Triumphs and Knock Backs

Life has a habit of giving with one hand and taking away with the other.  Two things are happening to me at the moment.  I’ve a new book coming out - the second in my republishing deal with Accent Press - but my mother-in-law has died. Next week, when FLY OR FALL is launched, I'll be in Chichester at Barbara's funeral.

In many ways it was a good death.  Barbara Williams was 92 and had lived independently almost until the end. Despite living with cancer for the last few years, she had continued to go to church and for little outings and lunches with her boyfriend (who lived in the flat next door) right up until the beginning of 2015.  When her health began to decline more dramatically, the day’s out ceased and she was cared for at home.  Nurses from Saint Wilfrid’s Hospice came in three times a day to attend to her needs.  It would have been kinder if she’d slipped away then, while still living in her own surroundings, her bits and pieces, photos and ornaments, all around her. But a week and a half before her death it became unavoidable that she be taken into a nursing home. In the terminology of the Saint Wilfrid’s nurses, she had become too vulnerable. Nursing care needed to be on-site and full-time.  

Barbara and her son, my husband Geoff

The staff at the home were caring and kind. It was a pleasant place, airy and spacious with big gardens and sea views.  But Barbara was too poorly to appreciate the amenities. She didn’t want the bother of being taken downstairs to the lounge .  I’m glad the time she spent in her bedroom there, was short.  We’d seen her a few days before, but we weren’t there at the last; her son, Paul, was at her bedside. It cheers us to have been told that she was in good form on the day preceding her death and enjoyed a full English breakfast.  It’s an image of her resilience and attitude to life that will stay with us.
Barbara was one of my biggest supporters. She always read my books in manuscript form and would express astonishment I couldn't get a publisher.
It was a great joy to me that she was staying with us last summer when the news of my Accent deal was confirmed. I was able to tell her I'd found a new publisher after..... a long time. She was thrilled.

On the 21st May, FLY OR FALL, is launched in its beautiful new cover.  It is actually the third of my self-published novels, but Accent Press are bringing it out second, in my three book republishing deal.  The books aren’t linked so there’s no problem with that.
I won’t waffle on; in the next few weeks I’ve a few appearances lined up around the web, where you’ll have a chance to find out more about the book, and about me.
The first is at BrookCottage Books on the 22nd, where I talk about the strange and disturbing coincidences that occurred to me - my life began imitating my plot - when I first started writing FLY OR FALL. The second appearance is at A Woman’s Wisdom on the 25th.  There I am interviewed, and you can read an opening extract from FLY OR FALL. Here's the blurb to be going on with!



“Wife and mother, Nell, fears change, but it is forced upon her by her manipulative husband, Trevor. Finding herself in a new world of flirtation and casual infidelity, her principles are undermined and she’s tempted. Should she emulate the behaviour of her new friends or stick with the safe and familiar?
But everything Nell has accepted at face value has a dark side.  Everyone - even her nearest and dearest - has been lying. She’s even deceived herself. The presentiment of disaster, first felt as a tremor at the start of the story, rumbles into a full blown earthquake. When the dust settles, nothing is as it previously seemed. And when an unlikely love blossoms from the wreckage of her life, she fears it is doomed.
The future, for the woman who feared change, is irrevocably altered. But has she been broken, or has she transformed herself?"

FLY OR FALL is not published until Thursday, the 21st May, but is available to pre-order.