The fields outside my study window are once again a-bleat with lambs that sound so child-like, I keep rushing outside on a wave of maternal instinct. Once there, the hedges are bubbling with birdsong, and the garden is a pomade of sweet scents.

I *so* love spring!

All of which makes me doubly grateful that I’ve finally delivered the latest Village Detectives novel after a difficult six months. Last autumn, my partner Sam broke his leg badly. His right thighbone was already full of plates and pins from a horse fall way back in the nineties that ended his eventing career, and this time it needed to be completely reconstructed, Bionic Man style. It was a big op. Poor Sam’s recuperation has been slow and painful. I’ve covered for him as best I can with my nurse’s cap plonked on top of the many hats Sam usually wears, although it’s been a terrific juggle with precious little time for uninterrupted writing.

As a result, writing dastardly deeds in Inkbury was far trickier than usual. Through November and December, I worked mostly in frantic snatches on my laptop in the mum-taxi/ambulance whilst waiting for teenagers to come out of schools and clubs or Sam to emerge from hospital appointments and physio. January was taken up rewriting these ‘carpark chapters’, which were frankly bonkers. In February, I thought I had a first draft, only to review it and change my mind completely about whodunnit. Thank goodness Sam started driving again in March, meaning he could reclaim the early-morning teen runs and I could return to the witching hours of my familiar late-night writing shifts. That transformed everything, and the last few weeks marked a joyfully exhausting nocturnal romp to the (all-new) end.

The Little Black Book Killer will be coming out in October. In it, Juno and Phoebe once again join forces to solve a village mystery, this time to uncover why Inkbury’s most pugnacious entrepreneur has been found dead in the cricket pavilion, and what that might have to do with the dating app Juno’s just signed up for.  With old rivalries, buried secrets, lonely hearts and a killer on the loose, it’s another fun-packed puzzler and available for pre-order HERE.

I’m now enduring the nail-biting wait for edit notes – of which there will be plenty, I’ve no doubt – and trying not to overthink the usual anxious maybes: maybe I should have made it darker, maybe I could have added in some horses and men in breeches, or those sexy elves which are all the rage in fiction. Then again, maybe I should just take May’s gorgeous canvas as inspiration for the next instalment, blossom floating down while the sap rises, and the welcome sight of Sam setting off at a brisk limp to forage wild garlic, Nordic poles clacking (because crutches make him feel old). He insists he’s almost ready to get back on a horse again.

And I’m already raring to write another book. If it features broken legs, sheep and bluebell woods seamed with pungent wild garlic, you’ll know why.