Leila Aboulela - Elsewhere, Home - blog tour

Today we're taking part in the blog tour for Leila Aboulela's new collection of short stories - Elsewhere, Home. A prize-winning author of several novels and a previous story collection, Aboulela was born in Khartoum, and now lives in Aberdeen. She first came to my attention with The Kindness of Enemies, and I'm intrigued and impatient to read this latest volume of her work.

Meanwhile, here's an extract from one of the stories. I hope it whets your appetite for more ...



The Ostrich
 ...

  ‘You look beautiful in blue,’ the Ostrich said, and when I was cruel he said, ‘but I can be a judge of voices can I not?’ I didn’t ask him what he thought of my voice. I walked away. It must have been in the evening that I was wearing blue. It was white tobes in the morning, coloured ones for the evening. The evening lectures were special, leisurely; there was time after lunch to shower, to have a nap. To walk from the hostels in groups and pairs, past the young boy selling peanuts, past the closed post office, past the neem trees with the broken benches underneath. Jangly earrings, teeth smacking chewing gum and kohl in our eyes. The tobes slipping off our carefully combed hair, lifting our hands, putting them back on again. Tightening the material, holding it under our left arm. I miss these gestures, already left behind. Majdy says, ‘If you cover your hair in London they’ll think I am forcing you to do that. They won’t believe it is what you want.’ So I must walk unclothed, imagining cotton on my hair, lifting my hand to adjust an imaginary tobe.
 The sunset prayers were a break in the middle of these evening lectures. One communist lecturer, keen to assert his atheism, ignored the rustling of the notebooks, the shuffling of restless feet, the screech of the Ostrich’s alarm. Only when someone called out, ‘A break for the prayers!’ did he stop teaching. I will always see the grass, patches of dry yellow, the rugs of palm fibre laid out. They curl at the edges and when I put my forehead on the ground I can smell the grass underneath. Now that we have a break we must hurry, for it is as if the birds have heard the azan and started to pray before us. I can hear their praises, see the branches bow down low to receive them as they dart to the trees. We wash from a corner tap, taking turns. The Ostrich squats and puts his whole head under the tap. He shakes it backwards and drops of water balance on top of his hair. I borrow a mug from the canteen and I am proud, a little vain knowing that I can wash my hands, face, arms and feet with only one mug. Sandals discarded, we line up and the boy from the canteen joins us, his torn clothes stained with tea. Another lecturer, not finding room on the mat, spreads his handkerchief on the grass. If I was not praying I would stand with my feet crunching the gravel stones and watch the straight lines, the men in front, the colourful tobes behind. I would know that I was part of this harmony, that I needed no permission to belong. Here in London, the birds pray discreetly and I pray alone. A printed booklet, not a muezzin, tells me the times. Here in London, Majdy does not pray. ‘This country,’ he says, ‘chips away at your faith bit by bit.’

                                                             ***

Elsewhere, Home is published by Telegram, an imprint of Saqi publishing, and is available on Kindle and in paperback.

Kaya's Heart Song by Diwa Tharan Sanders - author contribution

illustrated by Nerina Canzi

review by Maryom

As Kaya's mama sits meditating, she hums a little song - her heart song. Kaya wants to join in, have her own song to sing, but, as most children are, is too impatient to sit quietly, so she goes off to play in the jungle.There, she finds a broken-down carousel, and, in bringing it back to life, finds her own heart song too.

Most children are noisy, rushing around playing, not wanting to sit quietly. In Kaya's Heart Song, author Diwa Tharan Sanders encourages them to seek out quiet time, to observe the world around them, and to get in touch with their emotions, while Nerina Canzi's jewel-bright illustrations bring Kaya's world magically to life.

Here today as part of the Kaya's Heart Song blog tour, we have author Diwa Tharan Sanders to tell us more.

"I feel honoured to be able to share my take on mindfulness and children but as I am by no means an expert on the topic, everything offered here has come from personal experience and through conversations with friends. Mindfulness has certainly become a popular topic with children and I hear more and more about schools integrating mindfulness into their curriculum, which sounds absolutely fantastic to me, how I wish I had had those lessons too.

So what is mindfulness? To me, it is being aware of the present moment and tuning inwards with a calm, quiet mind to a state of be-ing and releasing all thoughts of anything else but the now. One of the beautiful things about mindfulness is that in can happen anytime or anywhere, if we allow it to. You could be waiting for the bus, walking through a garden observing the flowers or engrossed doing something you love such as art, cooking, running or you could even be sitting in a busy restaurant waiting for a meal for a state of mindfulness to happen.

When it comes to children, the same mindfulness ‘principles’ apply. Give them the space to pause as it were and allow them to come into a place of quietness and calm. This can create a ripple of positivity for their well-being. I hear the term ‘instant gratification’ being passed around amongst my friends with children and it basically means children (and many adults too, to be fair) today don’t know how to wait. In this current technologically-laden world of instant messaging, ‘instant-gramming’, watching videos on demand and being able to communicate instantly at the touch of a button, we have forgotten the art of waiting. Of noticing and of just being. I personally think that extending time and space to children to simply be with themselves will cultivate more awareness, patience and other sorts of ‘magic’ such as creativity, self-expression and self-discovery. A very real example of this is the process in which I wrote Kaya’s Heart Song.

My inspiration for the story was to write about a little girl who wanted to be happy, because I felt (and still do) that we sometimes forget the importance of following our hearts by unconsciously drowning-out the voice of our hearts living our day-to-day lives the way we’re ‘supposed to’. Thinking about happy hearts, led to the idea of a heart song and it was in discovering my own heart song as I wrote the book, that the theme of mindfulness revealed itself. And so yes, Mama is right in saying, “If you have a heart song, anything is possible. Even magic!”

And it’s finding this magic that I think is the best thing about practising mindfulness. Give your child (and yourself!) space to take the time to feel and listen for the magic that’s in us all. It is found in many different forms: in new ideas, finding new emotions, expressing these emotions, in having the courage to speak up for what you want or love, in being creative and even in simply being happy and content in the moment. Whatever makes your heart sing is mindfulness working its magic.

Here are a couple suggestions of mindfulness practices to do with your child (thank you to my friends who willingly brainstormed some of these ideas with me):

1. The next time your child does something you badly want to discipline them for, be mindful about it. Calm yourself with 10 – 15 deep breaths before explaining to your child why they should take some time alone to be with themselves and think about what they did. Ask them how they feel after.

2. The next time your child asks for your smartphone or gadget to play with, offer them something else like a piece of paper, an empty box or nothing at all and watch what happens. Regardless of how they react, you’re creating a space for them to be with their emotions and essentially express themselves. This also opens their mind to thinking out-of-the-(electronic) box and stimulates their creativity.

