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A fix for feuding parents? A Better Man by Leah McLaren

29/8/2015

Following the birth of their twins three years ago, Nick and Maya have grown apart. Having given up her job as a highflying divorce lawyer to devote herself to the children, Maya is becoming increasingly insecure, looking to her therapist, the children’s nanny, her personal trainer and self-help books for “the answer”, when what she really wants is her husband’s attention. But Nick, an advertising director, has come to the conclusion it’s time to leave. Confiding in the couple’s mutual friend, Adam Gray, he realises that, with Maya now a stay-at-home mum, he’ll be heavily penalised financially in the divorce settlement. Unless he can play at being a better man, spending more time with his children and encouraging his wife back to work.

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Awaiting judgement day: Higher Ed by Tessa McWatt

27/8/2015

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Francine is grappling bulimia and the menopause along with wondering whether she’ll survive the coming cuts in Quality Assurance. Robin genuinely cares about his students as he philosophises over film and the dread of having a baby with the wrong woman. Olivia wants to put the world to rights but isn’t sure if her law degree will let her, or whether she should start with her own dysfunctional family and the father who’s been hidden from her since she was four. Ed soothes his own loneliness by ensuring the unloved and unwanted still get a good sendoff. Katrin navigates the gulf between London and her native Gdansk in the cafe where she works and with the gentle Englishman who seems to like.

Each of these five point of view characters are vividly and sympathetically realised on the page. Each of them follows an interesting narrative arc, complete with back story and associated minor characters, I could have followed for an entire novel. But just as the characters seem to question whether there’s anything more cohesive than the fragments of their world (p151, 267):

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Victim, perpetrator, rescuer? Shame by Melanie Finn

26/8/2015

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Pilgrim Jones has done something shameful: crashed her car into a bus stop and killed three young children, although she has no memory of doing so. Did she swerve to avoid the dog and lose control of the vehicle or, consumed by anger and self-pity after being dumped by her human-rights lawyer husband, was she reckless? Certainly her neighbours in the small Swiss town of Arnau consider her a child murderer and, despite the sympathy of the police, she realises she has to get away. With no particular plan, she flies to Tanzania and, dropping out of a safari, pitches up in Magulu, a shabby village on the road to nowhere, with one bus out a week. Here she finds herself a world away from her former travels with her ex-husband, from her role as a diplomatic wife. Here, where the doctor has no medicine, the policeman no power to uphold the law, violence or the threat of it is ever presence at the periphery of her vision (p82/83):

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The art of the long-distance blog tour

23/8/2015

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The year I turned fifty, I undertook a long-distance walk: 190 odd miles across northern England from the west coast to the east. Instead of trying to cajole a group of friends into joining me, I chose to do the whole thing alone, but arranging for various friends and family to accompany me for a day at a time. Sometimes I walked solo, sometimes with individuals or a small group of four or five, with my husband – not an aficionado of rambling – valiantly attempting to fill in the gaps. Although the planning process stretched my organisational capacities to the limit, the event itself was wonderful, despite blisters, inadequate navigation skills and the vagaries of the English weather. After two and a bit weeks hiking across three national parks, I reached my destination at Robin Hood’s Bay, exhausted and exuberant. Back home, with a couple of days free before returning to work, I began writing the novel that became Sugar and Snails.

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Yes, I have been reading: 3 mini reviews

18/8/2015

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There’s no denying that, with my preoccupation with launching a certain novel, I’ve been neglecting my reading of others’ words of late. But I have been doing some reading over the past month, but writing posts for my epic blog tour has taken precedence over writing my reviews. Much as I might berate myself for not paying it forward and matching the eloquence and depth of so many of the reviews of Sugar and Snails, I’ve decided that mini reviews of these three debut novels will have to suffice. They’re summarised here, not in order of preference, but in the order I read them.

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Approaching the end of the trail? #SugarandSnails Blog Tour Week 5

15/8/2015

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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.

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Psychologist Write: Barbara Fagan Speake

13/8/2015

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For my third post in this series, I’m delighted to welcome Barbara Speake to Annecdotal. After an accomplished career as a research and clinical psychologist, Barbara is well on the way to publishing her fifth novel. Here’s Barbara in her own words:

How did you come to writing fiction?

