 | The Sugar and Snails blog tour takes a different shape this week; still the five posts but kicking off a day early, beginning on Sunday (tomorrow) with a short midweek break. Firstly, after my Q&A with Shaz Goodwin in week two, I have the pleasure of meeting up with a namesake from the front half of my name on Being Anne. Anne Williams has posed some interesting questions about my novel and, ingeniously, readers’ reactions to it, so I hope you’ll pop over and check my answers. Then I’m off to Writing Ourselves Well to tell Kate Evans, along with anyone else who wants to eavesdrop, why I’m thanking my therapist. Kate, trained as a psychotherapeutic counsellor, and I have wrung our virtual hands together over the portrayal of therapists in fiction; Kate took that a step further by featuring a fictional therapist of her own in her debut novel, The Art of the Imperfect. She’s been a fabulous champion of Sugar and Snails, reflected in this lovely review and in travelling up to the Newcastle launch where we met in person for the first time. |
On Tuesday, I’m visiting Urszela Humienik for the second time this summer; hot on the heels of her lovely reception of A mind of my own in another side to the story, I’m exploring the theme of adolescent ambivalence and risky decision-making in my novel. Then, a couple of days later, I’ll be squatting in Lora Hughes’ Writing Closet to account for my thinking behind the gender theme in Sugar and Snails. Lora was one of my Liebster award nominees last year, in honour of her highly original posts on gender. A writer and former trauma therapist, she described herself as a “transparent” when I first met her in the blogosphere, having supported her child through the transformation from daughter to son. Now I notice that’s changed to “trans-contagious”, as she maps the process of her partner’s transition from male to female. I think she merits something a bit more substantial than a Liebster award for her lived commitment to diversity.
The tour ends on Friday at another compassion-based blog, Gum on My Shoe, a collaboration between Fran Houston in Portland, Maine and Martin Baker in the north-east of England. Fran has lived with bipolar disorder, chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia for over twenty years and, despite the miles between them, Marty is her main support and carer, through the ingenuity of Skype. Marty and I discovered each other on Twitter not long before publication day and, after several back and forths of under 140 characters, met up with the Newcastle launch. He and Fran are hosting my post on invisible vulnerabilities and self-harm.
After five weeks on the road, it might be time to shove my suitcase back under the bed. I’ve still got some ideas for guest posts, and possible places to put them, but nothing scheduled after my visit to Marty and Fran. It’s too soon to stop promoting my novel altogether, but perhaps it’s time to give me and my followers a break. I have stepped slightly away from my narcissistic self-obsession to host a post from Barbara Speake who has been waiting very patiently for her slot on Psychologists Write and draft some much-neglected reviews as well as a debut novelist Q&A (no, not with me) that I hope to post soon. But I’ve enjoyed my travels immensely so, unlike my novel’s protagonist, I’m keeping my options open for now. But whatever my middle-aged decision – and perhaps you’ll want to advise me – I’ll certainly let you know.
The tour ends on Friday at another compassion-based blog, Gum on My Shoe, a collaboration between Fran Houston in Portland, Maine and Martin Baker in the north-east of England. Fran has lived with bipolar disorder, chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia for over twenty years and, despite the miles between them, Marty is her main support and carer, through the ingenuity of Skype. Marty and I discovered each other on Twitter not long before publication day and, after several back and forths of under 140 characters, met up with the Newcastle launch. He and Fran are hosting my post on invisible vulnerabilities and self-harm.
After five weeks on the road, it might be time to shove my suitcase back under the bed. I’ve still got some ideas for guest posts, and possible places to put them, but nothing scheduled after my visit to Marty and Fran. It’s too soon to stop promoting my novel altogether, but perhaps it’s time to give me and my followers a break. I have stepped slightly away from my narcissistic self-obsession to host a post from Barbara Speake who has been waiting very patiently for her slot on Psychologists Write and draft some much-neglected reviews as well as a debut novelist Q&A (no, not with me) that I hope to post soon. But I’ve enjoyed my travels immensely so, unlike my novel’s protagonist, I’m keeping my options open for now. But whatever my middle-aged decision – and perhaps you’ll want to advise me – I’ll certainly let you know.
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