I had a lovely holiday. Now that rain is lashing down from a leaden sky, it’s feeling like summer was months and months ago. Sniff! I have stuck a few holiday snaps up on the fridge, but it’s not the same!

We went to the Limousin in France which is gorgeously luscious, unspoiled and green. Because I am a sort of bug magnet, maybe even a bug buffet, I got bitten by everything going: one tick, many, many horseflies (ouch!) and then finally a hornet. Now that was one big sting. The beast got me on the side of the knee and I kid you not – a football-sized swelling followed and took days to clear up!

I spent lots of time at my computer writing about New York, which was weird because we really couldn’t have been further from the hustle, bustle and general adrenaline rush that is NYC. But somehow it worked quite well for me.

When we were in New York last year, I didn’t write one single word, because there was too much to do, too much to see and experience.

Now… book news:  The Celebrity Shopper paperback is out next month in a glittery, purple, gorgeous new cover.

New York Valentine comes in January next year. So not tooooo long to wait.

There is now a Carmen Reid page on Facebook, so you can join it and get regular updates. Also, coming very soon, I promise… Annie Valentine’s very own fashion blog. Exciting!

Yes, that really is me in the photo with the world famous Sophie Kinsella, Joanne Harris, Nicholas Parsons and the other fabulous authors at my publisher’s 60^th birthday party. Is the lovely Ms Kinsella not rocking her 8-month bump in the leopard skin dress? Go girl!

Now, I’ve had lots of email about the reading order of the books. First of all, don’t panic! The books are written so you can pick any one of them up, dive in and get to know the characters without missing anything vital.

But, if you’d like to read them in order, the Annie Valentine series goes: The Personal Shopper, Late Night Shopping, How Not To Shop and Celebrity Shopper (so far!)

Secrets at St Jude’s reading order is: New Girl, Jealous Girl, Drama Girl. Book four, Rebel Girl comes out in June.

My first four books are ‘stand alone’ titles, so no special order required.

I’ve done some fantastic visits and events during March. I’ve been talking about books, reading and writing in schools in and around London. I was talking at Waterstone’s in Guildford, then Stockton-upon-Tees library, I did a books festival and a Unicef event in Glasgow. Oh and a lovely primary school in Glasgow too. It’s been fantastic to meet so many readers and hopefully inspire lots of future writers.

This is some of the feedback from the lovely ladies I met in Stockton:

‘Carmen was an enlightenment – inspirational’

‘Really enjoyed listening to Carmen read extracts from her books. I’ve wondered how an author wants her books to ‘sound’ when read – now I know’

‘Carmen was such an interesting and charming person’

‘I really enjoyed the evening, Carmen was inspirational and funny’

Awwwww! Thank you so much, incredibly kind.

This is a picture of me and the lovely Jill Mansell (author of more than 20 bestselling books – wow!). As you can see, we are ‘relaxing’ in the bar after our Girls Night Out event.

I have some events coming up soon. Here’s hoping I will see you there!

There’s the main, big ticket event: Aye Write Festival in Glasgow. On March 6th 6.30pm at the Mitchell Library, you can meet me and the lovely Jill Mansell on our Girls Night Out.

Dress up (I know I’m going to… well I don’t get out much!), bring your friends (I will too) and we’ll all swap favourite books, worst ever changing room/ outfit disaster stories and have a laugh. Book the tickets and the babysitter now! Here’s the link www.ticketweb.co.uk/INFO/AYEWRITE/ or www.ayewrite.com for information (although they had the time wrong, last I looked. It’s definitely 6.30pm).

I’m also going to be in:

Hemel Hempsted at the Astley Cooper School on March 1st at 12.30pm. (With a book signing open to the public from 1.30pm.)

Burntwood School in London SW17 on March 2nd

Guildford, St Catherine’s School on March 3rd

Waterstone’s evening event, Guildford High Street, Guildford, also on March 3rd.

Come along if you can! It is always fantastic to meet readers.

Spring

The first hit of bright Spring sunshine has arrived and suddenly the windows look filthy, the house seems covered in clutter and dust, plus everything in my wardrobe is now hideously drab, black and grey.

I am craving fresh air and colour. I even tidied up a bit of the garden and I pretty much hate gardening and kill everything I plant, so clearly I must have Spring Fever. (Plant pretty flowery thing, watch it die, weed it out, plant new pretty flowery thing… that’s how it is in my garden. Yes, plus slash and burn undergrowth control). Ivy seems to grow brilliantly in my garden. Ivy and snails.

