Kindness, Acceptance, Peace.

I always thought that my ex-husband would die on the 3^rd September. The lyrics of the song ‘Papa was a Rolling Stone’ were written for him: a stone that rolled his own way who baulked at responsibility and commitment leaving a trail of devastation in his wake. But he didn’t, he died at 2am on Tuesday July 11th, 2023 in Galway hospital. 

He moved to Ireland after we divorced twenty years ago and I haven’t seen him since. Our elder son has only the sketchiest memories, our younger son has none and my ex was never in touch with them – not a card, not a phone call. I heard from him only once when a letter arrived. He had obviously seen me on the TV and it had it inspired him to write a very short note to say as much and sending love to myself and the boys. No address. At least that proved he was alive, news that my beloved father-in-law was desperate for because no one knew for sure: we had no clue where he was. My father-in-law sadly died not knowing because his son hadn't been in touch with him for sixteen years and searches yielded no results. Yes it is possible to fly that low under the radar, even in this day and age. I was always convinced he would turn up when he was in need and as such I have always been on low alert waiting for it.

            A month ago I was contacted by someone asking if I had been married to him and a red light was activated. This person told me that my ex didn’t know he’d tried to track me down, but he felt obliged, on his behalf, to tell me that he was very poorly. I turned into a detective that would put Sherlock Holmes to shame to find out what all this was about because I was convinced of an ulterior motive. It stirred up a lot of things because our marriage was a car crash of the highest order, but back then I’d always hoped I could rescue it, and trust me I tried. No one marries expecting to divorce. I wanted us to be forever, but our forever ended short. Even when we divorced, I wanted to keep it civil because the guilt of having been the one to call an end to our marriage weighed heavy on me. I didn’t want our sons to come from a broken home yet I had been the one who filed for divorce. When my Decree Absolute came through – on Halloween – I popped the cork off a bottle of champagne, took the first sip and broke down. That piece of paper represented my failure and I think I’ve been flogging my guts out ever since to make it up to my lads. But I would never have cut their father off from them, he severed those ties and kept them severed. For too many years I’ve been angry at him for taking off without a thought for his lovely father, his brother, his sons without a backward glance at what that level of abandonment might do to them.

            I had barely begun to comprehend that his name was back on my horizon again when he died awaiting a major operation, frail and thin and so ravaged that his friends who had seen him only a short time before couldn’t recognise him. I couldn’t register it, I couldn’t define what I felt. I don’t know why I was so upset, I’m still processing it, still struggling with a situation that sits outside the norm. I can't explain it and I can't understand it, I can only feel it. It isn't anything to do with love, but it is everything to do with loss.

            My ex found his way to a gentle, accepting community in very Irish Ireland. He lived a simple life, labouring on people’s houses, on their land, on a dairy farm, his home a ramshackle lowly dwelling place with a wild feral cat running around for company, enjoying the craic in the local village pub. The few photos I was forwarded by people who knew him show him aged, smiling, as if he’d found his contentment. Trading home comforts for a harder life but one as free as it is possible to get is undoubtedly the highest state he could find: satisfying the ‘here for a good time, not a long time’ adage. People in that community gave him lifts when he needed them, work, companionship, donated clothes and bedding, washed his laundry when he was ill, took him at face value. The couple on the farm fed him when he was poorly at the end, forced him into hospital, cared for him. Then the community arranged his funeral for him, wrote their eulogies, liaised with the priest and turned out en masse to mourn for one of their own in church. We watched the service online and it was humble and touching and yes, they included our names out of their innate goodness. They asked us if it was okay if he stayed in the midst of them, in their churchyard. It was only right and proper than he rested among these wonderful people who had enfolded him. It was a funeral service with the purest sort of kindness at its heart, their consideration has deeply touched me. On his coffin was a photo I’d sent over of him in his younger days looking handsome with that full head of thick hair that he has passed on to his sons. But I don’t recognise this man they will miss. We all refine of course. I hope I’m not the same person I was years ago, I hope I have evolved somewhat from a much rougher copy (and will from this rough copy). He obviously moved away from the man I knew too. Maybe in shedding everything but that which served his basic needs – and that little feral cat running wild about the place – he found all he needed in life. Maybe it was just easier to keep focused on forward than to unknot everything that lay behind him, cut the ropes and let it sink to the depths of the sea that lay between us. Maybe addressing everything was too big, too much and so he reset his whole life and began afresh.

