Louise Beech/Louise Swanson

Before the novel, there was the short story. And then a script – more on that next year when it comes to an East Yorkshire stage. Want to read how it was back then, when my daughter’s name was still used instead of Rose? Here you are…

We trade blood for words. This is our currency; her pain for my prose.

I don’t recall who thought of it but I’d like to give Katy credit. I’d like to say she spoke the suggestion through a spoonful of beef casserole, between school stories and Top Gear. Or maybe she grew tired of my terrible singing. A few verses of Phantom of the Opera I mumbled to distract when pen’s tip pierced skin. Stifled laughter from my daughter. Laughter causes hurt. Trembling flesh resists needle. Resisted needle bites harder. She suffered more.

Now, no singing. Now I will talk words.

I asked when we agreed the swap, what if I run out of ideas?

You’ll never run out, Katy said.

Such faith. Easy for one to say who isn’t thinking them up.

You could sing Rihanna instead, she said.

I knew she was freeing me from obligation as she couldn’t be freed from hers, letting me badly sing pre-written lyrics instead of working for my words while she endured finger prick after pierced thigh after finger prick after pierced arm after finger prick after pierced stomach. Are my put-together-on-the-spot words a fair rate of exchange? This I ask of myself. This I privately wonder when she puts damp head to my shoulder, a place she now easily reaches, and her hair tickles my cheek like shampooed spiders and her forehead smells of gravy and she cries as though she isn’t, as though I’m not here, as though I lived many years ago and never met her at all and only whispered across the South Atlantic sea.

On the raft they told stories to pass time. They probably didn’t care if these were fantasies or histories. Do lies bounce best on ocean waves; does pretence give comfort? In the dark we are all the same; no one is more hungry or happy or needy or worthy or injured than the next person. So at night, when lack of moon equalised them, fourteen men shuffled for the best spot in a space designed for half their number and talked until sleep washed whispers away. Talk of home hurt most. Lips cracked and bleeding could not easily voice the existence of that other place beyond a makeshift lifeboat, measuring twelve feet by eight. Soon talk faded. Poetry died. At the end, after fifty nights, two men remained. Two stories. Two, like Katy and me with our box of lancets and insulin, ready to draw blood, to cut, to read and record numbers in a log like that kept at sea. Can stories last seven weeks with one biscuit and four Horlick’s milk tablets and six ounces of water daily? Do they continue over the horizon? I hope so. We make it so. But this is not the story I will tell Katy. No. Not yet.

So let’s start gently. Gentle verses for blood.

Tell me a story about you, says Katy.

She puts the strip in the blood-reading metre with slender red-tipped fingers. I kissed those hands at birth and willed them to be kind, to be gifted, to be brave. To hold mine, her father’s, her brother’s, to hold a pen or guitar or paint brush. Now we cut their tips twice a day.

The story, demands Katy. You’re supposed to be distracting me.

I’m meant to make them up, this was our agreement, but she wants truth now, to know about me and about her and about anyone else who matters.

Let’s start here then; when I was three I almost drowned. I have opened crudely. It’s too late to retract my vulgar hook; huge eyes express interest. While on holiday in Wales I fell in a stream. My mother and father picnicked at the other side of a field and didn’t see. Finger pricked, blood flows. I’m a hopeless storyteller, summarising, giving no background, few specifics. But Katy hasn’t noticed her pain. She asks how I got out of the water (I’m unsure, it was all a blur) and why I got into trouble (because I ruined my new yellow jumper) and what happened next (we had beans on toast for tea). Answers dampen insulin injection’s sting. They last until liquid finishes its fiery course through her body. They follow us until next time, like only the best end-of-episode cliffhanger.

Let me share an amusing story about you and some water.

I’ve got three bruises on my thighs and two on my arms and four on my stomach, Katy says, angry.

This tale hopes to smooth over bumps and ease the constant cycle of changing injection site to cause least damage.

I hurt, she snaps.

Anger is easier than sadness. Anger fights and so submits too.

When you were two you wouldn’t go in the bath.

Well, the bath is a dangerous place, she says.

Her blood glistens thick and warm. You’d only get in if I promised stories and you wore a striped swimming costume and could stand up, like a statue. Imagine trying to wash unruly hair that way? Trying to dry skin over a damp cozzie?

