Stop everything! You can now pre-order my novel!

I’m UTTERLY ECSTATIC to let you know that Summer at Hollyhock House will be published on Thursday August 2 2018.

And as if that weren’t enough, it’s now available for pre-order. 

Even more excitingly, if you think you can handle any more excitement (not sure I can tbh) at the time of writing it was only 99p so please HOTFOOT IT OVER TO AMAZON RIGHT NOW to snap it up at this most bargainous of bargain prices.

But what’s it all about? I’m so glad you asked. Here’s the blurb, just for you.

An uplifting romantic comedy from a new voice in women’s fiction! Perfect for fans of Trisha Ashley, Debbie Johnson, Jenny Colgan and Holly Martin.

 Wow, am I in esteemed company or what? I adore all those authors from the bottom of my romantic little heart and to be compared with any, let alone all, of them, is just beyond flattering. What do you mean you didn’t ask for a running commentary? Point taken. On with the blurb.

One long summer changed Faith forever….

 Faith Coombes should have been over the moon when her long-term boyfriend proposed to her. But instead, she broke up with him. Rob was safe, reliable, nice and…boring. Nothing like the only person who had ever broken her heart…

 Unable to afford the rent on another flat and desperate for a new start, Faith takes the plunge and moves back to the village she grew up in, returning to the house that holds so many memories for her.

 Hollyhock House, the family home of her best friend Minel, also belongs to the boy who meant so much to her all those years ago.

 As Faith falls back in love with the sprawling surroundings at Hollyhocks she also finds herself falling all over again for the only person who has truly hurt her.

 Can Faith come to terms with her past? Did she make the wrong decision in breaking up with Rob?

 Or does her heart really lie at Hollyhock House?

 Summer at Hollyhock House is a charming romantic comedy full of lost loves, missed opportunities and second chances. This summer read, perfect for the holidays, will have you laughing out loud in parts, close to tears in others, and above all, championing Faith as she searches for what is most important to her.

So there it is, my debut novel, summarised in 219 words. I can’t tell you how truly, madly, deeply in love with this book I am. I honestly poured my heart and soul into it, and I am so beyond grateful to now be able to share it with you.

The fear of promoting my work

Yesterday I posted on Instagram about how hard I find it to promote myself and my work, and why that's going to change. It seemed to really resonate with a lot of people so I thought I’d go into a bit more depth about it here.

On the surface I don’t promote myself for one major reason. Time. I don’t have a great deal of it, to put it mildly.  I have kids, a business, a marriage, a house, a dog, a life. Promoting myself and my work feels like one more thing on the endless to-do list. Time and again it slips to the bottom, then falls off completely, because I just don’t have time.

It genuinely makes me laugh that I still use that tired old excuse, the same excuse I used to use for not having written the novel I always wanted to write. Time. Oh, that old chestnut. Who has the time? Who?

Nobody has the time. You have to find it. Make it. Beg, borrow or steal it if you have to, but don’t assume that there’s a ‘them’ and ‘us’, and the ‘them’ are sitting on great swathes of free time not available to the rest of us. We all have the same 24 hours, how we differ is in what we choose to do with them.

Once we move past that great red herring, we start to see a truer picture.

What if people don't like my work? Think it's rubbish? What if I get awful reviews, what if I get great reviews and go to pieces under the pressure of living up to expectations with my next book, what if I get no reviews at all? This last scenario actually worries me the most. And in a twist worthy of a murder mystery, it's also the most likely scenario, if I don't promote myself. 

These are genuine reasons why I have to force myself to promote my work. But they're still only scratching the surface.

Underneath these semi-logical worries is a boiling mass of far less coherent and rational fear. 

Fear of being seen to try, lest I fail. A big part of me would prefer to just shrug and say 'well I didn't really bother promoting it in the first place' if the book doesn't sell well. A big part of me would like to look as if I achieve effortlessly, rather than admit to the graft. 

Fear about the true nature of creativity and talent. The pernicious belief that talent is something bestowed only upon the worthy few, who never need lower themselves to anything as base as promotion because they are simply destined for greatness. It's like I've got a Conservative politician trapped inside my head, convinced that abundance and plenty should only be gifted to those already born into it.