3. Set aside joint ‘mindfulness time’, it could be a walk in the park to observe the trees, a colouring activity, sitting down to breathe together in meditation or silence or anything that feels like it would stimulate you and your child.

4. Listen to your heart song. Our hearts are often the truest barometers of how we’re feeling at any particular time. Make a conscious effort to tune in; ‘zoning-in’ instead of zoning-out and take the time to notice what’s going on inside. Sing, hum, whistle, speak, move, tap or drum whatever it is you hear. Self-expression has been for me one of the best ways to connect deeper to my own heart and to feel more mindful.

There are many advantages of practising mindfulness. For me, the most precious one is the love, honour and magic that we give to ourselves when we do so, because this is what then flows out into the world. Mindfulness starts inside, with us all and can be an amazing gift to unravel when we find the time to journey inward. Imagine how incredible it would feel to live amongst those who are creating and sharing magic every single day!"

Diwa is a yoga teacher, Breath of Bliss breathwork facilitator, and owns Tulamala, a brand that makes intuitively-designed mala necklaces and bracelets for healing, happiness and inspiration. Kaya's Heart Song is her first picture book

You can find Kaya's Heart Song here on Lantana Publishing's website

Force of Nature Blog Tour

We're delighted to be taking part today in the blog tour for Jane Harper's second Australian mystery

Force of Nature

Jane Harper's first crime thriller, The Dry, transported the reader to the hot, dusty, drought-ridden spaces of rural Australia. This time, we're again far from the safety of the cities, but in the misty, rain-soaked bush country of the Giralang Ranges. In this remote spot, Executive Adventures run corporate team-building retreats, encouraging stressed office workers to get outdoors and bond while trekking through the bush. The latest group of ten co-workers from finance company BaileyTennant is expected back any minute. The five men show up, a little early, but of the women's group there's no sign. Search parties are sent out, with no success. As darkness is dropping, the women's group eventually stumbles back to base ... but one of them, Alice Russell, is missing ...

I'm not sure from their reputation that any of these team-building, bonding exercises work, even in real life, but in fiction they lead to the opposite - irritation and fractious bickering leading gradually to the group falling out and heading for disaster in one shape or another - and this story is no exception. Immediately you latch onto the fact that the five woman may work together but are not friends at all; they're all outside their comfort zone; Jill is isolated by her position as one of the company's owners; twins Bree and Beth would sooner be anywhere rather than together, especially out in the Bush, Alice and Lauren may have been at school together but now they now seem locked in a battle of one-up-man-ship over jobs, houses and the achievements of their children; add in the fact that Alice has been providing the police with inside information about possible illegal deals taking place, and you've got a recipe for trouble. Oh, and the Giralang area was once the base of a serial killer...

Federal agent Aaron Falk, from The Dry, is back as Alice's police contact, and he and his partner, Carmen Cooper, are immediately alarmed by news of her disappearance, suspecting it could be related to their investigation, and so are dragged in to the search for her. While more experienced men take on the physical task of scouring the bush, Falk and Cooper talk to her colleagues and family, and try to build a picture of Alice's circumstances and state of mind. At the same time, a different thread of story goes back a couple of days, and follows the BaileyTennant staff as they head off into the bush.

The Dry was a wonderful example of a claustrophobic small town whodunnit and, in this totally different setting, Harper has created a thriller, possibly a murder mystery, that will grab you immediately, and keep you hooked till the end. The countryside and weather are again used to great effect to create atmosphere and highlight mood, with rain and mist adding to the growing menace, and clouding the investigation as much as they do the landscape. I raced through the book, eager to know what happened to Alice, and whether she'd be found alive or not. Although Force of Nature again features Aaron Falk it is a complete standalone story, so there's no need to have read The Dry beforehand. 

To find out more follow #ForceofNature blog tour, author @JaneHarperautho and publisher @LittleBrownUK on Twitter

Carol McGrath - The Woman in the Shadows - blog tour

Today we're delighted to be hosting the blog tour for Carol McGrath's The Woman in the Shadows, the story of Elizabeth Cromwell, the wife of Tudor statesman Thomas, with a piece from the author on the role of women in Tudor times ...


Elizabeth Cromwell and Women in Tudor Times


My new novel The Woman in the Shadows will be published on 4th August. This novel’s protagonist is Thomas Cromwell’s wife Elizabeth Cromwell. It was difficult to find recorded history about Elizabeth Cromwell, so to bring the wife of Henry VIII’s infamous statesman to the page, I undertook an enormous amount of research into the lives of Tudor women and, in particular, into the lives of women belonging to London’s merchant class. Here are snippets of what I discovered and integrated into the world of The Woman in the Shadows.

Marriage
Elizabeth was a young widow when she married Thomas Cromwell circa 1514. The age at which a first marriage took place varied depending on social background. The average would have been twenty to twenty-six. I suggest twenty-two. He would have been twenty-eight. A marriage was the joining of whole families and, as the Cromwells business interests expanded, relatives were drawn in. In fact, it was a relative who helped Cromwell get employed by Cardinal Wolsey. Widows could choose their second husband. They could inherit their husband’s business interests and a third portion if they had children by that husband. Once married, her property became her husband’s property even if they parted. I like to think there was love and mutual respect between Elizabeth and Thomas. It is recorded fact that his friends admired Elizabeth.

Childbirth
This was an important function of marriage. Elizabeth was not continually pregnant but she had three children with Thomas Cromwell. There was little pre-natal care. Dietary advice was based on the humours. Fish and milk, for instance, were considered phlegmatic. On birth the belief in talismans was common. Eagle-stones and the St Catherine’s belt were popular. Many churches apparently possessed this reliquary or its imitation and lent the belt out to women for their labour. A pregnant woman took to her chamber four weeks before the birth. It was hung with best hangings and the shutters were fastened up against fresh air. After the birth, the mother was confined to bed for three days and then to her chamber until her churching, a simple thanksgiving service, over a month later.

Education
Both middle-class boys and girls had an informal education including instruction in religion. Girls were taught to be good, obedient faithful wives and to raise children as devout Christians. Children of Elizabeth’s class were taught to make themselves pleasing in company and useful to those above them. Even apprentices were taught good manners. Elizabeth had to be capable of looking after her house and children properly, and above all to have a care for her husband’s comfort. She was, as many women were, involved in their business interests, even if Thomas was the main bread-earner. Even though she could be a female merchant the professions such as the legal professions were closed to her. Women often did the accounts, and she may well have done these in the early days of their marriage. Yet, even if she was clever she was expected to be soft and delicate, and could never think of herself as a man’s equal.

