I recently had the pleasure of being interviewed by Coco Pinchard, a fictional writer from Robert Bryndza's excellent series of humorous books. I recently read and enjoyed 'A Very Coco Christmas' - reviewed here - and am currently reading 'The Not So Secret Emails of Coco Pinchard'; the laughter count is impressively high and I am rapidly turning into a huge fan of the Coco books. To read my interview - where you can find out who I think should play Maureen if there were to be a movie and see me wearing a festive jumper - please click here. Thanks, Robert!

A new drabble of mine has been unveiled today on the Indie Book Bargains website.

Mum

“Mum, tell me again why you’ve got two Christmas trees up… and twice as many crackers as there are family!”

“I told you - if you buy it all during the sales after Christmas, you save a fortune! I bought half of this lot on Boxing Day last year and put it away for safe keeping. Then when this Christmas came round, I’d clean forgotten about it all. Now I have double!”

How we laughed!

Later the following year, Mum was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. I can still picture the two trees, the crackers swamping the tablecloth, but I no longer laugh.

Around this time last year, I released a festive Maureen short story - Maureen Gets Crafty. It was a quick read and I enjoyed writing it, so much so that I always intended to follow it up with another quickie this year. Here's that 'quickie', which has ended up considerably longer than last year's offering. The book becomes the second longest in the Maureen series and, while writing it, I found it's the ideal bridging book between Maureen and The Big One and the next. It's thus 'Book 4' in the series but can be read by Maureen newbies on its own to the same level of enjoyment.

The cover more than alludes to the fact that it's a loose take on Dickens' Christmas story. I emphasise 'loose' - parts are looser than Maureen's knicker elastic, but it was fun incorporating elements of A Christmas Carol in places.

And the best part of this book release? As a gift to my readers, the book is free immediately on release. Grab it while you can, spread the word and enjoy!