Jo Cotterill

It’s been a couple of weeks since I last blogged. But those two weeks have been eventful, in some good and some bad ways.

Firstly: the good. Well, actually I can’t tell you the good. Because then I’d have to kill you. But both good things are to do with books, and one of them is totally OMG AT LAST HURRAY! and the other is WOW WHAT AN HONOUR etc. I WILL divulge all, when I can. But for the moment, I’m sworn to secrecy. Which makes me sound like a super-spy, so I’ll go with that 🙂

Secondly: the bad. Illness. Of the really unpleasant kind. What is it with kids going back to school and suddenly catching ALL THE ILLNESSES EVER? Do their bodies forget how to fight germs over the long summer holidays? And why, when people become parents, does nobody point out that not only will your child catch sickness/diarrhoea/colds/flu/nits/impetigo but that YOU WILL TOO? I’m sure that many people would think twice about having kids if they realised it meant they’d catch three times as many illnesses themselves. Both my kids got sick, and then my husband and I got sick too – at the same time as each other. My mother wisely refused to come over and help, so there’s been an awful lot of CBeebies over the past week. Not that there’s anything wrong with CBeebies (apart from the dearth of female protagonists in most of the programming), but when I got to watch CBBC the other day, I nearly wept with relief (WOLF BLOOD – awesome programme!).

Everyone’s better now, thank goodness. And in the middle of everything, I DID get to celebrate one of my secret pieces of good news with two lovely writer friends, Sally Nicholls (who has some secret good news of her own) and MG Harris (who is a big fan of my homemade chocolate cake). Sally even brought some fizzy wine, which felt VERY decadent at lunch time.

I promise I will spill all my secrets soon 🙂

Well, maybe not ALL of them. A girl’s got to keep some things to herself, hasn’t she? 😉