A blood reading of two-point-eight means a glass of coke and dinner before injection. Injection means another story. I talk about the red and green blow-up pool she wee-ed in and the time she ate spaghetti bolognese out of the bin because she was still hungry. Bruises are curious, appearing long after pinprick, staining fleshy expanse like driftwood at sea. So we do not yet know the cost of today’s cut.

I’d like a big story, says Katy now. Not silly short ones. Something I can look forward to each day. Not random. Chapters. Long and detailed and wonderful. And true.

I know such a story.

It started off the coast of Africa, not far from Ascension Island, named so for its discovery on Ascension Day, which celebrates Jesus’ rise forty days after the resurrection.

Ascension, ascension, says Katy. No bible stuff. We do enough at school. It’s rather relevant and poetic in light of the imminent story, but she doesn’t yet know how. So, this story began 19th March 1943 when a ship carrying my grandfather, Colin, was torpedoed by Germans and sank in one and a half minutes while most on board slept.

I began in March too, says Katy.

She cuts her finger and we read the blood – four-point-nine. Blackened by fuel spillage and wearing explosion-torn clothes, fourteen crewmen managed to climb aboard a vessel formed by tying together two life rafts. While the SS Lulworth Hill split in two when she sank, each part likely landing in the seabed miles from the other, salvation required coming together. Katy measures insulin and pumps it into her thigh while I read the roll call of men – like the school register, says Katy – and I describe injuries like broken ribs and feet.

Colin was my great grandfather then, she says.

Yes. Yes, he was. He is. Let us end there for now.

Briefly, before words worked magic, Katy joked that money might lessen her pain. Extra pocket money for her bravery. A quid for each injection. But we are prehistoric; as those before the invention of money traded things, so do we. Such transactions have taken place throughout recorded human history. There’s evidence that obsidian and flint were exchanged during the Stone Age and sea trading routes appeared in the third millennium BC.

What about the men on the boat? asks Katy, already having read her blood, just the anticipation of more story enough to make it endurable.

Okay; the SS Lulworth was a cargo ship. Once all who had escaped her were safely on the raft, sunburnt and salty, First Officer Scown assessed that they fringed a shipping lane but were drifting fast. A trade route meant hope.

What about Colin? asks Katy. I bet he was most hopeful they’d make it home. The first log’s entry, a book that would record twelve deaths, ended with: Expect rescue any time now.

How soon will it come? asks Katy.

Oh, not yet. Many blood tests and injections later. Did they have any clue when? That first night they calculated thirty days travel to the Liberian border – 800 miles from land – and ate no food, knowing they should save what little they had for a long time.

But Katy must eat now. She must eat a meal rich in starch and fibre, now and later and tomorrow, or she will not last fifty days.

Days that follow routine merge like mudslides. A logbook listing numbers, dates and liquid measurements is the dullest of diaries. So we make it interesting. I drop syllables in the endless ocean.

There can’t have been much to look at, says Katy. If they got tired of the sea, the sky wouldn’t have changed much.

The fourteen men must have looked at one another. I set up the blood meter. They must have watched their companions disintegrate and, without mirrors, wondered at their own state. Prick, pain, blood reads eight-point-eight. On the eighth day they woke with tongues fat in their mouths, like black cotton wool. Saltwater boils stung so much it hurt to move. Headaches throbbed from blistering sun and lack of water, tempers frayed easily.

How old were they? asks Katy.

Five men were younger than twenty, and many were not even seamen, coming from farms or factories. Colin was twenty-one. I imagine he felt responsible, having rescued ship-mate Ken from the water when the ship sank, others too. In saving them was he obliged to continue so? You look after me. Six bubbles spoil the smooth span of insulin, like barnacles beneath a boat. Six men at a time could shelter under canvas awning; eight remained in the sun. Food held no appeal with such thirst. Some drank seawater in desperation.

Where’s the harm in that? asks Katy.

Excess salt makes you urinate more than the water gained from drinking it, increasing dehydration.

Like sugar in my blood making me wee so much. How thirsty I was then. Would they have felt like that?

Yes, like that. So softly, yes, like that.

Tell me something happy.

When night fell on the eighth day it began to rain. Desperately they opened mouths like petals to the sun, but it stopped almost as soon as it had begun. Two younger men sobbed. Hungrily, they licked the thin film of moisture off the canvas. I’m sad, says Katy.

But her injection doesn’t hurt.

