Keats’ Ode to Autumn is embedded in my mind because I learned it – among other set texts - as a teenager at school.  These early phrases and rhythms, learned by heart, carved into the mind when the clay was soft, are the mind-house for our future lives: reference points returned to again and again for clues to survival.  Another phrase that recurs for me - perhaps more often than it should - is from Shakespeare’s Henry V ‘…stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood, disguise fair nature with hard favoured rage, give the eye a terrible aspect…’  

Learning by heart, a wonderful phrase, is out of fashion in education these days which is a pity, but I do find that younger people have the lyrics of songs ‘off by heart’ which might serve the same purpose. When I think of it, even I  have lyrics buried somewhere inside myself which serve the gloomier aspects of my reflection! ‘Blue moon, I saw you standing alone, without a dream in my heart, without a love of my own’,  sits there alongside ‘…down at the end of lonely street, at Heartbreak Hotel…’

The autumnal shades in the portrait on this page, by my friend Fiona Horner, are a happy coincidence for this month’s diary. In fact the portrait was inspired by a photograph taken (unbeknown to me) by a friend in Colorado Springs USA, as I sat writing in a stream of sunshine. Fiona has caught the whole tension of the figure crouching over the notebook, the fingers clutching the pen. When I write I am in quite another world. After three or four hours at my desk, I often lose my voice, as though I had spoken all the words I have written, have lived all the lives. Strange.

I have just checked the paperback proofs for HONESTY’S DAUGHTER, which will be out next spring. This final check for the paperback is always revealing as it seems to me that surely at this stage, with the hardback out, there will be no changes. But in fact there are. The search for perfection goes on. As well as this my publishers Headline, in  their wisdom, have decided to change the cover image entirely, which is unusual. I love the cover of the hardback, which is dreamy and atmospheric, but can see that this new cover is sharper and simpler and will probably be more commercially successful. That, and the fact that this is a big chunky book, should prove popular with readers who like to settle down to a nice long read! Check out the two cover images here and let me know which one you like.

I am at last in the final stages of my new book, THE ROMANCER. It's an absorbing and very challenging story which at present seems to have its own life entirely. Still, I look forward to being able to it over to my new editor, Hari Evans. Last month, a friend asked me what an editor does, apart from ‘look at the text’. After some thought, I said that a good editor was an creative first reader, an efficient, enabling, collaborator, a source of inspiration and reassurance, an advocate – even a battler - for your work within her company, a champion for your novel to the outside world. It seems a lot to ask from one person, but then I am the great idealist!

I have no books to recommend to you this month, as much of my reading has focussed on writing as yet unpublished. I chaired the judges for the annual national writing competition run from  Bishop Auckland Town Hall, and have reviewed a new manuscript by Linda Hooper for a brilliant novel inspired by the Armada. I have also written an article called Twentieth Century Blues for the November edition of Solander, the magazine of  the Historical Novel Society, and a review of three sagas for the current edition of Mslexia. Between them, they reflect my views on historical fiction and cultural attitudes. You can read them in the magazine – nice to see them in context – as well as here on my site.