Hello, and welcome to my site!

If you ever came to another site called jennycolgan.com and it was never updated and you maybe even left messages that nobody ever responded to, uh, I would definitely say that was some other, much lazier Jenny Colgan and probably nothing to do with me. Yeah.

I would also say, though, that if you do want to get in touch with me directly, facebook is probably best - but here you can read some extracts, find out about new books and other projects and I may even manage to upkeep my blog (*laughs hollowly*).  The problem is that really nothing very exciting happens to me on a daily basis but if it ever does, I’ll definitely blog it. Or maybe try and make it into a newspaper article and actually flog it, but I’ll post it up too.

Jenny's new book is a scorcher!

Operation Sunshine came about when I overheard an aquaintance talking about her holiday. It sounded absolutely amazing and blissful and I thought, gosh, my holidays are never like that. They’re always a bit stressful at the airport, then the rooms are never as nice as you’d like and I get bitten by mozzies and burn something and take the wrong books . . .

June 13th 08

Hello...

Hello... and welcome to my blog, which I really hope is not going to be one of those things I dive into enthusiastically only to pathetically give up on really really fast, like learning to play the clarinet, making my own pastry or exclusively dating cartoonists.

I wasn't sure what to blog about, the novelist's life being what it is, ie, a well-trodden path from internet to fridge and back again, and of course there's all the HILARIOUS things my children say and do ALL THE TIME, but even I know how limited that appeal is. Actually, on the very rare occasions my children say or do anything even passably interesting, I immediately try and sell it to the Times for real money- I contribute to the Alpha Mummy blog, which is here:


I don't contribute that often, actually, partly because my kids aren't that interesting, partly because the mad comments people post afterwards are quite astonishingly in their viciousness completely regardless of whatever topic you're writing about, and partly because my friend Caitlin writes it a lot and she's kind of, uh, funnier than me and stuff.

I asked at work and they said write about anything, as long as it's okay by the lawyers. Which, frankly, cuts down substantially on my many and varied thoughts on Fergie from the Black Eyed Peas.

But I do know what I want to write about, because I say every year I'm going to do it, and I never do. I want to write about what I'm reading, so that even if no-one ever reads it, I'll finally have a record of what I'm getting through, so I can stop buying the same book twice or forgetting I like or hate this author or whatever. Wouldn't it be nice to have a record of all the books you've read in your life?

I'm one of those people who can't leave the house for a pint of milk without a book, aren't you? Well, what if you got in a lift and it stuck or something burnt down and you had to wait for a fire engine to come? You'd so totally need something to read. The best year of my life was when I was a judge for the Costas (then the Whitbread awards). I was the head fiction judge. Possibly the GREATEST JOB EVER. I was pregnant with my first baby and spent the entire summer lying under a tree reading every novel published that year. God it was great. AND one of the other judges was Hugh Grant!! I met him when I  was eight and a half months pregnant at the awards ceremony, and I thought my waters were going to break.

Plus, I live in France so my book access is a bit curtailed. Normally I rely on sidling into publishers going, ahh, Hannah, you wouldn't happen to have a copy of...uh, everything that's just out?

There is an english language section in the local library, but it has a really weird selection of Raymond Chandler, whom I don't like, gritty thrillers, which I am simply too thick to ever understand because they all have nine million tough- talking policemen and one women who's hard on the inside because she's HAD to be, goddamn it, plus a selection of recent 'greatest hits', like 'We Need to Talk About Kevin' and 'The Historian' and stuff, which I've read already.

The local English bookshop is good but really really expensive and I'm so spoiled with my library in London plus my publisher, plus I review a bit for Simon Mayo on the radio, so I get books there, plus publishers often send me stuff for quoting, so paying eleven euros for a paperback makes me a bit edgy. I know, totally spoiled.

SO, that's my plan for the blog. I'm going to go now and see if my download of Doctor Who is working yet (nb: possibly not the last ever mention of Doctor Who in this blog) but will do my best to come back tomorrow and run down what I'm liking at the mo. This list may well not contain Jane Smiley.

24th June 2008

Event at Waterstone's

Jenny is doing a talk at Waterstone's Glasgow on Tuesday 24th June. Be there from 6.30 p.m.!

17th July 2008

Edinburgh Book Festival

Jenny's doing a talk at the Edinburgh Book Festival on Sunday, 17th July at 4.00 p.m.