Here's a taster (or 17) of my novel, my only novel. It will be published by Braiswick in November. You can order your own copy with a 25% discount, post free, by sending me an email now - use the Contact page. It's a life's work.

As she entered the restaurant Louise spotted him immediately. He was sitting at a table looking slightly uncomfortable in a jacket that had seen better days, a half-finished cup of coffee in front of him on the shiny-black table-top. She had the photo he had emailed the week before, and although it was a younger version that had stared almost coquettishly back at her from the computer screen it was without doubt the same man. He didn't look like a Harry, but then what does Harry look like?

 She had given up smoking several weeks before and now regretted the decision. He would notice that her jeans dug into the new fat that now clung to her thighs, forming unattractive furrows of denim squeezed in between layers of cellulite. So she sat down quickly. It was the result of replacing a twenty-a-day fag habit with an intravenous drip of pure chocolate. Anyway he hadn't got much to shout about.

He immediately rose from his seat, then sat down again quickly, perhaps with the same thought in his mind as she noticed that they already had something in common. She just hoped she had been quicker off the mark than he had.

They talked, or rather he talked and she listened. Not that it wasn't interesting. It turned out that he was as fanatical about the business of writing and publishing as she was, but her attentions were compulsively drawn to the menu. It had been almost half an hour since she had ingested her mid-morning snack, well just a small biscuit with her coffee. Now, Should she have a steak sandwich with French fries and salad, or go for the three-course meal, which involved a rather tempting chocolate mousse?

After some discussion they both decided to go for the business lunch, main course, with starter or dessert She was rather miffed at having to decide between the mousse and compote of wild mushrooms on puff pastry. But there was no competition really. She knew she'd made the right decision as she scraped the spoon around the bowl making sure she gathered up every conceivable remnant of chocolate, and then discreetly sucked the spoon clean.

He watched, fascinated as her mouth encircled the spoon and then coughed rather loudly.

"I said, are you from London originally or another migrant?"

"Oh, sorry, yes, I come from Surrey originally, Brindover. My parents still live there. I go home every so often."

"That's funny, I once belonged to a Lodge down there. Sorry, better get it out in the open as soon as possible but I've been a bit of a part-time freemason. In the past."

"Are you, what a coincidence." Her father, also a freemason who had regaled the family, rather unprofessionally, with tales of masonic deeds for the past ten years or so, including the baring of breasts, rolled up trouser legs and something to do with a goat, although that last may have been an old joke. The family had always hoped his loose tongue wouldn't cost lives. "My dad is in a Lodge too, he's a Mason."

He looked at her in disbelief. "Who's your dad?"

"Michael Peacock."

"No!"

"Yes!" She cried, cottoning on immediately.

It was the start of a wonderful, if rather tempestuous relationship.