Is this story too much? Should I return to cheery childhood tales of paddling pools and crazy baths? No. Katy brings her box of needles, eager. She wanted another chapter between pinpricks, promising she could endure pain without words if the tale ended sooner. Let’s wait, I said. Let’s remain true to our trade.

Someone must have died, says Katy, cross-legged as she often sat for bedtime stories once upon a time.

The first death occurred after nineteen days of watching the waves for ship or land, searching one another’s faces for life. First Officer Scown died, having removed his ring to be passed on to his wife. Many more deaths come. Men jump overboard to be eaten by sharks. Some drink seawater until madness takes them, begging for water as they go. Shall I tell Katy these things? Should I assess her bravery each day? Is it fair to exchange pain for pain?

So how long would I live on a raft like that? she asks, eating a sweet, jammy biscuit to prevent further hypo.

There are many answers; in as few as twenty-four hours diabetic ketoacidosis would occur without insulin, and vomiting, dehydration, deep gasping breath, confusion and coma would result. It might take days, even weeks, with so little to eat. But a lack of water would be most dangerous. I will not sing these lines though. It’s time to put the box away and watch some TV.

You’re a coward.

I suppose I am.

I’m sorry, I’m sorry; you’re not cowardly at all.

I suppose I’m not.

Animals have featured in written literature for thousands of years. Bible stories had animals signify various human and godly traits, like the snake, the swine, and the lamb. Superstition has it that while sharks follow a vessel where death will soon visit, dolphins lead such a boat to safety. Rain hits the patio doors as though to break through. Katy covers her ears. I need her fingers, take them in my hands. She resists. A dolphin saved them for a while. Katy submits. They harpooned one on the twentieth day and ate its flesh and blubber, and drained all blood into a tin cup and drank of it.

Poor dolphin, whispers Katy.

Perhaps he surrendered too. It isn’t easy to catch one. And Ken, who managed it, was weak. Must the dolphin have swum close enough to be caught? What about the sharks? They’re mean and would make a better tea.

Ah, the men wished to catch such a beast. Sharks were a constant threat, swimming often on all sides, waiting. They named a large brute Scarface, because a ragged slash scored his head. Scarface swam with them until the end.

Can we say goodnight now, says Katy. Let the poor men sleep. Would they sleep? Would they dream?

Each day they watched the sun set, desperate for escape from its heat. By morning, after coldness and nothing but hard surface to rest on, they longed again for its warmth.

Tell me about Colin. Just him. Did you know him?

No, we never met. He passed before I existed.

You seem to know him like you know me or dad or Conor.

I think memories are part of our make-up, passed on genetically, reliving somehow in our DNA. I’ve only read about him but I smelt his presence between black printed paragraphs. Like blood, blood that flows now onto a strip. Blood we read as three-point-five. By the thirty-fifth day just two men remained – Colin and Kenneth. The story is theirs now. On the twenty-ninth day, unknown to them, a letter got sent from the owners of the Lulworth Hill to family members, advising that all onboard were likely dead. The thirtieth day was when their First officer, now gone, had predicted they’d reach the Liberian border. Instead it was a horrible day. No land. No ship. No rescue. Three men jumped into the sea and were eaten by sharks. No one tried to save them. No one had the strength. So came day thirty-five, and Colin and Ken clasped hands in their grief. Katy sucks her finger. Blood is sweet. Salt is sour. And so the raft drifted on an unchanging sea and two men lapsed in and out of coma and rain never fell and Katy doesn’t cover her ears.

Some days blood won’t flow, no matter how we pierce skin. Today is such a time. My Little Pin Cushion bears it well. She does not cry. But I do.

Let me distract you, mum, says Katy.

But I’m the storyteller.

I didn’t bring blood today, so let me do the words. It’s only fair. Listen to this – I went on the raft last night. Snuggling between the two sleepy men I stroked Great Grandad Colin’s hair and whispered right in his ear how proud I am of him. I did. I knew which one he was. He smelt right. Even though he looked like a scarecrow, all hairy and ragged, he still looked like us. I said I’d tell him a story to distract from his nightmares and the wooden floor. It really was uncomfortable, Mum. Not even a sheet. I said I bet he missed spider webs in rain. And butterflies. And birds. He used to go bird-spotting with his dad. There a bird means land and safety. I said, if you don’t live I’ll disappear, Grandad. I won’t be able to come back and stroke your hair. I’ll just dissolve like a salty ghost. So I ripped a page out of the logbook and drew us all in there; you and me and Conor and dad. I wrote above that you have to know how to be happy to know how to be sad, and if you know both of those things you’ll know how to be brave. He woke up after I’d gone and found the page and thought he was going crazy. He was sure he’d written the words because the handwriting was a bit like his. But my picture made him smile. He woke Ken and they had their tiny portion of water and horrid dry biscuit and milk tablet and they looked out at the sea for sharks and dolphins and birds. It’s okay to be sad, mum. It means you’re brave. We’ll have to just guess my number today. You always get it right. You always know. What do you think?

