Most of the blogs I've put on this site have been short snippets of news or have been about my writing process. There's little that, as a former news reporter, I'd deem properly newsworthy in any way.

All that changed last week when my next novel, Anatomy of a Scandal, was sold to Simon & Schuster, together with a second, in an auction on the eve of the Frankfurt Book Fair.  I even featured as a page lead on the first Bookseller Daily -  complete with a more serious - some have said scary - black and white profile pic:

I'm obviously completely delighted - and am thrilled that the novel I wrote out of contract, but with a strong conviction that this was a story I had to tell, has resonated not only in the UK but with publishers elsewhere. Before I'd even had a UK preempt, Anatomy had been preempted in Italy and France. It's also been preempted in Spain; been sold in a Norwegian auction; and I have offers from Germany, Turkey, Russia and Lithuania. As I write, the novel is out on submission in the US.

If this all sounds terribly cocky, then no one has been more surprised than me by the speed and certainty of these offers. Writing can be a lonely, doubt-filled process and it's only when I start editing and rereading ahead of submission that I begin to think: "Perhaps this isn't too bad." And then: "Actually, I can do this" 

Or perhaps that's slightly disingenuous. Anatomy of a Scandal is a novel I wanted to write for three years; something that I feel passionate about; and that - if everything is copy, as Nora Ephron famously said - contains an awful lot of me. It's darker and more emotional in tone than my two previous novels: a novel that explores questions that I think are being asked at the moment across many cultures as the breadth of countries offering to publish suggests.

I'm a perfectionist but even I knew, as I finished this, that this was a novel I'd really want to read.

I'm so incredibly grateful to my agent, Lizzy Kremer; the rights team at David Higham Associates, and my new editors, notably Jo Dickinson at S&S.

Because, thanks to them, the suspicion that this is a novel worth reading has become a certainty. And, thanks to them, it won't just be by me.

I am writing for the first time in four weeks. Just reading that sentence makes my stomach crease with panic and yet taking the first month of the summer holidays off - something unprecedented since writing full-time; and unknown when I worked as a journalist  - has been a creative thing to do. With builders knocking my house apart, I fled to the most southernly tip of Britain - the Lizard peninsula - keen to escape everything: social media; the relentless organisation of life as a parent of two young children; the unfounded anxiety that no one would buy my current book; the very busy-ness that stuffs my head around publication and can threaten to overwhelm.

Although The Farm at the Edge of the World is set on the north Cornwall coast, I wasn't particular about which part of the Cornish coast we visited. I was interested in extremity. A spot at the edge of Britain where the sea stretched in front of me and I could envisage utter, perfect isolation - though, this being Cornwall in the first week of the summer holidays and me holidaying with my husband and two children, that was rather a tough call. Most of all I craved somewhere where phones wouldn't work and where my children wouldn't mention the iPad we'd decided not to take. A place in which to detox technologically, and to wind down until my main consideration was when to plunge into the icy sea for a swim and whether I could bear to do so when the skies were molten and my skin was pimpled with goose bumps. A place where my eleven and eight-year-olds would race to be the first in the sea; and bound ahead of us along the cliff path like the springer spaniels they fell in love with. A spot where the first view in the morning would be the sea; and the air would be thick with the smell of sea salt and lush, dew-soaked grass.

We found all this camping at Coverack, watching the sun set over the limpid water beyond the harbour; and as we plunged into the coldest sea I have ever swum in: the churning waves that swallowed up my youngest and spat him out again at Kynance cove.

I found this sense of serenity, too on a trip to Penzance - truly the edge of the world - where I floated in the art deco salt-water Lido and watched the clouds scud across a royal blue sky, conscious that my mind was being emptied of all preoccupations and worries and refilled with new snippets of ideas for stories; and that all I need do, in this safe, contained place which fired my creativity, was to let the water buoy me up, keep me afloat.

It's a truism that such moments of intense relaxation are the stuff that holidays are made of. Each year I experience them and each year I vow to hold onto them. Inevitably, I fail. But this year, I'm going to cling on to the emotions felt on those Cornish cliffs and in the sea and evoked, I hope, by my Cornish novel. That sense that many of the things I worry about are mere clutter: superfluous compared to my priorities. And, as I begin plotting my next novel, I'm going to use these memories and these images to try to replicate those rare moments of calmness; moments that let me drift to the edge of my imaginative world.

The Farm at the Edge of the World, my novel about love, loss and forgiveness played out on the desolate north Cornish coast, is published today. I'm not having a hardback launch but I will be doing this event with two fellow Hachette authors on the Hodder roof terrace on July 19 and would love to see some friendly faces there:

I've also been busy publicising the novel, with an audible interview here and a series of blog pieces, many collated on my previous blog page; the others to be listed here when published.

The novel is also out as an audiobook, expertly narrated by Claire Corbett. I find it difficult listening to my words being read by someone else - a common writerly problem I think - but from this little clip, I know she'll do it justice. If you click here you'll get a flavour. Hope you enjoy! 

The Farm at the Edge of the World will be published in less three weeks - and as in the run-up to finals, or the birth of a baby, I've found myself immersed in a sudden frenzy of activity.  

I've attempted a mini book-tour, whisking to the very western tip of Cornwall and the fortuitously named Edge of the World bookshop, in Penzance, as well as Waterstone's Truro and St Ives bookseller to try to drum up support:

I've helped create a Pinterest page of photos that helped inspired the novel - see it here - and, having been picked as the Hodder, Quercus and Headline women's fiction website's choice of the month, have blogged on the books on my bedside table, here and my perfect weekend - in Cornwall, of course - here.

I've also written about the inspiration behind the novel for the Prime Writers website, here:

My great grandfather, Matthew Jelbert, who farmed just outside St Austell. Part of the inspiration for the book.

Childhood holidays in north Cornwall - and the emotional significance of a certain place - sparked the initial idea. Here my sister and I are walking on Tregirls Beach, aged 11 and 9, 1984.

And I've been interviewed for audible.com and written about the archetypal tricky second novel for fellow Hodder author Katie Marsh, here.

With a Hodder rooftop reading planned, I'm not holding a party until the paperback's released in January - not least because I'm determined to finish the first draft of my third novel by June 30, my publication day. It won't be a day of languid self-congratulation: one child has a piano exam and athletics tournament; another swimming; while my evening will be spent preparing for a school leavers' breakfast and attending a secondary school meeting.

But amid the busy-ness of everyday life, I'll make time to sit and stroke a finished copy, relieved that my archetypal tricky second novel has emerged as a beautifully-jacketed, tangible, thing. The book I once agonised over, and doubted I could ever wrest into a tightly-structured story, is being read, and - finger's crossed, so far - enjoyed. And that's reason enough for a celebration, however quiet a kind.