It feels strange to be sitting at my computer again.  I’ve just got home from three weeks in Scotland without internet access, in spite of my best efforts to get British Telecom to install broadband while I was there.  My father had a heart attack on 14th January, and was in hospital for a couple of weeks before an angioplasty, so I had to drop everything and go up to give my mother a hand.   It was an odd time, fitting into a completely different routine and without email I felt very cut off, but the good news is that my father is now home, thanks largely to the wonderful care he had at Dumfries & Galloway Royal Infirmary.  That meant that I could come home too, and yesterday I made it back across the Pennines to a bulging inbox.  I’ve been catching up with friends too – it feels as if I have been away for three months instead of three weeks, and I am still a bit disorientated, as if I’ve jetted in from another world instead of just driving across the border!  Now I’ll have to pick up the pace and get back to my own routine.  I didn’t manage to do any work at all while I was away – it’s amazing how you can spend a whole day walking dogs/setting fires/visiting hospital/playing Scrabble – and already the next deadline seems to be looming …

I’ll need to settle down soon, but there are some good things to look forward to first.  I’m off to London on Saturday (snow permitting) and on Tuesday will be trotting along to Kensington for the Romantic Novelists’ Association Awards Luncheon when they’ll be announcing the winner of this year’s Romance Prize.  I’m looking forward to catching up with the likes of Kate Hardy, Fiona Harper and India Grey who are also on the shortlist and hopefully there will be some other familiar faces there too.  More about the lunch when I get back next week.

There was more good news waiting in my inbox when I got home.  I was scrolling quickly through last night, and found a lovely message from CataRomance saying that Last-Minute Proposal had been awarded a prestigious CataNetwork Reviewers’ Choice Award for 2008.  That was a huge thrill so many thanks to all at CataRomance for the award, and for giving me a much-needed lift when I got home!