Jeanne Ray was 60 when she wrote Romeo and Julie, a delightful novel about two middle-aged florists long separated by family hatred. Part of the reason she wrote it was that she was tired of not seeing people her own age in books.

Sorry to barge in, but Betsy is playing my favourite game; I love collecting these kinds of writers' stories too.

Mary Wesley published her first book at 70. "I have no patience with people who grow old at 60 just because they are entitled to a bus pass," she said once. "Sixty should be the time to start something new, not put your feet up."

Mary Lawson's book Crow Lake just won the Canadian First Novel Award. It was published when she was 55.

A writer writes, period.

Publishing age is not a bar to a great book; why should it be? The longer you live, the more stories you have to tell.

Yeah, I know; it's just that at this point in my life I find the stories of authors who plugged away at it, usually part-time, for decades both comforting and inspiring.

Especially on days like today, when my work consists of massaging and collating multiple press releases into somewhat-readable form, and I can feel any stray bits of creativity I have left leaking out my ears (along with the grey matter).

Oh, I think the later in life writers are kickass. I also tend to think that the books I'll write at 60 (assuming I make it that far) are going to be far more amazing than anything I've had to say to date.

But I'm not the ideal person for this discussion, I think. I wrote my first three and a half books while running computer operations for a two-city banking regulatory law firm. I dealty by hiring a secretary whose mother is a famous poet, so who knew what I was about, and I got a lot done.

Without that, I'd have got a lot less written, I guess.

I'm having one of Those Moments.

"Matty Groves" is, realistically, a few weeks away from being finished. It's at nearly 55,000 words, and I'm charging down the straightaway to the big finish and epilogue, which are the easy parts for me to write. In the first two, I did the Big Bang Exorcism Concerts, all 13 or so pages, in one gulp each.

For some reason, I'm finding the feeling about finishing "Matty" very odd. It isn't that my house will be untenanted; on the contrary, I can then ask my betas and my agent to look at the entire thing instead of sections, and while I'm waiting for input, I can research UXB units in London after WWII and also do a little refreshing of my memory on the 15th century, both for the fourth book ("Cruel Sister"). Also, I can go slamming fulltime into "The Eden Tree", which I want to concentrate on.

So I don't know why I'm feeling so odd about being close to the end on this one.

But I am.

"Matty Groves" is, realistically, a few weeks away from being finished. It's at nearly 55,000 words, and I'm charging down the straightaway to the big finish and epilogue, which are the easy parts for me to write.

Yay, you! I checked for the first time last night, and Nihilist Chic is currently at 35,000 words or so. It's longer than I thought it was. Which is odd. The end's all plotted, except that I just made a major change that means I have to rework everything, and I've scrapped working linearly for awhile, to go back and write some secondary character stuff.

Fly-by post.

When I'm in California next month, in addition to the big reading Thessaly and I are doing in Orange, I'll also be reading a poem or two at a benefit-reading for Midnight Special Bookstore at Beyond Baroque in venice.

Other readers include Viggo Mortinson, Patricia Smith, Regie Gibson and many, many others.

Details to come.

Mild writing group vent below. Thing is, I'm sure I do the exact same I'm about to complain about, the whole "my work is an exception to the rule you're citing because blah blah blah exceptioncakes."

Hero of romantic fantasy spends at least two full pages confessing his love to heroine in a long, emotional speech. Didn't feel like real dialogue at all. I gently suggested that perhaps the speech needed to be broken up a little, just so it would flow better, and that I found it hard to imagine as real dialogue. I made a crack about my own hero, that James couldn't make a speech that long if you paid him. Other writer replies, "James is English--my guy is Greek."

I shrugged and made the palms-upraised "your story, your call" gesture. But the thought bubble above my head read, "Are you kidding? Have you paid attention to my book? James is talky meat. Nothing stiff and upper about his lips. He's just not speechy meat, because speeches are annoying and don't sound like real conversation!"

Susan, I already think your writers group aint my writers group, bebe. I mean, if the purpose of the thing isn't to hear feedback and evaluate it properly, why bother?

I also (having been to Greece a time or three) tend to doubt that this particular speechwriter has hung out with too many Greek men. They're, er, more about immediate action than loud talk, in my experience.

Basically, two pages of eternal love declaration, my arse. He'd be more likely to have her knickers around her knees after half a paragraph.