Fear to learn more about myself. To find out if my hopes, dreams and expectations are realistic, or if they need adjusting. Fear of finding my limits. If I refuse to try and fulfil it, my potential can remain limitless forever.

Fear to expose myself through my creative work, which is uninhibitedly of me. Today my publishers sent me their proposed blurb for the back cover. It took me 20 minutes to work up the courage to read it, and I did so from behind my hands, peeking through my fingers as if I were sitting next to my dad watching a graphic sex scene on TV. It’s that excruciating, that squirmy, that exposing. Somebody else’s interpretation of my creative work. 

Fear of being 'found out', that dreaded imposter syndrome that assures me each and every professional achievement of my life to date was a gigantic fluke. Fear that the dissenting voice is right, that vicious, manipulative and destructive criticism is simply 'honest'. 

It all comes down to fear. That's the very heart of it. And I know I'm not alone in this. That it never gets easier, I know no matter how many books they write, no matter how well they sell, I know authors all struggle with this each and every time they begin the journey all over again with a new book. I know all creatives struggle with it, whatever their form of expression. 

I understand the purpose of fear. I know it's my beautiful, brilliant brain's way of trying to protect me. I know it's essential. If I had no fear about how my work would be received, it would mean I hadn't invested anything of myself within it. 

But I’m also bigger than my fear. I'm ambitious, and a grown woman, and I really, really want this. I believe in my book. I believe in myself, not completely but enough, just enough to keep me going when the self-doubt is at its very strongest.

I'm going to put self-promotion in its rightful place, at the top of my list. Not just for my book, but also for my journalism and my creative business.

I'm going to own the fact that I'm working hard on my social media, admit that I want to grow my following and engage with people who like my work and the things I am doing in the world. I'm going to make connections with my tribe, and seek inspiration from creatives I admire around the world. I'm not going to feel ashamed of being seen to try. 

I'm going to ignore that voice that tells me it's self-indulgent and vain to talk about my work, that it's vulgar to be seen to endorse myself in any way, that it's just not British to be proud of what you do, that I'm only setting myself up to be knocked down.

I'm going to recognise that's just another way my fear is trying to help me, by stopping me trying, so it can negate any possibility of me failing.

And I’m going to take my fear by the hand and say thank you very much for looking out for me for so long, but it’s OK. You can go. I’ve got this now.

I’ve got this.

Does any of this sound familiar to you? How do you approach and manage your own self promotion? I’d love to know!

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How to be a writer: Write the book you love

I saw one of those posts on Twitter a while back. It was two pictures, the first captioned ‘drafting my debut novel’ was of a beautifully iced and decorated cake, gleaming white and sparkling with edible glitz, resplendent in its sweet perfection.

The second was captioned  ‘drafting my second novel’ and depicted a cake-shaped inferno.

I was experiencing the very same phenomenon at that precise moment. My second novel was rapidly turning into my own version of the difficult second album.

Somehow I was struggling more than ever to connect with the work, to really lose myself in the story I was trying to tell. The plot and characters felt vague and undefined, and I wrote myself round in circles, always coming back to the same point and deciding to begin again with a different premise, a slightly different treatment, hoping this time it would stick.

It did not.

Somewhere along the line I’d stopped writing the best book I could. The task at hand became more effort than enjoyment and this is always a very bad sign.

If I don’t enjoy and immerse myself writing a book I can hardly expect anybody else to enjoy and immerse themselves reading it.

I know that my creativity is fuelled by me doing other things, by periods of me not actively working on a novel. I know that scheduling does not work for me. But I was increasingly forcing myself to sit down with my laptop and write to a schedule.

And so I asked myself, if I know what I need to do to create, when did I stop doing it?

I stopped the exact moment I began to pressure myself that this book ‘had to be’. It had to be written as quickly as possible so I had a follow-up in the bag once Summer At Hollyhock House was published! It had to be every bit as enchanting and magical to me as that first novel, but better! It had to be finished as soon as possible so I could begin to churn out books and establish an income stream and eventually, a career! It had to be created and put out in the world before everybody read my debut then promptly went away and forgot all about me….

