Last week was frantic for two reasons – firstly I went to London to visit my son (I haven’t seen him since June, so this was a long-awaited trip!) and secondly I was on a blog tour for the publication of ‘Winter Snowfall …’ If you don’t know about blog tours, this is where you ‘visit’ several different book blogs/bookstagrammers accounts during a week, and they either read and review or post content that the author provides. I’m always apprehensive about blog tours – what if everybody hates the book and all the reviews are awful?

Blog tours can also be very illuminating – if everybody comments on the same thing, you know you are doing it right – or wrong. So, what did my reviewers and early readers tend to agree on?

One thing came through resoundingly. Harry and Oliver, Amy and Matt’s sons, were almost universally popular. I had thought about cutting down their parts in the next novel because I thought people might get a bit bored of their high-jinks, but now … Harry and Oliver possibly need their OWN novel!

I had hesitated over a rather sad moment in the book (I won’t say what it is as this might spoil the book for anyone who wants to read it) – I wasn’t sure if this would be too much for a Christmas novel. Enough people have told me that they were touched by it to make me think that I made the right decision in putting it at the heart of the story. Although I love everything about Christmas novels I like them to have something more thought-provoking than simply tinsel and hot chocolate. So I was relieved to hear that other people thought the same way as I do.

Several people told me that they didn’t like the character of Diane. Now, this was the point, because Diane is not a likeable person. However when I was writing about her, the story developed as I wrote – it wasn’t planned. Diane was one of those characters who leaps off the page, grabs the pen and starts to write her own story. She was an absolute joy to write about, and I’m quite glad that people didn’t like her!

A couple of people also said that Amy and Matt were a bit annoying too. I like all my characters to have flaws, and both Amy and Matt have their issues, and communicating is a problem for both of them. Yes, the story could have been less tense if they’d communicated better from the start – with each other and with Diane – but then they wouldn’t have had to learn about the importance of being honest with each other and there would’ve been no story!

I’m more than happy with the early responses of readers and reviewers – a novel that for a lot of last year had become a millstone around my neck now becomes a gleam of festive brightness!