I came to fiction writing through the discipline of writing non-fiction. I was very fortunate to have had two major psychology careers spanning nearly four decades, firstly as a research psychologist and then, after further training, as a clinical psychologist and NHS manager. During my academic career, I authored or co-authored numerous journal articles, book chapters, government reports, a PhD thesis and two books for parents and staff, both published by Souvenir Press. When I later qualified as a clinical psychologist, my writing was mainly of a clinical nature, service reports, and court reports, firstly in primary care, then in learning disability services, autism, Asperger’s Syndrome and forensic services.

Of course, like many authors, who have written non-fiction, I always wondered if I had a fiction book in me.

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Welcome to the real world as the blog tour enters week 4

10/8/2015

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It’s been another hectic week on the blog tour: sharing the novels that have helped me find a mind of my own with Urszula Humienik; examining how contemporary novels feature scientific research with Gargi Mehra; talking attachment with Safia Moore stemming from my character’s difficulty in “telling a story about when you were a little girl”; confessing and commiserating with Clare O’Dea regarding our shared difficulty in articulating what our novel’s about; to come to port on Friday with Lori Schafer to address the question of how much my novel might be autobiographical.

After my weekend in a virtual California, I’m heading northward today to join lead buckaroo, Charli Mills on her fabulous Carrot Ranch in Idaho. She’d already set my place at the table with this lovely introduction on her blog. I’m heading back to the UK for the rest of the week, stopping off first with novelist and psychologist Voula Grand, who was the first to feature in my series Psychologists Write, to explore a shared interest in transgenerational trauma, both on and off the page. Then it’s a second guest post (the first, on Day One of the tour, being on debuting as an older author) with my publishers, Inspired Quill, to reveal my responses to the thoughtful questions put to me by one of the team, Hannah Drury. With all this travelling I wonder if I’ll have time to tidy up before Thursday, when I’ll be showing everyone around my Writers’ Room, courtesy of novelist, former prison governor and Costa Short Story Award winner, Avril Joy. Friday, I’ll be hot-footing it to London to join novelist, blogging addict and reader of an early version of Sugar and Snails, Geoff LePard, for a post on how walking facilitates my writing with, hopefully, a few photographs of the walk that features in my novel. (Yikes, did he realise that’s the day he launches his second novel, My Father and Other Liars, or is his attention to me an excuse to avoid a launch party?)

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An Author Abroad as the Blog Tour Reaches Week 3

3/8/2015

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For the first fortnight of the Sugar and Snails blog tour, I’ve been mostly confined to the UK. Apart from a visit to The Oak Wheel in California, I stayed, like the homebird I am, in my own country until pitching up at the end of last week in Australia. While Norah Colvin might live as far away from me as it’s possible to get, I knew I’d have a warm reception on her blog. Now she’s injected me with the travelling bug, I’m spending this whole week with blogging friends beyond my country’s borders, and greatly looking forward to the trip.

I’m starting today in Poland in the Monday Inspirations slot courtesy of former art therapist, writer and fellow broccoli addict, Urszula Humienik, to talk about the books that have inspired me. Tuesday finds me in Pune, India (one of the two calling-off points in this week’s tour I’ve visited in real life) to explore fictional research with Gargi Mehra, software engineer by day, prolific short-story writer by night. On Wednesday I’m off to Ras Al Kaimah (Arabic for Top of the Tent) in the United Arab Emirates to talk attachment with Safia Moore. Recent winner of the Bath Short Story Award, Safia posted a beautiful review of Sugar and Snails on her blog last week AND flew over from her native Belfast on Friday to join the launch party at Jesmond library. On Thursday, I’m visiting another expatriate Irishwoman, journalist turned fictioneer, Clare O’Dea, now a Swiss national, resident in Fribourg, to discuss not knowing what my novel’s about, a follow-up to her own popular post on the topic. Friday takes me back to California with writer of serious prose and humorous erotica, Lori Schafer, where I’m pondering the autobiographical element of fiction with the author of the prize-winning memoir On Hearing of My Mother’s Death Six Years After It Happened. If all that doesn’t show that the blogging community is truly international, I don’t know what would!

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A fix for feuding parents? A Better Man by Leah McLaren

Awaiting judgement day: Higher Ed by Tessa McWatt

Victim, perpetrator, rescuer? Shame by Melanie Finn

The art of the long-distance blog tour

Yes, I have been reading: 3 mini reviews

Approaching the end of the trail? #SugarandSnails Blog Tour Week 5

Psychologist Write: Barbara Fagan Speake

Welcome to the real world as the blog tour enters week 4

An Author Abroad as the Blog Tour Reaches Week 3

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