Hygiene
Tudors washed more frequently than given credit for. Bathing was a wooden tub for most. They strip-washed every day and it was a matter of pride to have clean linen. Women made scented washing balls from expensive imported olive oil soap by adding herbs and flower scents to them. A respectable Tudor never sat down to eat without washing hands first as they ate with fingers. Cleanliness about the household was vital. The dairy especially must be clean. General cleaning was an extremely time-consuming task. Elizabeth would have had servants and cooks but it was her responsibility to train them.

Food and Cooking
A good display at meal times was important. Thomas Cromwell was exceptionally social and apparently good company. He was witty and possessed a phenomenal memory. The family would lose face if the house-wife could not present guests with a variety of dishes. These would include plain boiled and roasted meats accompanied with fancy spiced sauces. Exotic ingredients could be found in Elizabeth’s kitchen. One example mentioned in the novel is Russian isinglass - an expensive, pure form of gelatin found in the swim bladders of sturgeon. White leach was made by boiling new milk with isinglass and leaving it to cool and set firm until it could be cut into squares that might be gilded.

There is much, much more and limited space here. The book’s world is packed with a woman’s life in the Early Tudor period. At this time the exact nature of a woman was under debate as was the effect of education on women. I like to think that as a Humanist, a man of the new learning, a Renaissance man, Thomas Cromwell was enlightened and in favour of education for women, just like Thomas More who famously had his daughters educated. Tudor women, in general, none the less, had skills that even though not completely acknowledged, were as essential to society as those belonging to their brothers, fathers, and husbands. They, like today’s women, were true multi-taskers. They were both similar and different, and, for me, incorporating this concept into Elizabeth’s story was the novel’s real challenge.

Anne Goodwin - Underneath - blog tour

Today we're welcoming Anne Goodwin as part of a blog tour to promote and discuss her latest novel Underneath. To get an insight into it check out Maryom's review but here's a little synopsis from the publisher ... 

"He never intended to be a jailer …

After years of travelling, responsible to no-one but himself, Steve has resolved to settle down. He gets a job, buys a house and persuades Liesel to move in with him.

Life’s perfect, until Liesel delivers her ultimatum: if he won’t agree to start a family, she’ll have to leave. He can’t bear to lose her, but how can he face the prospect of fatherhood when he has no idea what being a father means? If he could somehow make her stay, he wouldn’t have to choose … and it would be a shame not to make use of the cellar.

Will this be the solution to his problems, or the catalyst for his own unravelling?"

Maryom; I think my first question has to be, What was the starting point for this novel? Was it the thought of an underground room, and the purposes it might be put to, or did it grow from Steve's character?

Anne; It’s always difficult to be completely accurate about where a novel started, but I’d been thinking about insecure attachment and extreme forms of vulnerability, such as the experience of a baby totally dependent on unresponsive caregivers. When some shocking reports came to light of women imprisoned in a hideaway, within, or attached to, an ordinary house, I thought the emotional experience might be similar. I’m not entirely sure how that got turned around to writing from the point of view of the jailer, except that I had the image of an unhappy little boy in mind and I’m curious about the way in which vulnerability can be expressed in actions that seem, at least on the surface, to come from strength and power.

As I said in my review Underneath isn't the domestic noir or thriller that a reader might expect from its synopsis. Were you ever tempted to go down that route? 

I wasn’t aware of domestic noir as a genre when I started writing this novel in 2010 but, even if I had been, I doubt I’d have wanted to write one, despite their popularity. With some exceptions, I’m not drawn to thrillers as a reader because of the way in which character and credibility can be compromised for the sake of plot. But the potential for overlap is tricky in describing Underneath: I think the synopsis is a fair reflection of the story but appreciate that some readers will be disappointed that it falls short on the twists and turns of the classic thriller; others, like yourself, will be pleasantly surprised it takes a different route. But, given the difficulty of predicting reader responses, I’m content to take the themes and ideas that are of interest to me and crafting them into the best story I can manage.


How much do you draw on your experience as a clinical psychologist when creating characters? and  do they appear fully formed or develop along with the story?

Having studied psychology in one form or another for over a decade, and worked as a clinical psychologist for twenty-five years, that experience – and perhaps even more the style of thinking – is integral to who I am. My background gives me empathy for my characters – even the villains like Steve – and an awareness of the complexities and contradictions of the human condition. But, like many people who gravitate to the helping professions, my own vulnerabilities aren’t so different to those of the people I’ve worked with, so I draw on my own demons too.
I couldn’t imagine a character arriving fully formed unless I’d based them on someone I knew, which doesn’t particularly appeal to me, so they develop over various rewrites in conjunction with the story.

By the end of the novel, I felt that, although I wouldn't condone Steve's actions, he was more a victim of his childhood and upbringing than an out and out villain. Is this how you saw him as his character unfolded? How much responsibility for his adult character can be laid on his mother and sisters? Do you think there was a point in his life at which events could have taken a different path?

I’m pleased Steve had that effect on you, Mary. Although I have little experience of working with offenders, I generally found as a clinical psychologist that, if I could support clients to be open and honest with me, I felt a significant degree of warmth and compassion even if I wouldn’t have been drawn to them in ordinary life. Steve first took root in my mind as a sad little boy, so I was always conscious of his vulnerability and, while I was writing, I was very much – perhaps too much – on his side, wanting him to get his own way. In fact, even though I’ve stepped back from him now, I still have a soft spot for Steve. However, although I think he’s partly a victim of his circumstances, he does have choices, and sometimes he’s taken the wrong ones. While his mother’s grief and emotional neglect, and his sisters’ bullying, have shaped his character, they too were doing their best in difficult circumstances and I don’t see them as responsible for what he does. I’ve written in more detail about these issues in some other guest posts:

Fictionalising the Mentally Disordered Offender

Child, lover, jailer: The three faces of Steve

Compassion for the Criminal, Condemnation of the Crime

Victims, villains and vulnerability

The Child in the Clothes of the Criminal

Finally, I like your question about whether there was a point at which his life could have taken a different course. Psychological support for the family when the mother is briefly hospitalised and the children taken into care might have helped, and there’s a huge gap in our knowledge of Steve as an adolescent and young adult where a sympathetic teacher might have channelled him into a more stabilising career. (Perhaps he could have become a clinical psychologist, or an art therapist like Liesel!) But relative to a lot of children and families who come to the attention of services, he wouldn’t appear particularly disturbed and I think there’s an element of bad luck in how things turned out.