I’ve put out a pink bedspread in the room with yellow walls. I have a total thing for yellow and pink at the moment. I’m not convinced I’m going to wear it. In fact, much as I love pink, I’ve not yet discovered a shade that really suits me. But it must be out there somewhere.

Following a good old clear through the wardrobe, I can honestly say that there is very little Spring/ summer wear in there – an incredible amount of tights and hold-ups though. Unbelievable. I could open my own little concession. Winter clothes, I have piles of: jumpers, dark jeans, cardigans, a wide selection of Uniqlo thermal tops, woolly everything, scarves, tick. (Oh GOD! I lost my purple gloves. For Christmas I got these fabulous purple leather driving gloves with a knitted stripy lining; Noa Noa, I think, from my Mum. I was so in love with them, so ultra careful with them… I hardly even dared to wear them anywhere. Now they are gone. Disappeared. Completely lost. I am only just coming to terms with this. There is no way I can tell her. No way. She will never give me anything as nice again.)

Anyway, I’m definitely going Spring shopping. I am going to buy pale green and bright blue and heck, even white, maybe even a hit of yellow and orange. Then I will just have to trust that the weather improves and I get a chance to wear it all.

For my St Jude’s fans.

There is an eating problem in the new book and I wanted talk about that a little.

Just like lots of my school friends, I under-ate when I was a teenager. I remember lasting a whole day on a handful of strawberries. Yes, the result was I was thin, but I didn’t have much energy to do anything and I often fainted. I gave up doing any kind of sport at about 15. So then I was unfit as well as unenergetic.

It probably took a full 10 years before I saw the light and got really healthy. At 25-ish, I joined a gym, started eating really well and finally gave up the dreaded cigarettes. Eating well and exercising are the only way to go. Please put all the faddy diet books down right now.

Nowadays, I’m pretty Californian about my health! It’s 3 square meals with lots of fruit and vegetables, hardly any junk and some vigorous exercise every day: tennis, the gym, the treadmill, long dog walks, even running up and down the stairs. Usually I’m full of energy and although I’m not underweight like I was, I’m not overweight either.

It’s a good guideline to know your recommended BMI: body mass index (you can look up tables on-line) and try to keep well within in. Don’t get too underweight, don’t get too over weight.

If sport is uninspiring at school, I really urge you to join something with your friends: a gym, a dance class, a netball or athletics club. It’s always much more fun and motivating to go together with pals and the people running sports and athletics clubs are usually great. They always want to help more people into the sport. Yes, even if you are a beginner or rubbish!

My favourite eating tip: if you are craving something unhealthy, eat a good thing first. So before you tackle that packet of biscuits, have a big banana first. Or a crunchy apple before the crisps. It will concentrate your mind on what you are putting into your precious body.

Drink loads of water every day. Loads…. glasses and glasses of the stuff. Tea, coffee and fizzy drinks do nothing for you or your skin. Water is the thing. I drink it from the tap, I’m not fussy.

If you think you have an under- or over- weight problem, you need to speak to your doctor and get really good advice. The only diet book I’d ever recommend is French Women Don’t Get Fat which is packed with truly sensible advice from a woman you will think of as your surrogate French Maman. Plus Mirelle is so cool. She’s a champagne ambassador and splits her life between New York and Provence. Just how jealous-making is that?

The Good…

NEW BOOKS!!

The third Secrets at St Jude’s : Drama Girl hits the shelves this month! The official publication date is Feb 4, but you will be able to get your hands on a copy from the last weekend in January. You can order direct from the publishers here and if you’d like signed book-plates to stick in the front, then just drop me an email – carmen@carmenreid.com.

Just a little bit longer to wait for the new Annie – Celebrity Shopper is out on March 4th!

This is Jimmy’s new winter scarf, knitted specially for him by the totally lovely, top St Jude’s fan, Zarah Ahmed. Is it not soooooo cute?! Jimmy has been enjoying the snow. But when the temperature goes below minus 5, his feet freeze, he stars limping and has to be carried home – which he hates as he may be tiny, but he is definitely no lapdog.

There has been so much snow for weeks that we have almost got bored of sledging! In the Botanical Gardens there is this steep hill peppered with trees. Claudie has no control over her sledge and it is terrifying to watch, but how can I not let her go without being a huge spoilsport?