            It is the finality of it that is hard to comprehend for the family he left behind him. I know there was always the lingering hope of a reconciliatory pint, of them being able to talk, which has now been removed and can never be. It is a confusing time. Why else would I be so incensed that he has gone denying his sons a single scrap from his emotional table, worrying about the effect on them, and also poring over pictures of gravestones because I can’t bear to think of him in an unmarked pauper's grave. 

            I know the priest is surprised that the quiet man who stood at the back during Mass had chosen such a different life from his ex-wife, who is doing okay at writing books. And she made that happen so she could support her children as a single mum, and had enough material from that marriage to write novels until the pen drops out of her hand at her own end. Books featuring women rising like phoenixes from the ashes of bad relationships. That marriage was rocket fuel for my literary ambitions. The end of us was the beginning of me, and probably the beginning of him too, even if the path he took led to a wilder, harsher terrain.

            There are a lot of feelings here that refuse to sit in pigeon holes. I don’t know what the correct protocol is for a long-divorced ‘not-widow’. There is a template when someone close dies, but this chapter was left out of the textbook. I have few good memories of our time together, they were all snuffed out by the weight of too many bad ones. I have no idea why all this has affected me so much because I can hold (and have held) grudges for decades, trust me, I’m no saint… except to say that I gave birth to his sons, who have the best of him in them, and who I love more than my own life and that link will always be - maybe that is it. My overwhelming feeling is one of sadness, of something ended, even though for me it had ended long ago. And yet it feels now as if it has ended again, but properly this time. Maybe I am worried about the effect of that ending on those I love with all their questions left unanswered. It is impossible to get into someone’s head who thinks so differently from you, who has such opposing values. It was also impossible back then to see someone continually swimming against the tide, taking the path of most resistance when it would have been so easy to go with the flow and I could never work out why he did it. He was an apprentice-trained joiner. He had a trade, a way of living well but he threw that away too. He was a puzzle that defied solving beyond his last breath, the ultimate enigma.

            These are uncharted waters: losing the father of your children. Someone who, apparently, spoke of us fondly to his Irish friends who knew this different version of him. Every time I think I have a grasp of it, it slips away as if greased and it will not be pinned down. He told people about us, but he wouldn't answer any questions. Information given was on his terms only. 

Then I found that letting him go with my forgiveness freed me. There is no longer a need to try and untangle the knotted emotions, I have buried any enmity in its own grave. It is all finally done. There was a weight inside me that I didn’t know I was carrying but now it has gone. I have told my sons to let him go with forgiveness also and move on. Any ends that remained untied, we have to tie off ourselves now, make our own closure. 

It will take the soil on his grave time to settle, in line with our feelings, but settle it will.  And I will see to it that there is a stone erected so that one day his sons can go and see his resting place if they choose. It is a marker for what was once but is no more. It is time for us all – living and dead – to be at peace. 

The Power of Nancy

 

My friend Nancy died last week. I wept buckets. I wept like someone who saw her every day of our lives but the truth was I rarely saw her. We wrote - always a VERY lengthy one at Christmas - and I went to visit her last year, the last time being before Covid. But therein lies the strength of a good friendship, we picked up as if we HAD just seen each other the previous day. And she was never far from my mind because she turns up as a mention every time I do a presentation about my career. 

Our friendship started when I was twenty-five. I lived in Haworth and had secured a job at a local furniture and antiques shop and I was introduced to the three women who I would be working with - Nancy, in her fifties, Sheila in her sixties, Mary in her seventies. My initial thought was 'My god, this is going to be fun working with these old farts' but it WAS the best fun. We called ourselves the Golden Girls. Mary was the flighty Blanche, Sheila was dizzy Rose, Nancy was the pragmatic Dorothy - and it was ME who was the old Sophia, because they were far younger in spirit than I was. We went bowling together, to dinner, to the theatre... they taught me how women's friendship batters down all the barriers of age, background, colour, creed. It was the best lesson of my young life. 

