I'm still reeling after the last couple of weeks.  I've had a run of very heavy trials recently and suddenly realised I hadn't stopped until Christmas.  May is always a busy month...stacked full of birthdays and closely followed by my wedding anniversary.  It's all lovely of course but it can be hard to know whether you're coming or going by the end of the month.

In the middle of all this I got some news I've been after for ages.  Finally, after years of trying, I've found an agent for my novel and she's as excited about it as I am.

I've wanted to write books since I was a child.  Not simply the true crime I write as a journalist but also fiction.  My brand of fiction is satirical fantasy...quite different from the day job and, in an overcrowded market place, quite difficult to break into.

Now I have a summer ahead of me of writing.  Not, like last summer, with a desk laden with print outs and notebooks, but refining the characters I've worked on for so long and the plot I made up myself.

I've promised to finish by the Autumn so I've quite a short time to finish something that's taken me years of tinkering but then, when I started I had never written a book so it was a pretty steep learning curve.

It'll be so exciting to work on something different and to go back to working on something that I love but that I had all but given up on.  Then come the Autumn, who knows?  

I love the work that I do in the courts.  It's a fascinating beat and I've plenty of non fiction books planned.  But fiction was my first love and it's wonderful to have an opportunity to pursue it properly.