Now I don’t want to give too much away but I can tell you that at St Jude’s this term: Gina really can’t decide whether she loves or hates her new boyfriend (does that make him the Marmite boyfriend?)… Amy is still trying to track down her real Mum but is frightened of what she might find out… and Niffy’s got family problems of her own. Then there is Min: exams are looming so she has just about locked herself in the study. Help!

What every girl needs is to grab a dress and a pair of sparkly shoes (just like the ones on the cover) and dance their problems away at a truly unforgettable party!

I like to say that the St Jude’s series is for teenagers of all ages. I know that I have a wonderful time channelling my inner teen (and remembering so many cringeworthy teenage moments) when I am writing the stories. I really hope you enjoy the new story!

Find out more on my Secrets at St Jude’s website and watch my behind-the-scenes video here!

I promised I would tell you a little more about The Jewels of Manhattan, so here we go.

I am very, very excited about this story, which comes out in November, because it’s something a little different.

It’s about three sisters who move to Manhattan with wonderful plans and when their dreams don’t come true, they commit a jewel theft.

But with so many complications! Two sisters don’t want to take part… in fact the theft sort of happens by mistake and then…  there is one seriously sexy detective on their case.

I have had a ball writing this story. It’s a little edgy, it’s set in a sometimes glamorous, sometimes very real world, it’s full of tingly suspense and very funny in places too.  I think of it as a romantic crimedy.

I wanted to write around the question: what drives someone to steal? Would you steal because the opportunity was there? Would you steal for love? Would you steal to protect someone? Or are you so honest you would never steal at all?

My fictional sisters Amber, Sapphire and Em, come from the Texan countryside – their Daddy was a rancher. This is because my real-life sisters and I grew up on a farm, so I wanted a little flavour of that in the story.

I decided to make the girls Texan because I have a wonderful friend from Houston and I just love all the unique and colourful phrases she comes out with: ‘You can put your boots in the oven but it don’t make ‘em biscuits’… ‘there’s no back door out of this Alamo,’ and ‘Oh my gosh, you will be discussed.’

I had to use a little of that.

Amber and Em are very sassy modern girls, chock full of ambition, trying to make their way in the world. They’re in their early 20s desperate for life to begin. Amber works in finance and Em’s an aspiring actress.

But I also wanted an old fashioned strand, so middle sister Sapphire is a dreamy Grace Kelly-alike who sells antique jewellery. She wishes her life could be like a black and white movie complete with a handsome hero.

The first seed of the idea came from a sentence in a story by my daughter and her friends: ‘Three beautiful girls decided to rob a jewellery shop.’

Ooooh… that just set my mind racing. Why? Where? How? And most importantly – did they get away with it?

My daughter’s story didn’t have any answers (she was only seven!) so I had to go away think, mull, research and plan.

The result of all that thinking and writing is The Jewels. It’s set in Manhattan and Geneva, it’s dusted with snowflakes and sparkles and I really, really hope you’re going to love it as much as I do.

Check out the new cover for the sixth Secrets at St Jude’s book, Party Girl. It’s absolutely brilliant. I love it.  A party in a cover… a party in a shoe! Unfortunately you will have to wait until August 4^th to get your hands on it.

I have been chained to my desk, literally typing my fingers to the bone for you my lovely readers. I’ve just finished Party Girl and put the final touches to the brand new (v v exciting) story The Jewels of Manhattan which comes out in November. Much, much more about that all soon.

Meanwhile, I am really enjoying all my new multi-media ways of connecting with readers.

You can now read Annie’s very own blog at annievalentine.wordpress.com – learn more about summer tights, fake tan and Kate Middleton’s dress sense right here. Annie also twitters @AnnieVshopper plus you can find the real me and lots of other Carmen readers (geddit? Sorry!) on the Facebook author page.

I look forward to catching up with you!

Oooh and here’s a little pic of me talking to some lovely St Jude’s fans. I do love to do a school visit, it’s one way of having a captive audience. (If you’d like a visit to your school email me at carmen@carmenreid.com and I’ll see what I can do).  However, I may have to take some Annie advice re author visit outfits. I mean I never want to be over-glammed for school visits, but grey Mary-Janes… what was I thinking?!

Chick Lit Reviews has also given New York Valentine a fab review! Reviewer Chloe describes Annie as ‘a great character who leads the book so well… a character the reader will love and warm to.’  Chloe likes the New York setting, and that Annie’s teenage daughter Lana takes on a bigger role, giving NYV an overall rating of 4/5. Read the full review

If you’re in need of a feel good read, then I promise New York Valentine will not let you down. Annie is back on January 20th. This time, she goes to New York with her teenage daughter Lana to help her super-glamorous Ukrainian friends Elena and Svetlana run their fledgling fashion business. I had so much fun writing the scene where the fashionistas go dumpster diving in Brooklyn (think very high heels, plus rat, plus an enraged guard dog!). Also, I love Connor’s New York personal trainer: the incredibly pompous and vain ‘Train with Gawain trademark’. He grudgingly agrees to try and put Annie through her paces with near fatal results.

I hope you’ll enjoy reading the story as much as I enjoyed writing it. And have no fear, it is definitely not the last in the Annie adventures. Next I’m thinking taking her to Venice maybe? Or Moscow?! Take care and thank you for the lovely messages posted. If you want to write directly to me, please feel totally welcome. I’m at: carmen@carmenreid.com.

That was wonderful, but the rest of October has been a total pain! At the very start of the month, I got a kidney infection. Horrible, complete with temperature, shaking, wailing with pain and peeing every 15 minutes. If you’ve ever had one before, you have my absolute complete sympathy. If you’ve never had one, just drink an extra glass of water for me, right now!

Since then, I’ve been coping with the after effects of nuclear dose antibiotics and recovering. There were points in the month where I was languishing in bed or on the sofa like a Victorian invalid, wondering if I would ever get better again. (But still typing, I’d just like to add!) I was really exhausted – which just does not work when you have a deadline and two children and all the rest of the shebang. I didn’t feel like eating anything for three weeks, now I’m eating saintly food because the kidneys are healing and the bladder is on a hairline trigger. Just one apple slice too many and I’m dashing to the ladies all over again.

But luckily – I’m definitely getting better and there’s nothing like a health scare to get you cleaning up your act. The one to two (or make that three) glasses of wine every night – over. The six cups of tea per day – same. And this year, I made it right through Halloween without eating one single sweet! This is so shocking that my family still can’t believe it and has hidden the carrier bag of goodies somewhere out of sight, just to be on the safe side.

So, take really good care of yourself, especially as cold, dark, stressful pre-Christmas  days come along.

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.

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?

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.