Thank you, Anne, that was a fascinating chat, and I'm looking forward to reading your other posts in this tour.

Caroline Wallace - The Finding of Martha Lost - blog tour

Today we're delighted to be taking part in the  blog tour for The Finding of Martha Lost. Martha was found as a baby on the platform of Liverpool's Lime Street station, and has spent all her life there, living in the flat above the lost property office. Setting is obviously a key point to the novel and  author Caroline Wallace is here to talk about just that ... 


The original plan was to set The Finding of Martha Lost in Paris. For many years, I’d been infatuated with the culture, the romance, the language too. At eighteen, I even ran away to France, to find myself and to fall in love; neither happened.

My outline for The Finding of Martha Lost was to focus on a character called Martha being lost, then found, on departures and arrivals in a train station, with a host of quirks that I imagined would feel at home in France. The novel was forming nicely in my mind, despite the many obstacles of the setting being overseas, but everything changed when I walked through Lime Street Station in Liverpool (on my way to a Nik Kershaw concert).

I needed cash but couldn’t recall where the cash machines were located inside the station. After several minutes of searching, and having spotted a man sitting inside, I stepped into Lime Street Station’s lost property office and asked for help. The man behind the counter glared at me. I swear he growled as he pointed at a laminated sign on his desk: ‘CASH MACHINES ON PLATFORM 7’. I laughed, he didn’t. He continued to scowl, so I thanked him and hurried out of his lost property office. As I turned and looked back, I considered the amount of times the man must have been asked that same question before deciding he needed the sign. The thought made me smile.

That was the seed, or perhaps the switch.

That’s when I started wondering if Paris was the correct location for Martha Lost to live. I thought about when I’d first arrived into Liverpool by train, freshly broken from France, all lost and alone. I thought about the city and how its people had embraced me. I thought about falling in love with a local boy, about finding myself, about the friends I’d made, about the stories I’d been told. I thought about how the city had saved me, about walking down the aisle to The Beatles’ When I’m 64 on my wedding day and about how I couldn’t imagine ever living anywhere else. I thought about how the funniest, grumpiest, friendliest people live in Liverpool, a place that was my rescuer and soon became my home. I thought about how the people were defiant, brave and (often brutally) honest, so far from stereotypes in popular culture that had been created to mock. I realised that I was a fan of Liverpool’s culture, the romance to be found, the language too.
It didn’t take long for me to grasp that Paris didn’t hold the passion or the quirks that I needed for The Finding of Martha Lost. I realised that everything and more could be found in my city and that Lime Street Station would function at the heart of my story. Somehow, and unexpectedly, my Parisian novel transformed into a love letter to Liverpool.

Thank you Caroline - I personally can't imagine the novel being set anywhere but Lime Street station. 

If you're now intrigued and want to know more about The Finding of Martha Lost, check out Maryom's review here

Christopher Fowler - Wild Chamber Blog Tour

Today we welcome Christopher Fowler to our blog for the tour celebrating the latest of the Bryant and May books - crime stories about two ageing detectives and the Peculiar Crimes Unit that employs them. We have been fortunate to have had a visit from him before when he answered questions at the time of the launch of "London's Glory". Today's questions contain a few supplementaries from that visit. 

The Mole is currently reading Wild Chamber, which is the latest and wonders at how each book seems to get better and better.

With Bryant's cerebral approach, his not revealing his thinking, and his extensive range of 'expert' (if a little eccentric) contacts, I am reminded of George Smiley. Is there any Smiley in him?
I think he’s not as organised as Smiley. His thinking is untidier and more haphazard but there’s a real technique at work – not deductive but instinctive.

In a previous interview you said "...then Bryant & May are about how I’d like to be". Which of the two do you see yourself as?
I’m May. Bryant is my former business partner, so much so that I once put a photograph of him in one of the earlier books.

You said of London "... Before the mid-1980s it was a city steeped in shadows which bred criminality. We lost something when the lights were turned up and the CCTV was turned on". Surely much of the change then is for the better? But has London really changed that much or is it your perception of London that has changed?
No, London has transformed, and that’s perfectly natural. I grew up playing in the streets, sneaking into theatres off Piccadilly, diving into dodgy cinemas and generally getting into trouble with appalling people. London is less dangerous now if you keep your wits about you. But then my father, a teenager during the war, had to go through so many changes too, And his father was a typical London Victorian. We all have to roll with the changes. The trick is not becoming stuck in an era.

The 'Peculiar Crime Unit' investigates just that - Peculiar Crimes, but where do you get the ideas for those crimes from? Do you have a list of crime ideas for the new books or are the ideas hard to come by? I have a keen notebook fetish, and ideas get piled into those. 
Often I couple several ideas together and start connecting the dots – but it usually takes a final mad leap to join everything up, and the inspiration from that can come from anywhere – people, places, experiences mostly – and library research.

In a previous contribution to our blog you said of PD James' rule 'Read, write and don't daydream' - "This is possibly the worst advice imaginable" do you make time for daydreaming and do you have a special place to do it?
I daydream in parks and since a child I’ve always walked around new cities. Last year I went into the Carpathian mountains  in Transylvania to visit Vlad the Impaler’s castle, just to write a story about Dracula.

Of her rule 'Never talk about a book before it is finished' you said "No, no, no!" which does make perfect sense but who do you talk with about your work in progress? 
That’s the thing; you need a sympathetic ear, and I have several friends who are patient and kind, and offer their thoughts. People are quite timid about giving feedback to writers, as if we’re going to bite them!

Many thanks go, once again, to Christopher Fowler who took time out of a very busy timetable to talk to us.

Beth Lewis - The Wolf Road - blog tour

The Wolf Road is a stunning, hard-hitting, post-apocalyptic novel; a story of survival in the forest wilderness of north-west Canada, and probably the most original book I've read this year. So, I'm delighted that today Our Book Reviews is the stopping off point for author Beth Lewis on her blog tour. Here she is to talk about one of the important images of the novel - fire!

My Life with Fire

There’s something about a roaring fire, isn’t there? Staring into those flames, dancing in the grate, it’s utterly mesmeric. Fire brings a family and community together and that’s something that so many cultures share. I spent most of my teenage summers around a campfire or bonfire on the beach. We shared food, drink, and stories with strangers and made new friends who I still cherish today. Fire took center stage in those years and in many different forms. First, there were the bonfires, the beach parties, the coming together of people from all over the country with one shared interest – performance. Then the fire was harnessed, lit and burning on the end of chains to be spun into beautiful, intricate patterns.

