Low life | 14 April 2016
On Monday morning I was in a blind panic. The deadline for posted manuscript entries to the Daily Mail First Novel competition is 1730 GMT on Saturday 16 April. But I was in France again. A letter sent from France to Blighty takes between three days and a week. Therefore I had to get my entry — 5,000 words in 12 point Times New Roman, double-spaced, and a 600-word synopsis of the rest — posted by midday at the absolute latest. The winner gets £20,000 and a book deal if he or she can faithfully promise to deliver the finished novel by 31 October. On Monday morning my problems were
