Happy New Year
Welcome to my monthly newsletter for January 2025
Hi!
A very happy new year to you all. I hope you had a lovely festive season and have started 2025 with all guns blazing. It took me a couple of weeks to find the right gear but I’m definitely motoring now. We had snow on the ground for a week here in Ilkley which put paid to a few of my plans but the skies were beautiful with the air so cold and crisp and that went some way to make up for being grounded.
What am I writing?
I am racing towards the finishing line with my 2026 book. It’s set partly in present day Cirencester (those with a good memory might remember my trips there last Autumn) and partly in Northallerton in 1979 and I’m throughly enjoying writing it, especially now that its mysteries have finally revealed themselves to me.
Yesterday I had an idea and this morning it dawned on me that that’s what I’ve been writing about all along. Funny how these things happen. I’ve also just found a use for a throwaway line I wrote weeks ago which now is an important part of the plot. How does that happen? It truly is like magic.
The text of the book for 2025 is all edited and ready to go but we still don’t have a title, or cover. (We did have a title but I think we might have changed our minds!) I’m hoping that both will be settled by the end of this month. Obviously, as soon as I know then I’ll let you know too. It’s all very exciting.
I’ve also been writing some short stories. Most writers start with short stories and I have a few tucked away but I’d forgotten how hard they are to write, especially when I’m used to having 90,000 words to play with in a full length novel. A short story needs to get to the point much more quickly and I’m enjoying the discipline of that. Expect news about what I’m going to do with all these short stories in a future newsletter. (Is that what they call a teaser? Sorry.)
Where have I been?
The year is only three weeks old but obviously I’ve already been out and about. On New Year’s Day we went to Zagreb to watch my son dancing in The Nutcracker for the second time. He was dancing a different role this time so that was lovely. Unfortunately we missed him doing his big solo part – maybe next year . . . Zagreb was still all lit up for Christmas which was very pretty and it snowed a bit.
Then I went down to Wells-Next-the-Sea to see how the builders have been getting on with the renovation of our cottage. There was real progress and we now have the finishing line in sight which is great. I have so missed having my little bolt hole. (See the picture below.)
This weekend I’ll be in London to meet up with my editor and some other authors to do some marketing work which will be fun. I’m also popping into The British Museum to see an exhibition about The Silk Road, a journey that has long fascinated me. I hope to meet up with some friends too.
What have I read?
I’ve made a cracking start to 2025 with some fabulous books read so far.
In Long Island Compromise by Taffy Brodesser-Akner a wealthy business man is first kidnapped and then returned to his family. However, the actual story is about the impact that the kidnapping has on the three children of the family as adults – clue: it’s a lot. The book is darkly humorous, examining Jewish family life in New York, wealth and what it means and, of course, the American dream.
In The Midnight Hour by Eve Chase a patio is to be dug up but exactly what was buried under it twenty years before? This dual timeline story is about Maggie, her little brother Kit and the mysterious Wolf who saves Kit from being run over and thus steps into their lives. When Maggie is barely eighteen her mother disappears. She has no idea where her mother is and so steps up to care for her six year old brother until she returns. Twenty-one years later Maggie is still searching for answers and has to piece the mystery together. It’s real a page-turner with lots of dark characters.
Next is The Wedding People by Alison Espach. Phoebe arrives at a swanky hotel with the intention of killing herself. Her marriage has imploded, she can’t stand her job and her elderly cat has died. It’s all too much. However, there is also a huge wedding party at the hotel that weekend and Phoebe is the only hotel guest not invited. When the bride discovers her intentions she is horrified. A dead hotel guest will ruin the wedding. But as the book continues we learn that it’s not just Phoebe who has some serious thinking to do. The book is beautifully observed and I loved the relationship between Phoebe and the panicked bride-to-be.
Finally, The Saint of Lost Things by Tish Delaney. Lindy lives in Northern Ireland with her mother’s twin sister in a nasty little house built, resentfully, by her grandfather so that the women don’t have to live with him in the farmhouse. Granda Morris is all about passing on his land to the next generation but he hates women and there are no sons. So what should he do? The story follows Lindy both as a middle-aged woman with her many untold secrets but also through her break-for-freedom trip to London in 1985. Books like this make you realise just how much has changed for women since the eighties, particularly in Ireland.
And that’s everything for this month. As ever, there is more on Instagramand Facebook so follow me there if you want to know what I’m up to. By this time next month, I will have finished my current manuscript and will be thinking about what might come next. I have several book ideas but I don’t know which one I’ll work on first. Another adventure awaits me – and then you, I hope.
So until then, happy reading.