Poi have been around for hundreds of years and are now a staple of festivals and fun-loving individuals. I started spinning poi when I was sixteen and lit them on fire soon after. Poi are basically weights on the end of string or chain which you spin around your body into patterns. It becomes a dance and when you chuck fire into the mix, it becomes something so much more. Being inside a fireball is otherworldly. You see only darkness and bright yellow flames, you smell only paraffin and burning and feel only heat and hear nothing but the roar. And boy, there’s nothing like that roar. It’s addictive. One spin with those heavy, flaming poi and I was hooked. I learned to eat fire, trail it over my skin and I took part in a record-breaking attempt to have the most fire spinners going at once. It was well over a hundred, it lit up the tiny Cornish beach. We made a second attempt at a festival a few years later. I made incredible friends doing it too. I met my best friend on a beach, around a bonfire. I had fire spinners at my wedding. It was my life for years and it was magical to be around so many like-minded people from all walks of life. We all shared this very simple love – friends, fun, and fire.

Then I moved to the city and gradually work, life, writing, took over my time. The love of the danger, the addiction to it, have never left me. When I see footage of Glastonbury or old fiery friends post photos of the old days, I get a deep pang of nostalgia and yearning. I can’t get to those festivals as much anymore and that saddens me no end.

It’s no coincidence then, that I wrote fire as such an important part of the story in The Wolf Road. It’s in the background, it’s subtle, but it’s there. Fire appears at key moments in Elka’s story, transformative moments that speak to how she had changed as a character in the time she’s been on her journey. The first is destructive, it’s the catalyst that spurs her into the wilderness. Then it becomes her savior, then her teaching tool, then she shares it with those in need, it brings her close to people she would normally never have trusted. Fire does that. It brings people together and it brings hope, whether to share warmth or food or a couple of beers on the beach, it’s part of the shared human experience. We all need it and I believe that need allows people to put aside their differences and return to a simple, instinctual state. I need a fire, you have a fire, let’s be friends. That’s how I see it and how I see Elka’s journey change from an untrusting, feral girl, into one who sees the value and importance of friendship.

Many thanks to Beth for stopping by. I hope everyone is now intrigued enough to read the book! Meanwhile, you can catch up on the rest of the blog tour as detailed below, check out my review , and read Beth's fascinating Week In The Wild posts on her website.

Carys Bray - Museum of You - blog tour

Today we're delighted to welcome to the blog Carys Bray, author of A Song For Issy Bradley, to talk about her new novel the Museum of You, and one of her favourite museums (you can find more of them by checking out the other stops of the tour).

My Favourite Museums

In my new novel The Museum of You, twelve year old Clover Quinn sorts through her mother’s belongings and curates an exhibition in the second bedroom of the house she shares with her Dad, Darren.
As part of The Museum of You blog tour, I’m writing about some of my favourite museums. In recent months it has been frustrating to read of the museum closures which appear to be disproportionately affecting the north of England. Museums are a great place to learn about our heritage; they’re often a testament to the efforts and dedication of working people, the men and women who built and made many of the things we take for granted today.

The British Lawnmower Museum
This museum is in my hometown of Southport. The museum doesn’t receive any funding so there is a charge for entry: £3 for adults and £1 for children. An audio guide is piped out of speakers that are positioned around the museum so you can listen as you explore. It’s pretty niche – the only lawnmower museum in the world. Instead of carpet there’s artificial turf on the floor and there is something wonderfully eccentric about the whole enterprise.



The staff are friendly and will accompany you and fill you in on some of the stories behind the lawnmowers. For example, the lawnmower in the picture below was used in this advert:

It’s the stories that really make this museum. I learned that James May of Top Gear once reassembled a particular lawnmower without any instructions, another lawnmower was pulled by a horse that wore leather shoes so as not to spoil the lawn, and some people like to participate in lawnmower races (12 hour lawnmower races, in fact).

My favourite machines were the ‘lawnmowers of the rich and famous.’ Below you can see Paul O’Grady’s lawnmower.

And Eric Morecambe’s Dad’s lawnmower, an object which provoked some serious giggling.

My son and I visited this museum wondering why on earth anyone would keep and care for lawnmowers. We left feeling that at the heart of this unique museum lies the determined optimism of people who really love something and want to share it. And even if you’re not a lawnmower aficionado, there’s something contagious about that.





Who would imagine a museum of lawn-mowers to be so fascinating? It sounds well worth a visit though.
Read on now for an excerpt from The Museum of You which Maryom describes as  "tender and compassionate, will make you laugh, maybe bring you to tears, and will have you rooting for Clover and Darren, hoping they can both find happiness and sense of completeness. In short, an absolute joy to read." 

The Museum of You – Excerpt

"When she got home from the museum Dad was kneeling in the hall. He’d unscrewed the radiator and his thumb was pressed over an unfastened pipe as water gushed around it. The books and clothes and newspapers that used to line the hall had been arranged in small piles on the stairs. Beside him, on the damp carpet, was a metal scraper he’d been using to scuff the paper off the wall.

‘Just in time!’ he said. ‘Fetch a bowl. A small one, so it’ll fit.’
She fetched two and spent the next fifteen minutes running back and forth to the kitchen emptying one bowl as the other filled, Dad calling, ‘Faster! Faster! Keep it up, Speedy Gonzalez!’ His trousers were soaked and his knuckles grazed, but he wasn’t bothered. ‘Occupational hazard,’ he said, as if it wasn’t his day off and plumbing and stripping walls was his actual job.

Once the pipe had emptied he stood up and hopped about for a bit while the feeling came back into his feet. ‘I helped Colin out with something this morning,’ he said. ‘The people whose house we were at had this dado rail thing – it sounds posh, but it’s just a bit of wood, really – right about here.’ He brushed his hand against the wall beside his hip. ‘Underneath it they had stripy wallpaper, but above it they had a different, plain kind. It was dead nice and I thought, we could do that.’

Dad found a scraper for her. The paint came off in flakes, followed by tufts of the thick, textured wallpaper. Underneath, was a layer of soft, brown, backing-paper which Dad sprayed with water from a squirty bottle. When the water had soaked in, they made long scrapes down the wall, top to bottom, leaving the backing paper flopped over the skirting boards like ribbons of skin. It felt like they were undressing the house.

The bare walls weren’t smooth. They were gritty, crumbly in places. As they worked, a dusty smell wafted out of them. It took more than an hour to get from the front door to the wall beside the bottom stair. That’s where Dad uncovered the heart. It was about as big as Clover’s hand, etched on the wall in black, permanent marker, in Dad’s handwriting: Darren + Becky 4ever.