In amongst all that pressure I was putting on myself, and on this poor book which is still yet to be brought into the world, I had totally forgotten the reasons why I write in the first place.

I don’t write for money, or fame, or to please anybody or so my mum and dad will be proud of me or so I can boast on social.

I write because I love and need to write. I tell stories because storytelling is a fundamental part of the human condition and it’s one that’s particularly pronounced within me. I write because the words form in my brain and press physically against the inside of my skull until I release them via the channels of my arms and hands.

I write because I love and need it, and therefore I only want to write books that I love and need to write.

It really is as simple as that.

So write the book that you love. Write the book you wish somebody else had written, so that you could read it. That’s the book you were born to write. That’s the book you need to write.

Not the book that ‘is bound to sell’ or ‘the market is crying out for’ or  ‘is just like (famous author’s) book that sold really well’ or ‘that will establish me as….’ All of these are great to have, but they’re unreliable. The market will shift and change, demands rise and fall, trends come and go, fashions change like the seasons and pass by like the wind.

By the time you’re halfway through the book that’s ‘totally right for the market’, the market will have moved on.

Write the book that is pressing insistently into the inside of your skull. Write it because you can’t not.  Trust that the process will be enough, that the journey will be reward, and that if it’s meant to be, the market will make itself known when the time comes.

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Why I set my novel in summer

As you’ve probably guessed from the title, Summer At Hollyhock House is set in summer. I started writing it in earnest about this time last year, as gunmetal-grey skies rolled over bleak, spindly silhouettes of bare trees and the only sign of colour and warmer days to come was the crocuses and narcissi poking their cheery little heads through the relentless gloom. Maybe I was just craving some warmth and life and colour but it wasn’t so much the imagery of summer I had in mind when I was writing, as the feeling.

I grew up in a small village in rural Sussex that does summer very well. The village green, its crowning glory, is always packed in the warmer months, surrounded by majestic horse chestnut trees and playing host to cricket, football, rowdy mobs of children and families enjoying picnics and games of rounders. A walk around the outer rural lanes is like a stroll through the Chelsea Flower Show, magnificent gardens heavy with high-summer blooms sending sweet, heady scent wafting into the air. It’s always lively and busy, there’s always something going on, everybody’s out and about and full of chatter and activity and the odd inevitable complaint about how hot it is.

It’s impossible not to feel happy on these heady summer days, happy and hopeful and like you belong. That’s one of the feelings I was looking to capture with my novel, the sense of belonging.

But when I really think about summer, and what it means to me, and what it was I wanted the book to capture and reflect, I think about the mornings.

Now first things first. I am not a morning person. I drag myself protesting out of bed every. Single. Day without fail and while yes it’s easier in summer when there’s soft light pouring in through the windows and the air is balmy, I’d probably still rather just roll over and go back to sleep. I’ve always been this way, since I was a young child my mother had to shake me complaining out of bed every morning. In fact there was only one thing that could stir me into action voluntarily, and that was if I was going out to ride horses.

Horsey people start their days early, some yards get cracking at 6am. I worked for several such yards in my formative years and the prospect of a day of the irresistible combination of manual labour, the company of animals and time outdoors was enough to boot me out of bed and get me moving. Up, get dressed, eat breakfast half-asleep then out of the door and onto my bike. Even then I’d be half wishing I was still in bed.

Outside the sun would already have risen in the sky and the air would be fresh, not yet warmed up after the cool night. The dawn chorus would be in full swing and the village green would be basking in the early morning rays. On these mornings, there was rarely another soul to be seen, the odd solitary dog-walker maybe, making the most of the peace and quiet before the serious business of the day began. But usually I was alone. Just me and my bike and wherever it was I had to be. Whizzing past those gardens as their glorious displays began to unfurl themselves, ready for another day of basking in the sun. There were hardly any cars on the roads at such an early hour. At dawn the village didn’t belong to people. It was its own world, private, secretive and busy with the movement of insects and birds and foxes returning home after a night of pillaging, but devoid of human activity.

