Five Minutes Peace

How would you like to star in a novel?

When I was a teenager with too much time on my hands, I took commissions from friends to write a story featuring them and the heartthrob of their choice. I was quite good at it, by all accounts (My most frequent requests featured an appropriately sensitive Matt Goss, a deeply sexy - but in touch with his feminine side - George Michael, and New Kids on the Block's Donnie Wahlberg for a bit of rough.)

Given my, um, history, I'm surprised I didn't come up with idea to offer this skill to a wider audience, but I didn't. And U Star Novels did. You go to their website and provide personal details (such as characters' names, where they live, where they work, eye colour, hair colour, etc.) which will then be woven into your choice of novel, from a selection "ranging in sauciness". And if you're boyfriend/girlfriendless, you can have your fictional way with a celebrity instead.

I'll have Amsterdam Lessons with Russell Brand please. Actually, I might just go away and write that one myself...

Books to bring your mojo back

I know that some women feel incredibly sexy when they're pregnant. I'm not one of them. I know that some women can't even wait the recommended six weeks post-birth to get back in the sack. I'm not one of those either. (And I can't even bring myself to think about those freakish women who actually want to do it during labour! Labour!)

When we had Harry, we probably went without sex for (and I really am - kind of - embarrassed to admit this) at least eighteen months. That was pretty much the entire duration of the pregnancy and then the same again once he'd been born. I was knackered. I was a physical wreck. I had absolutely no libido. And I also had no contraception and I certainly wasn't going to risk getting pregnant again.

But it's important to get back on the horse (?!) and books can certainly help. I mean, I learned about sex from books in the first place and so, inevitably, I would return to books to try and re-learn about sex.

BOOK REVIEW: Seduction by Geneva Holliday

The words "erotic fiction" make me a teensy bit afraid. I'm not a prude (okay, I'm a bit of a prude), but I'm always wary of reading anything described as "erotic" and I'm certainly wary of reading anything with people in their underpants on the cover.

But Geneva Holliday's latest book, Seduction, while it is indeed erotic, is also great fun. I think I read it in two sittings and I was pretty much smiling throughout.