‘I’d forgotten,’ he murmured. And then he pulled his everything face. The face he pulls when Uncle Jim is drunk. The face he pulls when they go shopping in March and the person at the till tries to be helpful by reminding them about Mother’s Day. The face which reminds her that a lot of the time his expression is like a plate of leftovers.

She didn’t say anything, and although she wanted to, she didn’t trace the heart with her fingertips. Instead, she went up to the bathroom and sat on the boxed, pre-lit Christmas tree dad bought in the January sales. When you grow up in the saddest chapter of someone else’s story you’re forever skating on the thin ice of their memories. That’s not to say it’s always sad – there are happy things, too. When she was a baby Dad had a tattoo of her name drawn on his arm in curly, blue writing, and underneath he had a green, four-leaf clover. She has such a brilliant name, chosen by her mother because it has the word LOVE in the middle. That’s not the sort of thing you go around telling people, but it is something you can remember if you need a little boost; an instant access, happiness top-up card – it even works when Luke Barton calls her Margey-rine. Clover thought of her name and counted to 300.

When she went downstairs Dad had recovered his empty face and she couldn’t help asking a question, just a small one.

‘Is there any more writing under the paper?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘She didn’t do a heart as well?’
‘Help me with this, will you?’

They pulled the soggy ribbons of paper away from the skirting and put them in a bin bag. The house smelled different afterwards. As if some old sadness had leaked out of the walls. "

Thank you Carys for dropping by and I hope that's tempted people to read the novel!

Check out our full review here  and the rest of the blog tour 

The Chimes Blog Tour - Anna Smaill Author Contribution

Today we're delighted to be part of the blog tour for the paperback publication of The Chimes by Anna Smaill. I'm always intrigued about what sparks an author's imagination, particularly when their creation is a complete new world, so, having the chance to ask, that was what I wanted to know....
I've seen a lot of people talking recently about how the constant chatter of social media dulls us to the surrounding world, even the friends or family we're actually sitting next to,  and the Chimes themselves seemed to me a more organised, centrally-controlled but similar form of brain-washing.
I don't know if these thoughts have any relevance at all but they left me intrigued about how Anna stumbled upon the original idea for The Chimes. .....

The Chimes is really an exploration of two different human drives – the one towards purity and the one towards mess – and how sometimes art seems to encourage us to view these as existing in a sort of irreconcilable binary.

It will surprise no one that this preoccupation behind the book can be traced to my own experience with music. I started playing the violin at quite a young age, seven years old to be exact, and I was far from a natural musician. I loved it, but the sounds I produced were always quite different from the ones I imagined in my head. My experience with music gave rise to a sort of painful dualism. By which I mean, it often felt like my body was a kind of hindrance to what was going on inside, and the things I wanted to express. I felt exhausted by all that was uncontrollable about playing an instrument – those erratic nerves and wayward physical habits. I also felt befuddled by the fact that, even if I played something perfectly and soulfully, a person listening could fail to be swept up in this, could, in fact, just walk past unmoved.

This kind of overthinking wasn’t exactly compatible with a performance degree; I stopped playing the violin in my second year. However, I’ve remained really interested in the way some art seems to inhabit and draw on these frustrations and impulses. It’s not a strange leap that poets like T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound were drawn to fascist politics – the impulse is in the work, in the straining toward a sort of pure, unimpeachable form of expression, and in the setting up of a quasi-religious aesthetic hierarchy.

The idea that we can ever attain some kind of pure expression is a nonsense, of course. Any two-way communication is always fraught – each party brings their own experiences to the exchange. Mess and impurity is where language and art thrives, evolves and adapts. Discrepancies and clashes of perspective allow memory to modulate into story. Yet my own experience with music is why I didn’t want the Order (the powerful musical elite of The Chimes) to appear in the book as a simple force of evil. I wanted to show the beauty in their extreme commitment and fervor. I wanted to suggest that that there is even something potentially admirable in their vision. I think it’s in all of us, that hunger for extremes.

Hopefully, possibly, some of this seething internal debate is clear in the world of The Chimes! But I should make it clear that I never saw the book as an ‘ideas novel’. I didn’t have an agenda to push or a specific target for critique. I’d hate the book to feel didactic or programmatic in any way. I should, however, probably end by saying that if we are ever in a situation where art is divided between the pure and the impure, I – to quote the wonderful NZ poet Bill Manhire – ‘want to go and stand in the corner with all of the impure people’.

Claire McGowan: The Silent Dead Blog Tour - author contribution

Today as part of the blog tour to accompany the publication of her latest thriller, The Silent Dead, we're welcoming Claire McGowan to talk about "Writing the Unknown"....


When I’m teaching creative writing, a question that often comes up is whether people are ‘allowed’ to write something. Can you write a character who’s a different gender or age group to you? What about race or economic background? Can you convincingly use a dialect or vernacular that you don’t know well? Are you allowed to write about things you haven’t experienced?

My answer is usually – of course, you’re allowed to write about anything. You don’t have to ask for permission in fiction and it’s not homework. We can make up whatever we like. But I do understand the anxiety that comes from writing something you haven’t gone through yourself. This seems to be so widespread that authors routinely hide their gender with pen names or initials. I’m writing a series about a forensic psychologist who works with the police. I’m not hugely familiar with these worlds, and sometimes I feel unsure about the details – what colour are the walls in police stations? What do the offices smell like? And so on. However, these details can easily be checked by wangling a station visit or researching the procedural processes.

What’s more difficult is to write about emotional situations you haven’t been in. I feel qualified to write about Northern Ireland and the Troubles (I was sixteen with the Good Friday Agreement was signed and living near the border), as I know I have an experience of that time which can’t be challenged. However, I’ve now taken my character to a place where she has a baby, and I don’t have children. I like to think I can imagine it – but I can also get things wrong. A writer friend who has children recently kindly pointed out a small mistake I’d made, which I wouldn’t have known unless I’d been around small children a lot. So there’s always the option to have things checked. I think this anxiety about permission can really hold writers back – so my approach would be write now, and ask questions later. You can always correct it!

Christopher Fowler: London's Glory Blog Tour - Author contribution

To celebrate the launch of "London's Glory", a collection of short stories about the detectives Bryant and May, we are delighted to welcome Christopher Fowler's blog tour and take the opprtunity to put some questions and learn the true future of this great pairing of characters.

 Before Bryant and May you had success with a few other books including "Roofworld".  These books were either short story collections or stand-alone novels but then you come up with a series of 15 books about an unlikely pairing of detectives.  Where did you get the idea of such an odd couple as Bryant and May from?


