence it came - full of misspellings and large chunks of text that I slice out of the final edit: 'Jee-sus. I wrote that? Terrible!' Right, I'm probably telling you too much...

I really hope you enjoy the book and that it makes you laugh and cry and vow never to snog your boss in the stationary cupboard. Do let me know what you think. Thanks for logging on.


All the best, Polly

Green shoots

Hi there

Have emerged from bubble of third baby - she's four months now and am feeling almost normal, although all my clothes appear to have shrunk - and thinking about fifth book...In the meantime I've moved publisher and my fourth book, The World's Worst Wife is slated to come out early next year. I'll get an extract on this site as soon as I can.

Thanks for all your messages. Apologies if I haven't replied. My site is being splatter-bombed with spam - go away whoever you are! - and it's taking hours to trawl through to get to my lovely readers. My Facebook page is always a good way to get in contact. Or join me on Twitter.

All the best,

Polly

The cruellest month

It’s one thing holing up to write when the weather is crap. I can do discipline in the winter. Easy. But the spring, or worse, summer? It’s really, really hard to keep one’s self-employed bottom on one’s ergonomic seat. (Sympathy please...) The sun starts shining, the park beckons, and I lose the necessary guilty gravitational pull. The moment I need sunscreen, I need a boss – any office sociopath will do – someone to micromanage good word count and caution me sternly for long al fresco lunches. All unfortunate timing really, considering that the deadline for my second novel is the end of June. So while the rest of the country yearns for sunshine, like a gardener, I’m willing rain.

The new arrival

She's a poppet. In fact she's lying in her moses basket looking up at me as I write and making it very hard to concentrate because I'd so much rather look at her face than the screen. Yes, my new baby daughter is one month old. And she's just perfect and...

No, stop. To spare you from more ga-ga baby-musings I'm going to sign off right here...

Happy New Year

I hope you had a fab new year and that it involved more dancing and debauchery than mine did. Yes, still waiting for baby number three to arrive. After two early births I never thought I'd ever get this far along in a pregnancy, or imagine it was physically possible to get quite so blooming large. Chair legs quiver at the sight of me. All very What's Eating Gilbert Grape.

Still, at least I have an excuse to stock up on carbs. What's one more Chelsea bun - current fetish - at this stage? I mean I can't get any larger.

Er, can I?