I have a new book out this month – the fourth Secrets At St Jude’s which is called Rebel Girl. I am loving the sparkly kiss kiss lips on the cover. Gorgeous! 

I can tell you that the Gina and Dermot romance comes under severe strain when deliciously handsome Callum appears on the scene. Callum is in hot pursuit of our fav Californian girl. Meanwhile, Amy is trying to cope with the fact that her Dad may no longer be rich. She may actually have to shop on the High Street (eeek!). Niffy is about to take drastic transformation action to make herself glamorous – think bad haircut. We’ve all been there. Min needs to be dragged out of the study to have some fun, she is swotting far too hard.

Rush to the bookshop and get a copy, I hope you’ll love it.

Now, what else… I’ve got an article in She magazine about turning 40. If you’d like to know more, you’ll have to get your hands on the June 2010 issue with Dervla Kirwan on the cover. But I’ll also post up a link ASAP. The piece was inspired by one of my birthday cards. On the front it read: ‘You’re only young once…’ then inside, it said: ‘How was it?’ Ouch!!! But it’s true, 40 is not young and I’m still adjusting!

Anyway, it has been a frantically busy month as I finish off the NEW Annie Valentine. The planned new title is: New York Valentine. Genius, no? But I’m not saying any more! I’ve also been inundated with birthdays lately.

Cake creating is hitting new highs. For the girl party, there was a chocolate delight studded with pink Smarties, for the hungry big boy party – a giant Victoria sponge with cream, jam and Star Trek action figures. To boldly go where no cake has gone before.

Sun… there is finally sun! So happy!

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.

The new bathroom is lovely. The new bedroom, same. I’d had my Carrie moment. My Mr Big had built my new wardrobe (shame there were only worn jeans and Converse sneakers to put in it…. And I don’t recall Carrie being involved with hauling the very heavy flat-pack boxes up the stairs… but no matter).

The house and I had almost put our bad relationship behind us. We were all set for that brand new start.

And then. Then. It goes and lets me down AGAIN!!

We were about to lay the sitting room to rest, finally. It was all plastered and painted, complete with the new boxed in cupboards and skirting boards. The paint, by the way, on one wall is an amazing blue. Almost exactly the colour of both my husband’s and daughter’s astonishingly blue eyes.

Anyway, the carpet, no to be precise, sisal man arrived. He looked at the wooden floorboards, which are messy and un-sandable, then, to my horror, he took out a chisel, bent down, gouged out a piece of floorboard here and there, shook his head and declared he couldn’t possibly put down anything here because this whole floor was rotten and infested with woodworm and would have to be sorted out first.

Then he left. Before my mouth could close again.

Never heard from him since. What he’s done with the 25 square metres of sisal is anyone’s guess.

Since then… we’ve had countless joiners etc in and out ummmming, ahing, scratching their heads.

The one we booked arrived today, removed about four square metres of floorboards from the sitting room and the hall and declared it was all hopeless, he really felt for us and he couldn’t do this, he would have to go now. Leaving the four metre square hole by the way!

I actually had to sit down and laugh at that point.

I mean that is a first. In all the work we’ve had done. No one yet has come in, started, then packed up in horror and run away. That is truly a first. Luckily, my mother had been to visit and there was a substantial amount of homemade chocolate cake in the fridge. Otherwise, I really might have cracked up.

I can seriously recommend refrigerated chocolate cake as lunch on a bad day. There must be a lot of bankers chomping through it at the moment. I mean, what is going on there guys?! My mortgage company is just about to be ‘rescued’ by Lloyds. The bank I have my businesses account with is teetering… it really is very scary.

But the Easter service was even worse. The school’s headmistress has been off for months with an unspecified illness and when she was welcomed to the podium by the stand-in headteacher, to everyone’s distress, she was wearing a headscarf.

She told us how much she’d been missing the children and how the wonderful doctors were making her better. But every parent was looking at the headscarf and thinking: this is very bad news.

Her speech made me cry, but then the choir’s angelic The Lord Bless You And Keep You just about finished me off. I’d have come with a box of mansized if I’d been warned.

Still, I wasn’t in quite as much of a state as when my daughter’s nursery was closing down. The final concert of the year was emotionally-charged enough, what with tearful staff hugging each other at every opportunity, but then the children sang Abba’s Mamma Mia.

Now just who thought that was a good idea?!! A chorus of gorgeous little three and four year olds singing: ‘Mamma Mia, did you ever know, my, my, just how much I missed you… oooooh I’ve been broken-hearted, ooooh since the day we parted…’

Heads were turning while I tried to subdue myhowls. Believe me, I’d been feeling quiteconflicted enough about putting my three year old into daycare without that!

April is when Claudie has her birthday. We like a homemade cake in this household, preferably with themed decorations. This year’s request was for a grassy cake with cows!