Despite the aloneness I never felt lonely. I felt infused and imbibed with the magic that surrounded me and it really was magic, not hocus-pocus but true and deep earthy magic. The dew on the grass, the fat, pale droplets gleaming irrediscent on the petals of roses. My favourites were the peachy-yellow ones that turned pink at the edges. I wondered if fairies drank that dew from the petals every morning, before the world awoke. If the sun was already heating up, mist would rise from fields behind thick hedges over which I could just see, from my vantage point on my two-wheeled steed. Rabbits often frolicked in the morning rays, even the odd deer, enchanting looking creatures of fable who would be alerted by the noise of my tyres on the road and raise their heads, startled, ready to run lest I pose a threat.

No, not lonely, I’ve always enjoyed solitude since I was very young, and the whimsical thoughts in my head seemed too uncool to consider voicing out loud. But it did often occur to me how much I would have liked to share this with somebody or something. If instead of the bike, I was riding along on my own pony, a chestnut Arab with a gleaming coat and pluming tail, skittering and darting at the shadows cast onto the road. Or a dog, trotting along faithfully at my heels, occasionally breaking away to bounce into one of the fields and pursue the unfortunate rabbits.

And then when I got older I would sometimes wonder what it would be like if that person was with me. That person, the one who saw right into my fanciful heart and didn’t scorn my notion that the world of the morning was a bridge between two realities, the one of people, and the one that lies beyond most of us. The world of my favourite childhood authors, where trees have spirits and animals can talk and there is magic and mystery beyond the human eye, visible only to those who really want to see it.

Sometimes, I wondered if I let my eyes lose focus and let the landscape around me meld into a blurry mass, radiant with colour and texture and scent, I would be able to see it. And then if I turned my head I would find beside me that person, they would have materialised next to me, and they would be able to see it, because they could see me too.

Can't find the time to write? Try this one tip.

Yesterday a lovely woman in an equally lovely Facebook group I frequent posted about her creative block. She's desperate to find the time to write, but as a mother of two children under five, she has no idea how to fit it in.

Sound familiar? Yep, to me too. About two years ago I went on something of an epic quest to find the time to write. I read books, blogs, features and articles all devoted to helping writers carve out the time to dedicate to their craft. All the advice was helpful, but none of it actually helped me achieve what I was looking for. As the mother of two children under five at the time, both at home full-time, I literally could not find the time to write.

I think this is a really common problem. You don't have to be a mother to struggle to find the time - you could have a busy job, or ageing parents in need of constant care. I don't think many of us are sitting on great swathes of free time, ready and waiting for us to devote ourselves to our creative work.

Last year, something changed. I did find the time to write - or more accurately I made the time to write. Nothing in my circumstances changed, however. My children got a bit older, but they were still at home full-time, Noel was still at work from 7.30am to 7.30pm five days a week.

What changed was this one little tip I'm going to share with you now, and I promise you if you follow it through fully, it will change your situation too. 

I took my writing seriously.

That's all. 

Truly all that needs to change is how you view your writing. Once you stop seeing it as something you'd like to do one day when you have time, and start viewing it as an important part of your day to day life NOW, the rest will follow. 

I learned this the hard way. If you're thinking now that I sat down and made a schedule and set myself a word-count a day and allocated the time accordingly, I'm afraid you're going to be disappointed. I did take my writing seriously but not in a positive, thought-through, structured way.

What actually happened was I became so compelled by the reflection I'd been doing, and the story that was forming in my head (you can read more about that process here) that I turned my writing into a kind of guilty secret. An addiction, almost. I wrote frantically and furtively whenever I could and I felt racked with guilt the entire time. I write for a living, but I was at the time a full-time home educating mother of two children five and under. Any time outside the children 'should' have been devoted to housework, family time, my marriage, and any paid work I could round up to help keep the coffers at a reasonable level.

I didn't have a book deal to justify the output of time and energy. I wrote because at the time I felt I had to, this story was literally pouring out of me, pressing physically against the sides of my skull, and if I didn't get it out my head would explode. I told myself I had no choice. I had to follow this compulsion, and so I did. But I did it whilst filled with shame and guilt and a nagging feeling that I was being selfish, unfair on my family, and neglecting my duties.

