TanyaThugirl

RELEASED TODAY 'The Lost Empress' No 1 Bestseller in Historical Thrillers amazon link Meet Steve Robinson – bestselling author and a man who has confessed here that he shoots from the hip (see interview below). He has also finally appeared in public wearing the infamous 'writer's hat' mentioned in his first appearance  on my blog , and again  when I last interviewed him.   Steve Robinson drew upon his own family history for inspiration when he imagined the life and quest of his genealogist-hero, Jefferson Tayte. The talented London-based crime writer, who was first published at age 16, always wondered about his own maternal grandfather - "He was an American GI billeted in England during the Second World War," Robinson says. "A few years after the war ended he went back to America, leaving a young family behind and, to my knowledge, no further contact was made. I traced him to Los Angeles through his 1943 enlistment record and discovered that he was b...

I suppose it was inevitable that within minutes of us renaming our adopted dog 'Sherlock', my husband (a big 'Airplane' fan) said, 'Of course, we'll call him Shirley.' Sherlock/ Sherl/ Sherley/ G'boy seems very happy with his new names and life. He has a tail like a cat's and it's usually waving that little white hook at the end high in the air. His hind-quarters have completely regained muscle tone and a bum doubled in size suits him better than it does me; ditto the extra 5kg he gained gradually after he came to us. Read Part 1 of Sherlock's story A Happy Tale Sherlock is a griffon bleu de Gascogne, a Gascony Griffon, bred for hunting, abandoned with no ID. My suspicions that he was thrown out by his hunter-owner have been backed up by his behaviour. When we opened a bottle of Clairette (the local sparkling wine), the cork popping sent Sherlock into nervous running round. Purely in the interests of dog-training, we made sure he heard the so...