Watch this global space

I am thrilled to announce a new alliance with an innovative, dynamic, truly international woman, Kelly Falconer, founder of the Asia Literary Agency, who will be representing my fiction and non-fiction book projects worldwide. More details will be released to the UK and international press next week but what I can say for now is that we have three fiction projects ready to go and many more in the works (or rather, boiling in my brain, or spilling out of countless Smythson Panamas, the most beautiful notebook in the world)... and I have a new cool ally to be inspired by and learn from. Check out this interview with Publishing Perspectives, or this very recent piece from Time Out Hong Kong or this coverage right here from Book Brunch. See what I mean? These days you go global or give up.

I must also announce that this blog will flatline for the timebeing, although I'll keep my appearances and biog pages up to date. I've enjoyed (by which I mean to say I really disliked and resented) contributing to this site in an unpaid, overworked, compulsive and futile fashion for two and a half years and must now step back "without a murmur and with the fortitude that religion alone can give," to quote from a tombstone I saw at Exeter Cathedral yesterday. The inscription was commemorating a woman who died at only 29 after a long and no doubt totally harrowing illness. My articles on the arts and culture, social justice and international affairs, along with my work on health and global development for the International Reporting Project, will appear in the Huffington Post (another new alliance which I am very happy to announce) and elsewhere.