Spring is arriving at last in southern France where I am copyediting my novel, The Viking Hostage.

I was delighted to revisit this quotation from Freda White’s Three Rivers of France:

‘the spring in Aquitaine comes flying from the west in a swirl of flowers, with summer hard on its heels, pursuing it by the rivers and catching up with it on the ridges’.

I put the quotation into the mouth of one of my characters in the novel.

I wrote The Viking Hostage nine years ago, sitting in this same house in France. It has been out of print for a couple of years. I’m delighted to be reissuing it as a new edition with Meanda Books. It is published on 20 June and available to preorder now. (Hardback and paperback preorders coming soon.)