Mindfulness, The Congo, and a Shaggy Dog Story

Spring is almost upon us and with it comes a blossoming of new books and some exciting fresh material to keep me busier than ever. First, there is the publication of the British version of a book that reached number 3 in the New York Times bestseller's list at the end of last year. Secondly, I have just completed the manuscript of a page-turning memoir of a young woman's extraordinary experiences in Africa, which we hope will be snapped up internationally. And finally (paws crossed) I hope that I am on the brink of selling my childrens/young adult book about a dog in the Blitz entitled Mr Scraps, a much-loved and deeply personal project that started as a gift to my nephew.

First things first ---the indefatigable Ms Goldie Hawn. This week marks the UK launch of my latest book with Goldie, entitled 10 Mindful Minutes: Giving Our Children - and ourselves - the social and emotional skills to reduce stress and anxiety for healthier, happier lives. It's a rather convoluted subtitle, admittedly, but the message couldn't be simpler - reach for your own oxygen mask before applying one to your children.

As Goldie says, children are taught everything about their skeletons and the way their bodies work but they are rarely taught about the workings of their own brains and especially how they respond chemically to the potentially deadly stress hormones that we all produce at times of anxiety. Through her charitable educational foundation called MindUp she has gathered together some of the greatest minds in the field of neuroscience and emotional psychology. She has then drawn on their expertise to devise ways of helping parents and children deal with everyday stresses including anger, grief, fear and wild swings of emotion.

By simple breathing techniques and through taking a few moments to appreciate all that life has to offer in terms of smells, sounds, tastes and visual feasts, Goldie puts the reader back in the driving seat and leads them through what could otherwise be a minefield of confusing information. Her pioneering work has had such amazing results within schools across the USA and Canada that the parents of those children who have benefitted from the programme begged her to write a book that would explain it all to them just as simply. 10 Mindful Minutes is the result and its reception has been overwhelmingly positive. Goldie and I are both enormously proud of what we have managed to achieve and are indebted to those who make it their life's work to improve life for future generations.

The publicity schedule for the book kicks off this week with Goldie appearing on The Graham Norton Show tonight, BBC Radio Woman's Hour on Tuesday, Desert Island Discs and the Steve Wright Show in the coming week, This Morning on Friday, an interactive chat on Mumsnet on Monday, along with numerous newspaper, radio and TV articles and a book signing at Waterstone's in Piccadilly on Wednesday. I shall be happily tagging along for much of it.

Once Goldie has flown back to the US, I can get on with my latest projects and help promote the ones I have already written. Among them is what I can only refer to right now as my Congo book, but which we are hoping great things for. It tells a remarkable and moving story of a young British woman on a voluntary posting as part of her gap year who was inadvertently caught up in something that changed her life forever.

I am also waiting for news on the sale of Mr Scraps, the story of a homeless, orphaned dog caught up in an equally bewildering situation - the London Blitz. This book began life as the germ of an idea to write a new story for my adored nephew Lawrie who, I am delighted to report, reads as avidly as I did when I was his age. Once he had given it the thumbs up, I decided to cast it wider and the feedback I got from children, parents and teachers was so positive that I polished it up and put it out to tender. My agent and I are currently in that delicate stage of negotiation that precludes me from saying more for fear of jinxing it. So, paws crossed!

As for the rest of the year and into 2013, Goldie and I have a third book planned and I am currently in the enviable position of having three other non-fiction projects on offer with my name tentatively attached to them. They are all very different, and could see me spending a great deal of time in London, California and the American South for a while, so I hope to be able to work on two of them if the conditions are right. I also have a great new idea for a novel which I am absolutely itching to write---just as soon as I find the time. I have got as far as a first chapter and an outline, and am hoping to devote some time in Italy this summer to pulling together a proper proposal.

The more astute among you may have noticed that my website has recently been updated and revamped to keep it current and--I hope--more interesting. This is a working version. There are a few tweaks yet to be made by the talented Ian and Roger at Spark New Media but so far I am very happy with how it all looks and would love your feedback.

As you may have realized, I am not the most prolific blogger and this will probably do me for 2012 unless I get a sudden urge to vent, so I wish you all a very good year and hope to see you here again soon. Thank you, W x

Afghanistan, Sinatra, Goldie and Asparagus

IF there is a prize for the world's laziest blogger then I must surely qualify. After a few impatient prompts from readers, I was shocked to find that I last blooged two years ago. My sincerest apologies for the delay.