I think we’ll have ice-cream after tea – a really big portion.

Remember the first Christmas after you’d been diagnosed? Remember how I replaced sugar with a substitute in cakes, used horrible diabetic chocolate bars, trying to make everything the same as Christmases before.

I remember.

It only highlighted that this one was different. But today is not Christmas. It’s a day like any other. Katy bleeds; insulin resuscitates. It’s hard to make stories out of such sameness. Suffering has a sameness too.

I’ve loved the boat story, says Katy. I know it’s going to end soon and I so don’t want it to, but I guess we’ll talk about the scratchy carpet in my first bedroom and the yellow bunny wallpaper in case I turned out to be a boy.

Her memory surprises me as much as the prediction that I’ll soon recall it during our trade. But let’s talk now about rescue. What do you think signalled it?

A dream?

Perhaps.

No, a bird.

Yes. Seagulls. On the forty-second day a group of them circled the raft, birds that rarely venture far from land. In the log Ken wrote, many birds around, can’t stand up now, we will stick it to the end. Katy’s blood reads eighteen-point-one. High. Could be excitement or illness or too much food or too little insulin. High in the sky, on the forty-third day, they spotted a plane. Colin set off a smoke-float, filling the air with dense red vapours. Had they been seen? More hours passed, hours longer than the days preceding. Hope dwindled with supplies. On the forty-fifth day another flew over and dropped packages, like gifts from Santa’s sleigh. A gas cylinder and a dinghy and a rocket pistol and a kite, but like the Christmas when we endured sugar substitute and craved sweetness, they only wanted water. Eventually it came. Day forty-eight brought tins of water from the sky, and cigarettes and barley sugar and real chocolate.

Excited, Katy says, I know how they felt. When I’m low and eat it feels like someone injected me with happiness.

Let us end, for now, on that high.

The best stories end openly.

No, neatly, insists Katy. All tidy with everything sorted out.

Her injection box is almost empty; our dwindling supplies are easily replaced, ordered from the doctor. I shall try and give her the ending she wants. Scarface knew an end loomed. On the fiftieth day he charged at the raft, perhaps sensing the men were hours from death, perhaps smelling a day of rescue. Neither had strength to fight, and the faithful shark gave up when the heavy raft wouldn’t relinquish its cargo. Colin spotted a ship, just as he had seen Ken in the water fifty days earlier. A ship, a ship, a ship, a ship. They said the words over.

A ship, whispers Katy.

Neither remembered much of those first days on the HMS Rapid. Fed warm milk regularly from a baby’s bottle, they slept in beds deliciously comfortable. Then, in Freetown they recuperated at the Disabled British Seamen’s Rest. Here Colin was said to ahev suffered his first epileptic fit. What’s one of those? asks Katy. Her injection is done without complaint. Story time is over. But we cannot leave such a question alone. Epilepsy is a neurological condition where the sufferer has seizures that start in the brain. Many things cause it, from genetics to injury of the brain. Triggers like stress or tiredness can bring on a fit. Let’s save one more chapter now.

We’re almost there.

Like the SS Lulworth Hill’s two halves pulled by currents to land far away from each other, Ken and Colin separated. Once home, once medals had been received for bravery, once children came, life resumed and they untied the ropes and cast adrift.

But why? Surely they’d be friends forever now?

Doctors asked Ken to stay away from Colin, thinking his presence reminded of their ordeal and brought on the many violent seizures. Colin never knew of these orders and died, years after, thinking his friend had abandoned him.

No, whispers Katy. He’ll know now. He must know now.

We have not yet read her blood. Our exchange is off balance. I’ve given lines too easily and now there are none left to dampen her pain. She winces at the cut but nods to show she’s fine. Time doesn’t heal. Time lets wounds fester and blister in hot sun, it bruises legs and arms and tummy with pinpricks. Really, time separates.