When I was about 10, my Dad built this mile long downhill ‘cresta run’ which he used his tractor armed with a leaking water butt to ice over. We used to hurtle down it on an antique sledge which had metal runners rubbed with candle wax! I remember shooting clean through the wires of a fence. Now I hear myself suggesting to my children that they wear bicycle helmets…

The Bad…

Bleeeeeuuuuurrrrrrghhhhh!

I always have a lovely time over Christmas and New Year and tell myself that this year, I’m going to be positive and surely January won’t be that bad? Then it comes round and slaps me in the face all over again.

Jan 2nd, it is freeeeeeezing despite all the heating roaring at full blast and wearing three layers at all times. Jan 3rd horrible icky sticky sinusitis sets in, despite the fact that I have been saintly over the holidays, eating well and hardly drinking at all. My New Year’s resolution btw is to change from being a ‘regular’ drinker into a ‘very occasional’ drinker. Jan 4th my pipes burst and suddenly we have an indoor water feature. More like waterfall.

For an hour, it is a hideous drama. Water gushing from kitchen ceiling, light sockets (yikes!) door arches, children holding buckets and crying, parents rushing about trying to find more buckets, the plumber’s number and shrieking about where is the stopcock? And how does it work? And why the bloody hell don’t we know this?

(Just take a moment now my darlings to locate the stopcock, that’s the large tap that turns off all the water in your house, and work out how to turn it off. If your pipes burst, you will thank me. One friend already has!)

However, once the water has been mopped up and everything moved about and dried off. Things don’t look quite so bad. In fact, apart from some repainting and a new kitchen ceiling, we may not have to get anything else replaced. Obviously a lot more insulation will have to go up into the draughty attic space, where the pipes froze in the first place. But we have had days and days at minus 5 and nights of minus 10.

I am a terrible person to have around in a crisis. I did a lot of running about, panic sweating and shouting. ‘Just be calm, stay calm’ I shouted a lot, in a voice which didn’t sound calm at all. Generally I ran about like a great flapping chicken. But I did hug the children a lot afterwards and tell them how well they’d done. They stood under a doorway with buckets, catching water. I remember Claudie rushing down from her bedroom with a tiny sand bucket and her towel.

We couldn’t cook in the soaking kitchen that night, so we went to Macdonalds. See how I am cleverly linking images of family disaster with fast food in their impressionable minds.

The Ugly…

I was back at my desk (box of tissues on one side, used crumpled pile of tissues on the other, red, flaky nose doused in Nivea, sheepskin slippers, thermal vest, two jumpers) feeling totally depressed about the ceiling leak and the frozen pipes. The pipes re-froze twice after the burst! Cue much panic, heaters in attic, hairdryers, kettles etc. Me convinced everyone was going to be electrocuted.

But as my dear friend Annie Valentine would tell me: no good comes of huddling about in 15 layers of wool and nose cream. The January spiral will set in. Before I know it I’ll be too cold to leave the house. Too cold to leave the bedroom. Too cold to move from the electric blanket! Then that big grey, snotty blanket of bleakness will move in on me.

I know Annie’s advice would be to dress up a bit and face the world. So… I washed my face, applied lipgloss, put on my leopard skin hat instead of my woolly one and dug my black fake fur coat out of the back of the wardrobe. Yes, definitely more glamorous than the duvet coat.

Then I walked the school run, even though it’s nearly a five mile round trip. When I got to the playground, it’s funny, but other Mums I know approached to stroke the coat!! Then we were all swapping winter tales of woe. Someone’s child’s front teeth got knocked out sledging. People are buying bottled water at the supermarket because even their cold water has frozen solid. Someone else went up into the attic to inspect their insulation and found dust!

It was good to get out there, get some perspective and realise I’m not the only one with some minor problems!

The children and I walked home from school in minus 8. It was freezing yes, but magically cold. We saw someone skating on a pond. This winter will be a very special childhood memory for them.

Here is a sneak preview of the amazing covers for the two new books, out in early 2010.

Drama Girl is out on January 28th 2010. LOVING the tiara!

Celebrity Shopper – Annie’s latest adventures – comes out on March 4th. Not too long to wait!

To celebrate the publication of How Not to Shop, my publisher has created the fab new How Not to Shop quiz! Give it a whirl to find out what kind of shopper you are, and to get a recession-busting 35% off any of my books!

Loads of things going on this month as the third Annie Valentine is released: How Not To Shop comes with the chance to win an Egyptian holiday (and if like me you’ve spent much of the summer in Glasgow – you might be needing something like that).