Nonetheless, it worked. I took my writing seriously. I prioritised it. I made it essential, and in doing so I found the time, and the belief, to see it through.

What I learned from this was mind-altering. I learned that:

I need to write. This is a fact and it's irrefutable. I can't bury my creative urges any longer.

Writing is a priority. It's important, it's part of who I am and it demands to be respected. If I don't respect it thoughtfully and positively, I will do so negatively and through crippling shame and self-doubt. But I will do it anyway.

If I view my writing as essential, as a part of the whole that makes up who I am, I can view it differently. I can make the time, set aside the time and find the time. I can justify the odd CBeebies marathon when I absolutely have to nail a scene and the children are at a loose end. I can negotiate with Noel time at the weekends to write in a more thoughtful and respectful way, making allowances for everybody's needs. I can sacrifice Netflix, get up early, stay up late as and when I need to, because the writing takes priority. It doesn't feel like a sacrifice, or a chore. It feels essential.

If I view my need to write as shameful, selfish, indulgent or 'not important', I will write anyway, but I will do so through a cloud of negativity. I will not feel proud of what I achieve. I will not have the faith in it to see it through to the end. I will sabotage and disappoint myself to prove my worldview that writing is NOT a priority, it's a nice-to-have.

I should not need to justify my writing, but as I do, here's how I see it. It's important for my children to see me doing my creative work and understand it's important to me. It helps them view me as a rounded human being, not just Mummy, and it helps them understand their own creative callings are important, positive and to be respected.

I can - and do - make money from writing. But this is not the goal. I didn't write my novel to get published and make heaps of cash. Now it is being published, heaps of cash would be lovely, thanks. But that's not what I had in mind when I wrote. I wrote it purely and solely because I wanted to. The process was the reward. Finishing it was the goal. Everything else comes afterwards, in its rightful place.

And so now I do prioritise my writing. I make the time. I take it seriously. I do it positively. I haven't quite got to the stage of planning daily word-counts yet - I don't think I'll ever work this way. But I do make time in my days, and in my weeks, to write. I treat it as important and allow it the time and space it deserves. 

To prioritise your own writing, try the following:

Think about why you write. Do you want to make money? If so, that's fine, but if that's the only goal then you will struggle to prioritise your writing until you have a book deal, and you won't get one of those until you write. There's an obvious cycle of self-defeat in there. So think why else you want to write. What do you want to say? How do you want to feel? What creative expression of yourself do you want to put out in the world? How would the process feel? How would a creative outlet improve other aspects of your life, and how you feel about yourself? Those are your initial motivators. The rest will come later.

Think about why you don't write. I know, you don't have time. The bills need to be paid, the kids need to be looked after, the house won't keep itself tidy, dinner won't cook itself, and your boss emails you at 4.30am on a Sunday morning expecting an instant response. What's actually happening here is you are prioritising everything else in your life, namely your servitude to others, over your creative calling. How can you take back some of that time for yourself? Do you need to cook from scratch every night? Do you have to entertain and play with your children 24/7 or could they be persuaded or assisted to entertain themselves from time to time? Would your partner, a friend, a family member, help out? Can the hoovering wait another night?

Look for your snatches of time. The ten minutes you spend waiting for the kids to be ready to head out. The time you spend scrolling while you wait for dinner to be ready, or for the kids to wake up. If your laptop (or notebook) is set up, within reach and turned on, you can reach for it the second you have a second. Just don't forget to save as you go.

Look for your chunks of time. Could you swap the sofa with your partner and Netflix for the laptop once or twice a week? Can you cancel any social engagements you aren't massively looking forward to, stay home and write instead? Could you set an alarm half an hour earlier and get up and try writing in the mornings? You might have to try a few things before you find what works for you. But if you don't try at all, you'll never know.

Think about how you'd do it if you were being paid. If you had a book deal, or an hourly rate, or a brand interested in working with you, you'd find the time. How?

Then go find that time anyway.

I'd love to know how you get on, and how you find the time to write.