The place we worked at well, you had to be there to believe it and a tale for another time, but thirty-odd years later and Nancy and I we were still laughing and coming out in cold sweats at what we experienced there. The big Christmas letter was the one I looked forward to writing and receiving most. But there will be no more. Nancy didn't want me to know she was poorly so it all came as a bolt from the blue and there will be no funeral because she didn't want anyone who barely knew her telling a congregation all about her as if they were best mates and she thought religion caused more problems than it solved. She wanted no fuss. That was her, strong, straight but you can be both of those and also full of joy too and she was. And, when I came to write my books, because of that friendship I had a lot in my scrapbook to draw from. Nancy's first husband was a serial adulterer, she told me, but he couldn't understand why she got upset because 'he saved her for best'. That turned up in a book, I tell you. (And yes, she moved on and met the most wonderful new husband.)

So when I read the article in the Mail at the weekend about the rise of 'mid-lit' - and how it had become this summer's literary sensation, my initial thought was 'about bloody time'. It's good that it's now in vogue - plus a double-whammy with some nice press for romantic fiction. But it has been around for quite some time waiting for the sun to shine on it, and there are many novelists out there writing about middle-aged and older women.

When I first started writing, I took a chance and wrote a story that was relevant to me rather than the ones I read - and loved - which were mainly set in the south and featured younger women. I was forty and badly in need of a Renaissance after a long drawn-out divorce. I couldn't see books about there about ME, so I wrote them.

My first book, The Yorkshire Pudding Club, about three northern women having babies aged forty, was a risk. But it paid off. And it sold because a load of women out there, like me, wanted books that were about women closer to their own age, who'd been kicked around the ring a few times and wanted hope that better things lay ahead. That book came out in 2006. I liked writing about women my own age, I knew what they'd been through, I knew that a few had been whittled away at in life, become doormats, and were ripe for a change of life. But I knew that a lot had gone the other way and embraced getting older, riding the age wave, pushing their boundaries. By this time I was finally free of the husband, I was running my own copyrighting company and doing a lot better than just surviving. Roll back seven years before though and I was standing crying in a corner thinking that if all I was going to have in life was what I already had, I might as well not be here. That low. So I absolutely know that however bad it gets, there is always the prospect of hope, of things getting much better, of reuniting yourself with the path your young self imagined lay in front of them which had some gold on it. As you age you realise sometimes that the gold is actually turds with a lucky light on them. But it doesn't have to be like that. Women have renaissances and when that biological clock hits forty and beyond... it seems to awaken a dragon within that says, 'Time's ticking, I want more.' It happened to me exactly like that. My life now couldn't be more different to how it was back then. I had no connections in this industry, just a hope that I could one day see my name on a book and see that book on a shelf in a shop. Change is scary and messy, but the end result is magnificent and that's why I write about such things.

I know that Jane Austen wrote about much younger women, but in those days you were finished if you were mid-twenties and hadn't got spliced. So when she writes about women like Anne Elliot, she's more or less writing the equivalent of middle-aged women, past it, heading for old-maid-dom, given a new lease of life. She was ahead of her time. She'd have worn a #RespectRomFic badge.

Sometimes my characters are younger (I still can remember what it's like to be that), sometimes they are much older than me, I have a wide range of ages in my books because I want to appeal to all readers. And even though I'm not a pensioner (yet), I've had enough friends of that age group to know that they are far from Scrapheap Farm and a switch hasn't been turned on that forces them to start an annual subscription to 'What Denture Paste?' and collecting thimbles. Let's not go down the lazy stereotype route. Women in their sixties don't start calling people dear and checking out retirement homes. They are going pole-dancing (yes some WIs so this) and trying all manner of new things, including internet dating and finding love. My friend is mid-fifties and she's about to climb Kilimanjaro, and not for the first time either. In many cases 'mature' women care less what people think of them which frees them. I was far more paranoid in my twenties than now. And I wear much brighter colours.

