I hadn't planned to disappear for a month, but in that time I have at least managed to produce my Yuletide story, which got way too long on me - I'm not sure what the final word count was, but at least 15 000. Simple calculations involving word ratio to time of writing make it clear to me that a novel is really not the absolutely massive writing project I keep making it into, and I should stop stuffing around and move on past the first chapter of my current one.

Anyway. Apart from about 20 picture books (shopping for various small friends, mainly, although I happily read picture books at other times) I've read/re-read a few others. Rosemary Sutcliffe's Arthurian legend one I want to save until I can go on about it, but here're a few others...

( The Thirteen Clocks and the Wonderful O, James Thurber. )

( Three Wishes, by Liane Moriarty. )

( The Pinhoe Egg, by Diana Wynne Jones. )

A bunch of others, but I've already had this crash on me once. Titles for later comment - Audrey, a New Girl (Joanna Lloyd), Darkland (Liz Williams), Starring Tracey Beaker (Jacqueline Wilson), the Rosemary Sutcliffe book, and The More the Merrier (Anne Fine), which is a suitably Christmassy note to end on.