Are these your words? They sound too not you, Mum.

Maybe they’re mine, maybe they’re his, maybe they’re yours. I’m not sure. But I think the dark heals. Don’t you? So do stories. Here we’re all equal. All characters have a part to play. So what now? Colin is home. He’s in whatever place we go when we’ve earned a rest.

You’ll have to sing again now, says Katy. Sing Music of the Night. Or that Lady Gaga one with the German bit. Or just tell me about when Dad was little and did a karate chop through the kitchen wall.

So we do.

We trade blood for words.

A competition should always be a level playing field. Each entrant should have an equal chance to succeed, follow the same rules as everyone else, be treated fairly. Otherise, it’s not a competition, it’s pretending to be. Sadly, in the book world, it isn’t always so fair where prizes and awards are concerned. Because some books don’t have an equal chance of being entered into certain competitions in the first place. The rules may be equal once you’re in, your book may be judged on its merit once you’re in, you may have a chance once you’re in. But you can’t get in. Here’s why.

The brilliant indie publisher of my memoir, Eighteen Seconds, considered entering it in a certain non-fiction prize. Obviously, I was excited. Then they saw the T&Cs. At various stages of the comeptition, large amounts of money are required form the publisher for ‘promotional activity’. And they simply don’t have it. I understand that prizes have to find money from somewhere for funding and costs, that these things can’t be operated without such donations, but this immediately alienates small/indie publishers who don’t have a vast budget. And that means that only certain books stand a chance. Even with bigger publishers who can fund such competitions, they will have to choose a ‘sure winner’ as the book they find they money for – and ‘sure winners’ are often very big names.

I don’t want special treatment. I don’t think my book deserves to shortlist, longlist or win over any others. But this experience made me think of the many books published by smaller presses that deserve a chance to be considered in the first instance. I’ve read some breathtakingly beautiful books from indies. Many of my favourites on my bookshelves were released by such publishers. And as I’ve savoured those literary delights, I’ve wondered why I’m not seeing them on competiton longlists and shortlists. Sadly, it’s probably because they were published by a team who can’t afford to fund this.

Bearing in mine that book prizes can’t run without funding, I wonder if there’s another way. One that offers a more level playing field. One that means anyone and everyone can enter if the book meets the criteria. I know that such fees happen with so many – not all but many – bookish accolades. Some well-known book club picks by certain celebrities come at a large cost. As do certain chart placings in a certain bookstore. I’m sure that once entered, books in these competitons are judged on merit, by a panel who loves selecting a wonderful winner. And I know that some of my other favourite books over the years have been those winners. Big prizes can make or break a novel. I love that these teams take the time to acknowledge literature in the way they do. But how about a way to include those who can’t afford this acknowledgment?

It’s been a month of really exciting announcements, one of which – the news that End of Story, my dystopian fiction, has been sold to Hodder – I waited over a year to shout about. Understandably, a few people were shocked that I could keep this mouth shut for that long. I am an enigma. A keeper of secrets. Ha. But now it is also out that my memoir, originally called Daffodils in audiobook, will be released next year. It’s now called Eighteen Seconds. Mardle wanted a less vague, more memoir-ish title, and I chose Eighteen Seconds because of a certain chapter with this title that many audiobook listeners told me had touched them. Obviously, the daffodils are still a huge part of the story, that hasn’t changed. Both books are out in 2023.

What struck me last night as I digested all this exciting news, was how close the release dates of these two books are. End of Story will be released 23rd March, and Eighteen Seconds (almost typed Daffodils!) is out 27th April. Just five weeks exactly between them. Which is exactly the time I took between writing them. I finished Daffodils, as it was then called, at the beginning of May 2020 as we came out of the first lockdown, and started End of Story mid-June. I continued writing that one through the final and darkest lockdown at the end of 2020. It feels perfect that though it’s the other way around (I wrote End of Story after Eighteen Seconds, but it will be first) they belong almost side by side. I could not have written End of Story if I hadn’t gone through the cathartic, painful, and full-on experience of writing a memoir.

At first, I was very scared though. Someone said to me that if I wrote my memoir, I might never write anything again. I’m not quite sure what the thinking was behind it – maybe that I’d be spent, done, have written everything I was supposed to. This might have put anyone off both starting the difficult task of writing their own story, and then trying to write a fiction afterwards. But anyone who knows me knows that suggesting I don’t do something is the wrong way to stop me. I trust only my gut instinct. It never lets me down. And when I had poured my own story onto the page, after a brief five-week breather, I was ready – though obviously nervous – to start what felt like my most epic book, a dystopian novel exploring a future world where all fiction is banned. The fear that I might never write again compelled me to write harder, better, with more self-critcism.