In Here Come The Girls, I have four friends who go on their first cruise for their fortieth birthdays. They're not in the best way, in need of that renaissance.  In Afternoon Tea at the Sunflower Cafe, Connie has become prematurely middle-aged, but she finds a fire in her belly when she finds her husband is cheating on her. In The Teashop on the Corner, one of my main characters Molly is a pensioner who, in My One True North, starts up her own business in her seventies. In Sunshine Over Wildflower Cottage, I fought to have my middle-aged characters going through the menopause because 'it wasn't a sexy subject' but I had a feeling it would be. I didn't want their symptoms being shoved under the carpet. I didn't want them to become superwomen either because of something entirely natural, but I did want to acknowledge it happens to women and so it should be mentioned. In The Mother of All Christmases, Annie has a baby late in life. In The Woman in the Middle, I write about Shay, in the sandwich generation, where a massive proportion of women find themselves these days - looking out for adult children, looking after elderly parents, juggling a job, the menopause, housework - and running on empty, squeezed out of their own lives. In Together, Again, Jolene is mid-forties and writing about love and romance but desperately unhappy at home. That 'insta-perfect' life jarring with reality. In A Summer Fling. one of my early books, there is a cross-generational friendship of women in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s. I'll leave you to work out where the inspiration for this one came from. A group of females who are bonded by life, by friendship and give support to each other at work. Yes, my precious Golden Girls group. 

You don't just stop having sex when you leave your thirties. You don't start buying brogues (although Crocs are blimming marvellous) and wearing twinsets and pearls. Women are having renaissances everywhere. They're being brave and leaving shit marriages and opening their own businesses. And often they find the bravery to do that by reading books in which fictional characters do this, written by writers who have taken their inspiration from real life - so there's a fabulous cycle of reality and fiction feeding each other. And it's a sign of a well-written book that a real person can take inspiration from a fictional person because they feel so authentic. That is the power of 'our books'. 

My lovely Nancy would never have believed the amount of material our friendship gave to me. Or the impact of it on my life, on my career. I will miss her wisdom, cackling over 'that place' we worked at which was as surreal as a Salvador Dali painting. I will miss the joy she gave me and I'll send a great big fat thank you to whatever it was that decided our paths should cross all those years ago. I owe it a pint.

Read the article online here. 

HOW TO SAY NO AND HOW TO VALUE YOURSELF AS A WRITER

At the risk of appearing like an out of season Grinch, I’m going to be saying NO a lot more this year and I’m already uncomfortable with that because it’s a word I’m totally rubbish at using. But over the past years, I’ve said YES too much because it felt easier (at the time) than saying NO. I’ve bust my gut, I’ve not seen friends I wanted to meet up with because I’ve had no space in the diary, I’ve been panicking when things have cropped up with my parents’ ill health that I’ll be away on one of the many committed dates when they needed me, so this year my hand has been forced and I’m going on an intensive NO course. I’m going to grow a backbone, put my big girl pants on, remember that my elastic can only stretch so far. 

 

Also, while we are on the 'wo-manning up' to things, let's throw in the c-word. CASH (almost as dirty as the other c-word). There’s something about cash in this business that makes it so hard to talk about. Other professionals work for money, electricians aren’t hobbyists hoping that someone will fling them some filthy lucre for a job occasionally, they trade their expertise for a wage. So why do writers find money so vulgar, so scary to talk about? Somehow I end up giving so much away for free because it feels icky to broker the subject of cold hard cash. I’m even cringing writing this. Goodness, what will anyone think of me talking about money *vision of a grasping Scrooge looms in my head*. But I’m going to because I think it’s important. 

