Actually, it turned out that I was involved in three - not two - publications this week. The US paperback edition of SEPULCHRE. Already there's been a great review - thoughtful, interesting, informed - on the website www.supertarot.co.uk, so that was most encouraging. The second edition was my novella for adults getting back to reading after some time, which published on 5th March. But it also turned out that a short story collection to which I'd contributed published on that same time.

Midsummer Nights is the brainchild of the dazzling British writer, Jeanette Winterson. A passionate opera fan, she decided to approach various novelists, short story writers, poets to write special stories for the 75th anniversary in 2009 of the private opera house in the Sussex Downs at Glyndebourne. Each of us was to use an opera that had been performed there - in my case, I chose Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande - as the starting point for our piece. Debussy's otherworldy opera ends with the death of the heroine and the birth of a baby. I took that child and imagined her life.

Others in the collection include Ali Smith, the UK Poet Laureate Andrew Motion, Grande Dame of Crime writing, Ruth Rendell, Alexander McCall Smith and, of course, Winterson herself. Operas chosen as inspiration include Wagner's Tristan and Isolde, Mozart's Marriage of Figaro and Verdi's Rigoletto.

As well as feeling delighted to be included in such glittering literary company, the book itself is beautiful. It is published by the young British publishing company, Quercus, and a perfect book for all opera lovers to celebrate midsummer nights.

A bientot.

It is unusual, but this week I have two publication days. One, in the US, for the paperback of SEPULCHRE - and thank you to everybody who's sent emails about that. The second is today in the UK, Thursday 5th March, for a very specific short novella written for adults with literacy difficulties.

March 5th is marked as World Book Day in the UK, where all children of school age are given a voucher to buy a book and lots of very affordable titles are published. Over the years, it became clear that it might also be a good day to focus on adult literacy too. Now, six bestselling authors are each year commissioned to write 20,000 novels aimed at adults with a reading age of between 9 and 12 years old. There are restrictions - no foreign words, no words of more than three syllables and so on - but the aim is to produce exciting, fast moving and typical (in terms of eah of the authors involved) fiction for this very specific market.

The Cave is a ghost story and, although it bears many of the hallmarks of my usual fiction, I found it very challenging, although also very rewarding, to write. In a few hours I'm off to do a live event with adult learners at a trade union in a local hospital, so I'll report back.

But, for now, happy World Book day to readers wherever you are!

A bientot

Kate