As you can imagine, I’m delighted that both books will be on shop bookshelves next year. Two of my proudest achievements, each written during what were unprecedented times. And though the memoir is my own truth, there’s a lot of that in End of Story too, a novel that explores themes of grief, loss, isolation, and the absolute power of the arts to heal and uplift and unite. Look out for the cover for Eighteen Seconds in the near future. I can’t wait. Huge thanks to Emily Glenister for getting me these wonderful book deals.

And you can pre-order End of Story here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/End-Story-original-thriller-coming-ebook/dp/B0B7RB4VS8/ref=sr_1_1?crid=28UPPG8G1PO9H&keywords=end+of+story+louise+swanson&s=books&sprefix=end+of+story%2Cstripbooks%2C77&sr=1-1

After a week of book panels, I came home exhausted but bouyant. It was wonderful to mix with actual humans like it was the ‘old world’ again, to meet new readers and old, to work alongside authors and reunite with loyal bloggers, and to see some fantastic festivals full swing once more, with people milling about, books exchanging hands, conversation passionate. I did a panel with Karen Sullivan, Will Carver and Sarah Sultoon at Newark Book Festival, in their gorgeous town hall on the market square, for a receptive audience who looked just as happy as I felt to be doing this again. Then it was onto Repton Literary Festival for two panels, one in Repton School’s beautiful 450-year-old library, with stained glass windows and dark wood everywhere, and one in the huge school theatre.

There, I did a couple of panels with crime writer Caroline England, and one with the Queen of Cornish, Liz Fenwick. In between these, conversation got around to the writing community in general, and how supportive it is. One audience member had asked if there was competition between authors, since books were competing for attention, advertising and sales. We all agreed that the answer, in general – of course there will always be the exception – was no. That writers truly support one another. They do. Caroline said that when she was first going to a major crime festival, and nervous, I’d told her, ‘Look for me, I’ll always chat.’ I’d forgotten this. But I will. Always.

Liz said that she likes particularly to support debut novels, and will make time to read and share reviews of those. ‘We all know how hard it is, starting out as a new author,’ she said. ‘So I like to help in any way I can.’ Similarly, I try and support indie and smaller publishers. If I receive an ARC (Advance Review Copy) from one of them, I’ll put that nearer to the top of my reading pile. I make time for emerging writers who ask me questions at festivals such as these, remembering well what it’s like to be desperate for that elusive book deal. There is room for everyone in the writing community and most authors I’ve met are very welcoming. As I said to Caroline, if you see me at an event, I’m super down to earth and will always make time to chat to you.

I saw a recent post on Twitter about people feeling uncomfortable attending literary events – the tweeter had insisted that they shouldn’t, that she hadn’t read all the ‘classics’ and was often just there to gush. I loved this. That’s what it should be about. Passion. Love of books. I hate the snobbery that can often be wrapped up in all things literary. Coming from a working class background, I sometimes feel out of place, like I shouldn’t be on a platform with these well-educated and successful authors. Then I have a strong a word with myself. I deserve it as much as anyone else. So, remember – authors get anxious too. I feel sick before every panel I do. Thank God then that the writing community is as supportive as it is. That most authors leave the ladder down for those behind them.

Music was a huge part of my childhood. It was one of the first things I heard, and not from the radio or a record player, but live, in the house. My father was a musician alongside his job as an engineer. He played in local bands, and even jammed with Mick Ronson. He played support to some big bands in the 70s too. Some of my earliest memories are of him playing his guitar in the front room – a room reserved for these instruments, all hanging in a row on the wall, and where we kids had to be quiet and well-behaved. I recall being fascinated by how his fingers, which moved so deftly across the strings, made that music. He tried to show me once but I couldn’t do it. Holding a pen was my way of creating that music.