In my defence, m'Lud, I have got three books out this year and am currently working on two-and-a-half more. Tonight I attend the launch party in London of my first of 2011, Kill Switch, written with Bill Shaw, a gritty and gripping account of how a proud British soldier was wrongly imprisoned in Afghanistan at great risk to his life. Bill was introduced to me by a friend in the Army who wanted to know if I could find a writer. As soon as I met him and his lovely wife Liz, I knew that it had to be me, no matter what else I was doing. I also agented the deal myself, and found the perfect publisher in the lovely Carly Cook at Headline. Bill lives in a beautiful peach-painted villa in Spain so I worked with him and Liz there, as well as at their daughter's home in Kent. They all made me feel like one of the family and will remain lifelong friends. Our book comes out in early June and is being serialised in the Daily Mail, so watch out for it please.

Coincidentally, in the same week Lady Blue Eyes, the memoir of Frank Sinatra's widow Barbara is released internationally. It is also out as an audiobook and it was extraordinary for me to hear the words I'd written being read so eloquently by an actress who completely nailed Barbara's voice. Lady Blue is a remarkable story of a woman in her mid-80s who reflects back on her life as a child from a whistlestop in Missouri to the wife of the most famous singer in the world. Along the way, she was a model, a Vegas showgirl and the wife of Zeppo Marx. Working with Barbara at her homes in California was a privilege I will never forget. Her book is launched on June 10 at a glittering party in Beverly Hills, which I hope to attend.

In September, my third book of 2011 is published. Ten Mindful Minutes: Giving Our Children the Social and Emotional Skills to Lead Smarter, Healthier and Happier Lives, is my second book with Goldie Hawn and is about her extraordinary work as head of a mindfulness foundation for children. Her pioneering MindUp curriculum in American schools has had such great success teaching children the workings of their own brains and how to cope with stress, anger and emotion, that parents have begged her to write a book for them, so that the success can be carried on into the home. Goldie and I holed up in her house on a remote Canadian lake to brainstorm the book last summer, and we are both very proud of the result.

Confidentiality agreements preclude me from revealing what I am working on now, other than to say that it couldn't be more timely or important and will have international resonance. I am also working on my first children's book, set in the Second World War, which I hope to find a publishing home for soon, and am helping a celebrity with her memoirs.

With all these books lined up it is often difficult to get the work/life balance right but I do try to spend as much time as I can with my long-suffering husband, our beloved dogs, and in our garden - which I have to say has never looked lovelier than this year. We are almost completely self-sufficient in organic veg and eggs now and wandering through the potager at the end of a busy writing day is the perfect antidote to hours in front of a computer.

I came across an old English proverb in the newspaper today and it made me laugh out loud. "To be happy for an hour, drink a glass of wine. To be happy for a day, read a book. To be happy for a week, take a wife. To be happy forever, make a garden." How true. No matter what challenges we face day after day, the simple pleasure derived from a blousy poppy, a cluster of self-sown foxgloves, or a heavily-scented rose makes all our troubles melt away. I am off now to cut some fresh asparagus and pick spinach for our lunch. Is it a wonder I don't have time to blog??

TIME for my annual blog---(honestly, how do people find the time to keep them up to date?)--and another busy year has passed. The best news is that I am still well and able to work and there have been fewer and fewer repercussions of my brain virus. For this alone, I am grateful.

In health and happiness, I have been able to work and travel, write and play. In my writerly phase, I have been to the farthest wildernesses of Canada with Billy Connolly, penning his Journey to the Edge of the World, to accompany his internationally successful television series. From the safety and warmth of my office, I have journeyed with him to defrosting Inuit lands and explored the history and future of the notorious North West Passage. Anything you need to know about Arctic exploration, I'm your girl! The book has already sold over 100,000 copies in hardback and continues to fly off the shelves, so not only was it a hugely enjoyable project, it was a successful one as well.