I wanted to create two Golden Age detectives in a modern setting. I made Bryant & May old to

dispense with the ageism that suggests only the young can do their jobs well. Older characters bring a lifetime of experience. I started with a matchbox label that read "Bryant & May - England's Glory". That gave me their names, their nationality, and something vague and appealing, the sense of an institution with roots in London's sooty past. You have to remember that London has only just been lit up. Before the mid-1980s it was a city steeped in shadows which bred criminality. We lost something when the lights were turned up and the CCTV was turned on, and I try to recapture that lost sense of the sinister.

 There is a psychic element in many of  the cases - did you develop these psychic themes as deeply as you would like or did editors hold you back? Or, perhaps, the opposite?


Amazingly I’m still working with the same editor and he never holds me back! I sew threads of ideas throughout the novels that I like to return to, and one of them is that DS Janice Longbright and her mother are psychic, which I’m able to explore in a non-supernatural, realistic way, in ‘The Burning Man’. I think there should always be a hint of the unknown in the stories…


Did you plan on them becoming such a long series?

I hadn’t expected the series to last so long at all. In fact, the first book was written as a one-off. The idea of a couple of elderly, grumpy detectives clearly didn’t sound very appealing to my former publisher, so I took the book to someone who understood what I was getting at, and have been there ever since. It seems to have worked and the detectives have a growing number of fans, which delights me.

I particularly enjoy making them behave like experienced adults and immature children. I think heroes are often boring simply because they have to be appealingly young – well, Bryant & May don’t have to be; they’re as esoteric, eccentric, bad-tempered and weird as the villains, who in most books are more interesting than heroes.


In "The Burning Man" we are presented with a scenario of the end of the series and I, for one, was gutted. What made you decide to bring the series to an end?



I haven’t! There is, as with all the mystery novels I most admire, a sleight of hand going on with clues hidden in several earlier volumes. I love showing that something is utterly impossible, and then revealing how it can be done. Just one reader has worked out what I’m up to, and I may have to kill him. I don’t write the books to be read in sequence, by the way; in fact I think they’re more fun if you mix them up. Perhaps ‘On The Loose’ and ‘Off The Rails’ should be read together, and ’77 Clocks’ is the odd one out, being set in a different period.

London's Glory treats us to a chance to follow their antics once again in a group of short stories - will there be more stories from before "The Burning Man" to follow?

I think if it turns out there’s a market for them, then yes. Publishers always tell you not to write short stories as readers don’t like them, but that’s a red rag to a bull to me, and just makes me want to write more. Conan Doyle’s consulting detective inspired many other authors to tackle stories beyond the accepted canon. Adrian Conan Doyle picked up his father’s mantle, accompanied by John Dickson Carr, for ‘The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes’, based on twelve unexplained cases mentioned by Holmes, and did two more volumes…

You have returned to stand-alone and short story books - do you a plan for a replacement of Bryant and May? 
 

See above – they’re not leaving yet! In fact the next full-length novel, ‘Strange Tide’, is out in March.

If you had to be judged on just one of your books and could choose which it was to be - which would you put forward?

Without question it would be Paperboy, because it’s my life. Well, that and the sequel Film Freak. But if they’re about who I am, then Bryant & May are about how I’d like to be.

Sarah Hilary - guest post

Today, as the latest stop-over in her blog tour, we're delighted to welcome crime writer Sarah Hilary to talk about why we all love crime fiction so much.....

Dear Reader
by Sarah Hilary


Dear Reader,

I’ve been asked to write about why so many of you love crime fiction. Lots of writers have been invited to tackle this subject including, perversely, several who loathe crime fiction. (Although it’s rather fun watching them wrestle their dictionaries to the ground in pursuit of credible reasons as to why so many smart people cannot aspire to their own contempt for the genre.)

Is it that you love to see justice done? That the detective is your secular priest?

Or is it that you delight in solving a puzzle?

Could it simply be that crime fiction respects the first rule of writing—to entertain?

Should I attempt to unpack the reasons why I became a reader of crime when I was ten? What it was about the stories of Conan Doyle and Raymond Chandler and Patricia Highsmith that hooked my pre- and post-adolescent brain?

I’m not sure I should, in fact. Any more than I should attempt to analyse your reasons for reading my books or any other crime writer’s. Other than to say this—

Crime fiction, at its best, is uniquely two things. Firstly, it is subversive. It asks the questions no one else likes to ask. It has a social conscience which is active in the here and now, without recourse to nostalgia (a fetish of so much literary fiction) and unafraid of ambiguity.

The second way in which crime fiction is unique is all about you. More than any other genre, ours depends on the pact between writer and reader. Never will you hear a crime writer bemoan or belittle the role of the reader, or make lofty claims of how little we think about our readers when we write. We think about you all-the-time. About the questions you’ll ask of our characters and what makes you turn our pages, whether our red herrings are too red or our subtle clues too clunky. You’re in our heads the whole time. We want to scare you and thrill you—and outwit you, if we can (knowing how damn hard that will be). Writing, they say, is a lonely business. But thanks to you, dear crime reader, we are never alone.

So join me if you will (I won’t say if you dare) in No Other Darkness as I twist and turn, and try to keep you guessing right up until the final page. Then tweet me or drop a line to my website or Facebook page to tell me what you liked, what you didn’t, what I should be doing differently.

Until next time.

BIO: Sarah Hilary has worked as a bookseller, and with the Royal Navy. Her debut novel, SOMEONE ELSE'S SKIN, won the Theakstons Crime Novel of the Year 2015. It was the Observer's Book of the Month ("superbly disturbing”), a Richard & Judy Book Club bestseller, and has been published worldwide. NO OTHER DARKNESS, the second in the series is out now. The Marnie Rome series is being developed for television. 

Follow Sarah on Twitter at @Sarah_Hilary

Sarah's second thriller No Other Darkness is out in paperback on 13the August.
Maryom's reviews of No Other Darkness and Someone Else's Skin

Anne Goodwin - guest post

Today we're delighted to welcome Anne Goodwin to the blog to talk about her debut novel Sugar and Snails and the changes it underwent between first draft and finished book....

Three generations of a novel: the transformations of Sugar and Snails from inception to publication

When I worked as a clinical psychologist, I met many people who were disturbed by their failure to live up to their own ideals or the standards set by others. It wasn’t until I moved to a small town in the former Nottinghamshire coalfields that I saw this perceived failure in terms of gender stereotypes. The 1984 miners’ strike had torn communities apart, and the failure of the strike to prevent the pit closures brought both economic and psychological depression in the area and a sense of emasculation among the men.
Around the same time, the country was marking the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the Second World War. Amid the pomp, reports began to filter through of elderly men being re-traumatised by repressed memories of their wartime experiences coming back to haunt them. As my own father was of this generation, I was touched by the notion that the stiff-upper-lipped version of masculinity might be unsustainable and curious about its impact on the offspring of such men.