I learned early on how music could affect mood, what it maybe said about those playing it. Why they had chosen to listen that song, at that time. Was it to uplift, to escape, to drown out things they didn’t want to hear? The songs that my parents played in our house were varied, from my mother’s favourites like Abba and The Beatles, to my father’s choices, which were everything from pop to classical to rock to folk. This has made me very open-minded with music, giving everything a go. And it’s given me a deep appreciation of the power of it. Which is why I wrote Nothing Else, last year, during one of the many lockdowns. I wanted to explore how much music means to us, not only for pleasure and escape, but as a literal life-saver, as is the case with the story of Heather and Harriet, and their need to create a piece that drowns out the violence in their childhood home, a piece that doesn’t work when only one of them plays it. When they tragically lose one another after their parents die, they are haunted by this song, and long to find each another and play it together once again.

While writing Nothing Else, I created a playlist on Spotify of all the songs that are included in the book, some from the sets that Heather plays aboard the cruise ship, some from music she likes to listen to, some from the references to moments she is inspired. I found that listening to the music I was talking about created the mood I needed. Even on my morning walk, when I was trying to empty my mind and let the ideas in (how I always write, rather than plotting heavily), I listened to this playlist. I lived the music my characters were playing. Even when writing my less musical books, I always have a couple of albums that I play while I write, ones I later associate with that creation. It’s funny because I’ll hear those tracks years after and it will remind me of the fictional characters I invented as thought they’re real people. How about you? Do you need music when you write? Do you prefer silence? It’s always such a personal thing.

I wanted to write a little something in response to the overwhelming reaction I’ve had to my memoir, Daffodils, which came out in audiobook three weeks ago. When I sat here at the keyboard, during the first lockdown – which many will agree was the most intense, being a new experience – and started to write my own story, I never thought I’d dare share it with the world. It was originally intended as a cathartic sort of therapy. As a way of unearthing memories and facing the things that have haunted me since I was small. Then, as I came to the end, I wondered how many other people might have experienced what I had, and how helpful it might be if I bared my life, utilised my platform, and used my voice. It was a long journey to audiobook – and I still hope it will end up in paperback, so watch this space – but here we are, and what a reaction. Let me tell you a little about it.

In the last three weeks I’ve been inundated with private messages, emails, gifts, cards, and even handwritten letters from readers, reviewers, relatives, and friends. I’ve been sent daffodil keyrings, bags, scarves, prints, doormats, and glasses. I’ve had people send pictures every time they spot a beautiful group of daffodils. These gifts have made my day – I’m a big kid at heart, you see – but it is the words people have shared with me that mean the most.

I’ve received messages from women who also have tricky relationships with their mothers, who either shared their experience of ending things/coping, or said that they were glad someone was actually talking about such a taboo as – for want of a better word – divorcing your own mother. I had the loveliest letter from a lady who knew the trauma of childhood abuse and having a narcissist mother, who has now made her life about helping others. I got a message from a woman who had just adopted a little girl who displayed many of the traits I had as a child in the memoir, who said she would now know how to help her daughter as a result. I’ve read tweets where listeners to the audiobook shared their tears, their difficulty, their support of the memoir. It’s been uplifting, empowering … and yet also surprisingly exhausting.

The exhaustion is because of the many emotions all at once. There has obviously been joy at touching people like this, at starting conversations that I really wanted to. There has been pride in the praise of my memoir, and it’s apparent bravery (I don’t always feel like that). There has been pain in hearing how so many others have gone through similar difficulties; I tend to take on such sorrow, very deeply, so have had to be good to myself. And there has been, still, even after all of it, sadness that I even had such a story to share, and that my family has been through so much. But, despite all that, you’ll still get the smiley me, because laughter has been as much of a therapy over the years as writing has. Thank you to every single person who sent a gift or a word or a collection of them in the form of a review. I’ll never forget any of it.

Nothing Else is what I call one of my lockdown books; lockdown literature might be a catchier phrase. I wrote three during the various lockdowns of 2020 and 2021, two novels and my memoir. What else was there for me except my writing? My theatre was shut, there were no physical book events, and we had all come inside. I got lost in my words, and naturally my experience of a pandemic infiltrated some of these stories, the isolation meaning I depended on music, reading, and writing.

Nothing Else was the third of the three books that I wrote during that time, and I started it in the deepest, darkest lockdown, the last one that was from January to March 2021, when we were all exhausted and fed up and done in. It followed my memoir Daffodils (out in audiobook 1^st April) which the first lockdown interrupted and ended up becoming part of the narrative. It also followed a novel I can’t talk about yet (soon!) which explores a future world where all fiction is banned. I think you can see how that time affected me? These are some of the posts I shared when I wrote my dystopian book:

The themes in these three books were quite similar; the importance of the arts in our lives, something the lockdowns destroyed in many ways. Daffodils explored my own story and touched on the power of writing throughout my life – how it’s something I’ve turned to since I was small. In the next one (I can tell you more soon!) l created a world where we could no longer write or read novels. And in Nothing Else I looked at the extraordinary healing and transformative magic of music, and how it helps two young sisters cope when their childhood home is consumed with violence.

