Reflections on the marathon that is writing & self-publishing a fiction novel As I write, we’re exactly a week away from the arbitrary ‘go live’ date I plugged into Amazon KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) for my Kindle e-book and paperback women’s fiction / family saga novel. And I have to say…. everything feels a bit…..well, flat. Quiet. Undramatic. It’s…

I’m not sure whether I’ve always been like this, but one thing’s for sure; midlife has brought my struggles with the polar opposites of impulsivity and indecision into sharp focus. I’ve always thought I’m well attuned to intuition, using it as a handy early warning system for life’s more minor challenges; from navigating friendships to which colour jacket to buy. It’s…

No one really knows another person, do they? Of course, we all present an acceptable version of ourselves to the world, otherwise society would look very different. But if you’re neurodivergent, there’s another dimension; you’ll likely be highly skilled at the game of public vs private persona known as masking. Peeling back the layers of…

It’s been a hell of a long time since I gave blood; probably 20 years, for one reason or another. Pregnancy, tattoos, training for marathons, medication, and other unhinged reasons kept my red cells inside my veins for a long time. My blood group is O-, meaning the vampires love me, and the NHS too…

The summer of 1988. I am hot and sweaty with exertion from riding my blue racer bike through the tangle of streets on the 1960s housing estate I call home. I zoom past the identikit mass of family homes and come to a sudden jolting stop with a screech of brakes and an audible exhalation…

‘I really don’t want to go poking around in my past, it will only cause more upset and harm, and I can’t see the point of it. Plus I’m too old and it’s too late now’. (Always my favourite excuse that one) This is me, talking to my eldest daughter; a therapy advocate and relatively…

Walking home from town the other day, I got chatting to a lovely older guy at the pedestrian lights. We stood there, strangers side by side, waiting patiently for the green man to appear, and the accompanying ‘beep beep beep’. Both of us invisible. Without introduction, he launched into a conversation about the weather, and…

I had often wondered why my parents christened me so late; not as a baby, but as a strapping 4-year-old. I’d already started nursery school, wearing my favourite tartan dress and scratchy mustard tights most days. I must have asked my parents about it all, but no one ever seemed to want to answer. The…

I’ve swallowed a block of concrete. An impermeable lump is now sitting heavily in my chest. I am motionless, corpse-like as I sit at the nondescript desk I’ve called home for the past 20 years. I’m grateful no one is close enough to see the tears building in my eyes, threatening to spill down my…

I’ve always been ‘bookish’. Not that surprising for a writer. What is surprising is how long I spent ignoring my natural ability for prose, preferring to shrug it off as something entirely unremarkable. Instead, I focused my efforts on Modern Foreign Languages, and a bit of Latin thrown in for good measure (still to this…