Rush to your nearest branch of Faith and they will give you a special edition of The Personal Shopper for free if you spend over £30 (easily done, I have been on their website and checked those shoes out… and they do big sizes. Gone are the days when you went to any shoe shop, asked for a size 8 and the shop assistant’s eyes popped from her head in astonishment – I’m still slightly scarred though.)

The lovely people at ultra-stylish Scottish Woman magazine have put me on their shortlist for witty Scottish Woman of the Year. I still can’t believe that… anyway, you can find out more if you follow this link. Hey, you can even vote and yes I will understand if you think Ronni Ancona is much more worthy!

Also, give this link a whirl if you’d like to read an interview with me from the Sunday Herald magazine. It’s incredibly nice, Susan Swarbrick was totally charming and no, I don’t have anything on her, she wrote this all of her own accord, honest! ‘Poster girl for yummy mummy chic’ oooh how my husband fell about laughing at that. He knows the grim reading glasses and ratty jeans reality!

Now, which photos can I use to enliven the August blog… I’m still missing New York, so here are another two from the holiday. The big plastic roach key-ring which was the gag of the fortnight: it ended up in everyone’s shoes, everyone’s bed, even Sam’s salad and my birthday presents. Eeek!

Then there are the family birthday cards… obviously cute dogs feature highly as we were all totally missing Jimmy by then!

 To celebrate the publication of How Not to Shop, Transworld Publishers and Faith Shoes are offering you the chance to win a fabulous holiday for you and a friend to Egypt!

The fantastic prize, courtesy of Libra Holidays, will include return flights and 4* accommodation at the Hilton Sharks Bay Resort. Enjoy seven all-inclusive days, relaxing by the pool, sipping a cocktail at one of the hotel bars, discovering the underwater delights of the Red Sea or partying into the early hours and enjoying the lively nightlife in Sharm el Sheikh!

To enter visit the Faith website from 10th August.

The closing date is 24th August 2009. See www.faith.co.uk for terms and condtitions.

Secrets at St Jude’s: Jealous Girl went on sale this month. I hope all the New Girl fans rushed to get a copy! Marie Goodwin from E. Sussex gets a signed copy as she was the very first person to send me an email about Jealous Girl. Surprise, Marie!

For the first two weeks in July, I was on holiday. As a big birthday treat, I went to New York with my family and had a truly brilliant time. It was hot, it was hectic, it was very exciting.

We did lots of touristy things, of course: Statue of Liberty check, Empire State Building, check, Natural history Museum, the Met, MoMA, the Bronx Zoo, the Central Library… all fantastic. All totally worth visiting.

Our apartment was weirdly Glasgow-ish: a Victorian sitting room, a little bit brown and shabby-chic, turned into a one-bedroom plus kitchenette kind of thing. It was on 16^th street between 5^th and 6^th and I can’t recommend that slice of town enough. We were right beside 5th Avenue… within spitting distance of Anthropologie, Coach, Banana Republic, J Crew (eek, all shopping accidents waiting to happen) Also the unbelievable farmer’s market in Union square.

When we weren’t eating out, we cooked in  – which Manhattanites don’t –  maybe because cooking attracted the biggest, brownest insect I’ve ever seen. Too big to be a roach, apparently he was a water beetle.

Yes, there were some shopping adventures: I bought my son button-down shirts and his first tie in the slightly fusty, wood-panelled Brooks Brothers (thus fulfilling a Woody Allen inspired fantasy… )

I took Claudie to American Girl Place where our jaws dropped. Not only could you buy a dolly to look like you, clothes and every dolly accessory ever invented (dolly kayak for instance), there was even a dolly hair salon where real, live stylists plaited your dolly’s hair.

I mainly bought shoes, none expensive and all quite devastatingly practical… OK apart from the Park Avenue Princess pumps in furry leopard skin with patent leather trim!

We spent lots of time hanging with the nannies and ‘Hudson Juniors’ in the Central Park playgrounds. Boating on the pond was the best and there were turtles. I found that surprising… what do they do with them in the winter? Fly them to Florida?

I turned 40 (!) and I got a truly spectacular cake. We went out and ate pizzas, played in the Washington Square fountain, walked home up Fifth Avenue admiring the lights on the Empire State building. I counted my many blessings, especially the three I was with, and thought 40 felt pretty good actually.

If you’re in the mood for some retail therapy, what better way to treat yourself than with a new pair of shoes and a free book?

From 10th August, selected Faith stores will be giving away free copies of The Personal Shopper to customers who spend over £30 (while stocks last).