A very happy, if belated, new year to you all!I'm not sure how we can be thirteen days into January and this is my first posting for a month.  So much for that new year, new start philosophy in which I intended to get ahead in all things writing/work/study... Still, a wonderful Christmas with Simon and yes, he did wear a little Santa suit despite my protestations about dressing babies up.  It's all Julie's fault for seeing it in the charity shop window, and it was just the right size, and, and, and, excuses galore... but: cute or what????And the stocking is All My Own Work, yes I know, I should stick to writing.  But I'm proud of it.  Oh dear, doting mother moment!It seems that quite a lot of people gave or got A Blonde Bengali Wife for Christmas; sales from Alaska to Nicaragua, from the south of England to...

Back in Edinburgh for a quick pitstop before travelling down to Suffolk for Christmas and New Year - if the airports are open long enough... so this might well be the last post this year.  That said, a very happy Christmas to everyone and thanks for your support and interest in the blog so far!  Lots of happiness, health and good luck for the new year - Back in 2011HAPPY HOLIDAYS

Greetings from Virginia!Simon slept through his first transatlantic flight, has yawned through his first meeting with Santa Claus, and even decided to sleep in a cot for a week before deciding this was a mistake...  And we're missing the big freeze in Scotland.Some nice reviews on Amazon:  http://www.amazon.co.uk/Blonde-Bengali-Wife-Anne-Hamilton/dp/1905091478If you've read the book, please feel free to add your own!  The more copies sold, the more royalties for Bhola's Children - so dare I suggest it as a perfect Christmsa gift???

Huge sigh of relief!The people flocked in in their hundreds (well, a wonderfully affirming 68, not all of whom I knew) and stayed beyond the wine and canapes.  The venue was great, the books arrived in time for a long, snaking queue for signings and the attentiveness (other than from Simon who slept from beginning to end) of the audience to the readings and Jacqui's explanation about Bhola suggested that the evening justified a night away from the telly.  Best of all, I didn't fall flat on my face or say anything completely stupid (I don't think).So, a big thank you to everyone who made it such a success - Neil & Caroline for their respective roles as compere and bar girl!! Ruth for seeing to the food, Julie & my mum for doing stuff that needed doing and Jacqui for the exhibition, the photographs and the 'speech'.  Jacqui Dunbar is a friend and  great...

Remember the theory of the 'six degrees of separation'?  Well, I met Dinah who met Bruna who took her to Bangladesh and introduced her to Ali who was running a small home-school for children with disabilities there...  The detail is in the preface to A Blonde Bengali Wife, but put simply Dinah fell in love with the country and the people in exactly the way I had done.  More so, she was totally inspired by the work Ali was doing on the island of Bhola, and came home with the plan to set up a charity to support him.  Thus was born Bhola's Children and a lifelong relationship between us and them.Still no sign of a publisher - but did it matter now?Well, some more excellent rejections ('great book but we've just taken on one about a female cyclist in Sierra Leone' or 'if only the author was famous we'd snap...