I realised that I’d never written a book about sisters. In fact, they rarely even feature in a small way. It occurred to me that this was quite odd. I grew up with three siblings, two of them sisters. Yet I seemed not to give this wonderful relationship to any of my characters. My siblings have been there for me in a huge way all my life. I told a tale of two brothers in The Lion Tamer Who Lost – not that it worked out that well! – so I wanted to write about the wonderful bond between sisters. Heather and Harriet in Nothing Else are very close. So, when circumstances separate them in childhood, it deeply affects the rest of their lives. The one thing they both remember vividly is a song they created together, one that drowned out the battleground that was their home. These are two (sadly, slightly ruined) pictures of us sisters (and our beloved grandma) when we lived with her. Claire and Grace learnt to play the piano, and were very good, but no one pushed them to continue.

Music is such a huge part of the new book that I created a Spotify playlist especially. It’s quite a mixture. As a pianist, Heather plays most of them at some point in the novel. The others are songs that she loves or is inspired by. Here’s a link: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7zxfUegPjGhWag4tnznizw?si=03ad81cedc9f4288

I’ve been so excited this week to finally share the cover for the upcoming audiobook release of my memoir Daffodils – the image is beautiful, simple, the colours bright, and the bunch of daffodils perfect. Here it is again.

I started writing the book at the end of 2019, after my private world fell apart, and just before the outside world shut down due to Covid. The process was terrifying, empowering, eye-opening, and ultimately life changing. I was forced to address aspects of my childhood I’d never fully explored, to dissect the complex relationship with my mother, to deal with the unexpected consequences of that, and of course to look fully at the day my mother jumped from the Humber Bridge. I made big decisions about my life now as a result.

I shared my journey writing the book both here on my website and on social media; how I used my recently acquired care records to flesh out the gaps in my memory, how I recorded my siblings’ thoughts and recollections, and those of my uncle, and incorporated those aspects too, how I coped with the aftermath of my mother’s bridge jump, and how the pandemic unfolded and became part of the narrative halfway through.

Two and a half years ago, here, I shared the photograph I took of some early daffodils the morning my mother jumped. That post had more views than any I’d written before. As a result, I got the most supportive messages from readers. When I did literary events and festivals that year, people gave me daffodil-inspired gifts and cards. When spring arrived, followers sent me pictures of first daffodils they had spotted. On my fiftieth birthday I got so many daffodil related presents that the house was awash with yellow. I’ll never forget these kindnesses.

Madeleine Black, who shared her brutal childhood rape and the years of recovery in her book Unbroken, often encouraged me to write my own story, particularly after she read Maria in the Moon, a novel I call the memoir I could never write. Madeleine is an author and public speaker who has encouraged so many women to speak out about their experiences. We did some #metoo panels together, became close friends, and I kept saying ‘Maybe one day’ when asked if I would forsake my fiction in search of a deeper story.

That day came nine months after my mother jumped off the Humber Bridge. I knew this violent act that tore the family apart was a starting point for the memoir I’d always wanted to write. It’s great that we are talking about suicide and mental health far more today, but we often forget the families of those who want to die; the fallout and pain that they too experience.

Writing my own story was a completely different experience to writing novels. I can hide behind the words in my fiction, but here, there was no such safety on the page. My siblings and uncle read it as I went, chapter by chapter, as did Madeleine Black. John Marrs – another dear author friend – read it as soon as I’d finished, when it was raw and unpolished, and gave helpful feedback. Later, other writerly friends Susie Lynes and Gill Paul read a more refined version. Now the book is finally released in audiobook on 1^st April. I’m excited and yet nervous for people to listen to my story. I hope it will inspire other survivors to finally find their voices too. And I hope the peace it has given me to write it continues…

You can order the memoir here:

https://shop.bolinda.com/aus/search/newreleases.aspx?/1/B37316E9-E2C8-4933-A553-E6D40F5F7885/1/138/1/0/0/1/1/28/05%20January%202022-05%20April%202022