Since "returning" from the frozen north, the two biggest projects that have been occupying me most this year couldn't have been more different. They are Pauline Prescott's autobiography and Barbara Sinatra's memoir of her life and times with Frank. Pauline, the long-suffering wife of the former Deputy Prime Minister, is an absolute delight to work with and, wow, what a story! It reads like a Catherine Cookson novel. My times spent with her in Hull were some of the highlights of 2009 for me, and her subsequent friendship is an added and much-cherished gift. Pauline's book comes out in March 2010 and will, I am sure, be a huge success for her. Lord knows, she deserves it!

Barbara has been a delighftul revelation to me too and I am still fully immersed in her remarkable journey from a whistlestop in Missouri to becoming the fourth (and final) wife of the man they called "The Voice." Having spent time with her in Palm Springs and Malibu in May, I will be going back out to Los Angeles next month to pick up where we left off. I can hardly wait. This will be an important international memoir and one that will take all my energy to get right. Sinatra fans the world over have been waiting for the woman who was at Frank's side for almost three decades to tell her story and they won't be disappointed. I feel honoured and privileged to be a part of this incredible book.

Several future projects beckon, some of which I will investigate States-side, but nothing is certain yet and I still have my fiction to return to, as and when I find the time. My completed second novel has gone into a bottom drawer for now, and a third I began to write earlier this year---set in Gaza---has had to be put to one side also. Both call to me now and again like sirens of the deep and I feel confident that they will one day see the light of day.

So, as yet another year draws to a close, I continue to count my blessings and look forward to each new day. May 2010 bring new challenges and times as happy as these. The sadnesses of life I have faced this year - the loss of a beloved dog, the illness of a friend, the frustrations of broken bones and the uncertain future for elderly relatives---has been tempered, as always, by the many joys I have known and shared. Borrowing a line from Max Ehrmann, I still strive to be happy in this beautiful world of broken dreams. Happy New Year!

THIS has been quite a year. After an enforced two-year break due to illness, I have been back at work and busier than ever. Best of all, I have felt well enough to cope with it all. Strangely, much of this year has been taken up with doctoring---but not of the medical kind. In my occasional capacity as the so-called "Lady Penelope" of International Rescue, I am called upon by publishers to help rescue books that are close to being cancelled through missed deadlines, poor writing, or a basic inability to structure a manuscript in the first place.

My services have never been more in demand and, although confidentiality agreements forbid me from saying whose books I have "saved", I can tell you that I have been embroiled in a remarkable political career, the glamorous world of international fashion, a memerising mind/body experience, and a travelogue of extraordinary adventure and historical importance. Fascinating as it has all been, the demands of tighter than tight deadlines and sometimes less than co-operative clients has brought with pressures of its own and there have been times when I wished I was curled up with a good novel---preferably writing one of my own! But the end results have been most gratifying, with all four books finished on time and to everybody's satisfaction, with subsequent sales justifying all the hard work.Freed from my rescue duties for a while, I am now off to the States for a few weeks to celebrate my freedom and to meet some potentially explosive new non-fiction clients.

I am still hoping for great things for my two screenplays, currently under consideration, and have meetings lined up in LA with a leading TV mogul who wants me to work with him on a new film project.There are three new novels in various stages of development----a Holocaust "memoir", an American epic, and a Gothic European mystery----when I'm given a minute to get back to them! And my brain, shut down for two years by a cruel virus, has recovered so well that it is bombarding me with new ideas all the time.Old projects continue to reap rewards. Heaven and Hell, the memoir of Don Felder of the Eagles, made it into the New York Times best seller list this autumn and continues to fly off the shelves.

Tomorrow to be Brave, the memoir of Susan Travers, the only woman in the French Foreign Legion, has been signed up for a new film deal by a leading European company, and Marthe Cohn continues to defy all expectations about her age by travelling the world over to give talks and promote her memoir Behind Enemy Lines. I am proud to have been the ghost on all three of those remarkable books.Goldie Hawn's memoir A Lotus Grows in the Mud looks to remain in print for many years and the insatiable appetite for all things Dean Martin has guaranteed ongoing sales for his daughter Deana's memoir of her father Memories Are Made of This. Goldie and I will be putting our heads together in LA to discuss a possible future project together, which would focus on her quest to bring joy back to the world.So, all in all, it has been a busy and productive time and looks set to continue to be so. I still wake up every morning and count my blessings, knowing how lucky I am to be alive and to be doing a job that brings me so much variety and fulfilment. I wish you all a very merry Christmas and the happiest of New Years. May 2009 be filled with love and laughter. W xx