The new prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, while a vast improvement on his predecessor is not doing much, if anything, to slow that process done.

I spent the year behind on deadlines and everything else. It's only now in December that I feel even slightly caught up. 2016 has to be better.

Really, according to the shrinks, I am angry at everyone ever. Especially them. I am all anger and resentment all the time. Not one of them has ever suggested that maybe I lie because the world is better the way I tell it.

I give people If You Came Softly when they demand proof that novels for teens can be as good as the best novels for adults.

Iloved Ashley Hope Perez's heartbreaking Out of Darkness set in late the 1930s in a small town Texas. It should win all the YA awards.

I decided to read something I normally hate: a cosy mystery. You know one of those mysteries where everything is tidily wrapped up at the end and everyone lives happily ever after? An Agatha Christie kind of mystery. They are so not my thing. But then someone was raving about Barbara Neely's Blanche White books and they sounded interesting.

I started writing a novel from the monster's point of view. It has its own difficulties but, I'm ashamed to say, it's much easier writing from a psychopath's point of view than from that of their empathetic opposite.