Here I am, up on cloud twenty three, wondering if I’ll go up any higher, or whether I will just float gently back down to earth at some point…

On Monday the new Amazon Rising Stars for the first part of 2011 were announced – and Into the Darkest Corner is one of them!  It’s taken a while to sink in, but this is a tremendous honour and a huge vote of confidence in my debut novel. The progress of the Rising Stars depends on the number of positive reviews, so if enough people write reviews on the Amazon website the book could potentially win ‘Rising Star’ of the year! So if you’ve read it – and this is probably not the only time I’m going to ask you – please go to the Amazon website and write me a nice review! The books I’m up against all look like real corkers, so I sense it’s going to be a real challenge to beat them…

On Tuesday I was in London for Into the Darkest Corner’s launch party. Oh my, what a fantastic evening. Admittedly I’d managed to pack the room with just about every friend I could find, so I did have quite a supportive crowd, but I was a shaking bundle of nerves as I got up to read the passage we’d selected. It was hard to find something suitable that didn’t give away too much of the plot, and yet was still exciting and dramatic… and of course the exciting and dramatic bits in my book have all either got rude words in or rude bits. So I was very worried I would struggle to read it, or – worse – be overcome by a fit of giggles. Fortunately I got through it all right. And everyone clapped. Once I’d got down from standing on the sofa (shoes off) the nausea I’d been suffering from all day magically went away, so I really enjoyed the rest of the evening! It went very quickly indeed and it seemed like only moments later that people were saying goodbye…

We had a very nice final glass of champagne toasting the success of the book and then D and I headed back to Charing Cross with the lovely Jess and the lovely Mr Woodrow Phoenix… caught the train home, in bed by midnight, couldn’t sleep for ages, too excited.

Worn out at work the next day, but fortunately was mad busy which made the day go quickly.

Friday’s good news, as if all that wasn’t exciting enough: a really good book review by Sue Magee at theBookbag.co.uk. It didn’t start off too promisingly, since she doesn’t think much of the cover and she’d never heard of me (who has?) but it was just lulling me into a  false sense of insecurity because after that she said “within ten minutes, I couldn’t put it down”. The summary of the review says that Into the Darkest Corner is:

A powerful novel which deals with obsession and keeps you on the edge of your seat. Absolutely superb.

She gave it four and a half stars. This is very good. I am beside myself really, more than anything because her review showed that she really ‘got’ what the book is all about – not that it’s difficult to get into, or obtuse – but I was never sure whether readers would just get the general sense of fear and being trapped, without the rationale of the OCD which lies behind it. So thank you, thank you, thank you Sue Magee, you made me very happy!

And now here we are at the weekend, and I am back with a couple of hours to spare which I’m going to spend researching pole dancing and boat renovation again…