I was inspired by Evie Wyld’s impressive début, After the Fire, a Still Small Voice, to have a go at writing something similar. Like her, I would explore masculinity and war across three generations but, instead of being set in small-town Australia, my novel would feature the rise and fall of a mining community in England.
My main character was Leonard, the clever only child of solid working-class parents, brought up to want to be more than a miner like his father, yet always a little ashamed at his mental and physical unsuitability for a job underground. Going straight from school to the army, and from there to a German prison camp, he dreams of the life he’ll have when the war is over: a steady job with a wife and kids.
As I delved more into Leonard’s character, the less need I felt to flesh out the parents who had made him who he was. I was more interested in how he’d fare as a husband and father, and what it was about his wartime experience that he so needed to forget.

So what began as a story of men across three generations was transformed into one about a man, his wife and their problem child. In the early drafts of Sugar and Snails, the story unfolded through alternate chapters set in different time bands: the tale of Leonard and Renée’s marriage over almost three decades interspersed with that of Diana, one of their children, a socially-awkward university lecturer in the early years of the twenty-first century, with a secret troubled past.

One of the problems with this structure was that, because Diana had gone by a different name in childhood, it was difficult for readers to trust that the two strands of the narrative would eventually connect. Furthermore, as Diana’s backstory developed, it came to eclipse Leonard’s, unbalancing the novel as a whole. I was advised to rewrite the novel solely from Diana’s point of view.

I didn’t relish the prospect. It wasn’t so much the extra work – I was starting to appreciate that writing a publishable novel requires numerous re-workings and repeated drafts – but that I had grown attached to Leonard and was reluctant to let his story go. Furthermore, as Diana’s life-changing experience occurs at age fifteen, her parents’ beliefs, attitudes and behaviours have a significant impact on who she becomes. In particular, Leonard’s ambitions for his children are shaped by an event of which Diana would have no direct knowledge, it having occurred at the POW camp before she was born.

Cutting Leonard’s scenes was painful. I’d so enjoyed his solitary hikes in the Peak District; his impatience as a father; his confusion at the funeral of his friend from his army days. But the incisions, and the reworking of some elements, make Sugar and Snails a much better novel. Different readers will find different things within it but I was gratified that one early reviewer felt that “One of the best parts of the novel is her relationship to her father, who is himself troubled by his own actions in the past.” Others, if they look closely, might still detect the theme of masculinity across three generations. But this is very much Diana’s story. I hope you enjoy following her journey towards narrowing the gap between the woman she is and the woman she feels she ought to be.


Anne Goodwin writes fiction, short and long, and blogs about reading and writing, with a peppering of psychology. Her début novel, Sugar and Snails, was published last week by Inspired Quill. Catch up on her website: annethology or on Twitter @Annecdotist.

See photo above for more of Anne's blog tour, read Maryom's review of Sugar and Snails here,  or catch up on the book's launch

Helen Lederer - Losing It - Blog Tour!

Helen Lederer, actor and comedian, is soon to add author to her CV with her first novel "Losing It" to be published next week (12/2/15) - a laugh-out loud comedy about 50-something Millie, who desperately wants to lose her debts and some weight, and hopes fronting a diet-pill campaign is the answer to both worries.... 

So, as part of her blog tour, we took the opportunity to ask Helen some questions about writing, comedy and tantric sex.....


Firstly - I'm old enough to remember the days of Naked Video and the first showings of the Young Ones and Ab Fab, but how would you briefly sum up your career ....
You've obviously written comedy material for stage and TV before, how different is settling down to write a full length novel?  

Well the early monologues for Naked Video were co-written, it has to be admitted, by wonderful Ian Pattison who wrote Rab C Nesbit. We had such fun writing them – his style was outrageous and SO RUDE! My character was a precursor to the Bridget Jones type and the first single women with half a brain to be found musing with a filo fax. I’m proud  of that and thank you for remembering Naked Video !  My career began after I did stand up comedy –and as de- railing as it was, it was a great way to learn how to write sparsely but with content  in order to attempt to induce laughter! Writing the novel was an amazing adventure. I’d write for ten hours at a stretch and forget to breathe - sadly I was able to make regular trip to the fridge –just as Millie would. I loved the freedom to venture inside the bitter private negative head space - as  well as describe places and people -in a way stand up would not allow – no time you see!

.... and was this something you'd toyed with before, maybe slaved over in secret for many years, or something that popped into your head almost ready-written?

 I always used to write –in fact I have a teenage file which has the word ‘anthology’ written on it. I used to write poems a lot and read them out loud to people (or  ‘over share’ as we might describe it now) I abandoned  three novels before Losing It was born - and I’m glad I did  - now I am in the zone. 

Will this mark a permanent move away from acting and stand up?
I’m hoping to write the next book as soon as I finish in Hollyoaks, but when you get the call – you get the call – I might turn up on stage again. 

With a 50-something heroine, Losing It falls into a genre that I like to call 'chick lit for grown-ups'. Do you think that's a fair description of the genre? Do you have a better way to describe it? 

I love the term chick lit for grownups. I labelled it  ‘Mid Lit’ as this is  a shorter  way of copying Chick Lit – but differentiates  itself  from ‘Granny Lit’ – as that role has as yet not happened to me and I’m not sure what Granny Lit gets up to…Knitted Thongs… ? Noooooo 

I found Millie to be someone I could easy empathise with, and, however bizarre they are at times, her experiences always ring true. Did you base her and what happens to her on personal experience?  

Yes –always. I did  attend a tantric  sex couples workshop where the straddle was demonstrated ( I was writing about it!)  – and yes, I was invited to take a herbal diet pill for money and strangely I’m still not slim  …

Do you think today's average 50/60 year old is looking for more from life than previous generations? That we're no longer prepared to be written off as old and past-it? 

Definitely! We are closer to our own offspring in lifestyle –we tend  not to favour a twin set and a perm and  we rarely wear sensible shoes. We look and act younger and offer value in the work place – as well as socially. Life is for living in the fast lane.  

Do you have plans for any more novels? Perhaps some further adventures for Millie... 

Oee yes!! I know this area now and I can’t wait to start the next book – it’s called ‘Extra Time’

Thank you Helen for taking the time to join us today and best wishes for this and future writing projects. 




Next week Maryom will be reviewing Losing It but meanwhile catch up with the blog tour so far