 

Firstly saying NO, is preferable to me saying YES and then ending up with a big fat MUG painted on my head. While sitting recovering from a seasonal bug recently, I contemplated just how much time I’d wasted because I couldn’t say NO. The amount of occasions when I’ve been cajoled into meeting up with a stranger who ‘wanted to run something past me’. I have no idea what I expected, but I should have said, ‘Run it past me on the telephone’ and ignored their insistence that they needed to do it face to face ‘but it won’t take long’ (it invariably does). So I’ve gone out for coffees or meetings with someone I don't know from Adam and ended up wasting all morning waiting for the big reveal. It’s nearly always a favour, or a crash course in ‘how to write a book’ and I’ve sat there thinking, ‘Why am I here when I haven’t seen my best mate for three months because I've told her I've got no time?’ On one occasion I sat there for two hours listening to a woman telling me how many times she’d seen David Tennant in person because she’d travelled anywhere he might show up, and how much she was in love with him before we got to the nitty-gritty: her daughter at primary school had written a book and she needed help in getting in published. Possibly the longest two hours of my life even though there are many contenders for that title. And though it might be very flattering that someone’s six year old child wants to interview me for their YouTube channel (1 post, 4 views) … need I go on? There's being polite, nice, wanting to encourage... and then there's just doing things because it feels wrong to say NO.

 

And when it’s a local person asking somehow that NO word makes it even worse to say because they might think you’re obliged to help coming from the same town and then they’ll tell everyone you are a stuck up arse if you say NO. I do believe that many people who ask a favour think they are the only one who does, not one of twenty that week. And you’d be amazed how many of those requests never feature the word ‘please’. Can I turn up at X's birthday party if I'm not doing anything on Friday and do a speech? Can I send X a signed book because her washing machine has blown up and she's a bit down? Can I mentor someone? You're local, can you advertise my husband's window cleaning business? As a fellow local writer can you read my book and tell me what you think? Can I... can I... can I? So many requests, enough to fill a diary. Please don't be offended by the word NO. I barely have enough time to shave both legs in one sitting doing my day job never mind all the extras. 

 

As much as I love doing events, I have to be selective. It’s no good doing a seven hour round trip to talk to six people, however lovely they might be, especially when I'm struggling to finish a book or it's main launch period and I need as many sales as I can get so a full hall would be so much better thanks. But – a disclaimer – if I wanted to do that event, because it sounded fun or would allow me to call in on an old friend I haven’t seen for ages, kill two birds with one stone – I am totally at liberty to do it if I wanted to, if it were my free choice. And you have to keep that in your mind:  FREE choice, not one that you’ve been manipulated into taking. Beware the manipulations. The amount of times I’ve been asked to be the after-dinner speaker somewhere, often at a ‘charity event’ but as soon as I’ve mentioned a fee and petrol, I never hear from them again. I imagine them pulling their handbags up in disgust that I’ve actually asked for money. Who do I think I am? Note to self, never say YES to anything on the spot, especially when hammered at a social event. You don’t have your diary on you, you can’t possibly say when you are free. You’ll come back to them. Don’t be bullied or pressured or cornered, you do not have to say YES. You do not have to explain why it’s a NO. And if you do say NO, don’t start imagining then that they have stuck a picture of you on a dartboard because you are a nasty, unhelpful, selfish arse. 

 

Sometimes organisers at events might say that they can’t pay a fee because they want to raise as much money as possible for their charity and every penny counts. If it was a charity close to my heart, then I could choose to do it of course. But I have my own charities and they get the free time I have. We can’t all support every charity, we can’t do everything for free. We need to pay bills and eat. Blimey, some celebs charge £10k just for turning up but we’re feeling guilty about a daily rate of a couple of hundred quid (see Society of Author’s guidance -  https://societyofauthors.org/Advice/Rates-Fees). Ticket prices should factor in that cost. 

Set out your fee (and your terms - including the 'blue Smarties')  from the off because if they're paying you a fee, you're 'worth more' than those who don't take one. This advice is from someone who used to organise lit fests etc. So even if you were going to do it for free, don't. Take the fee and then you donate it if you wish, your choice, but you'll be treated better if you charge. You'll get the respect and the gratitude. Crazy isn't it. Handle it like your PA would handle it. 

 

This is how weird it gets with us. Imagine an event and the organisers decide upon a well known author who they are sure will spin lots of ticket sales. Their lure. Someone of value. They hope to raise a fortune for charity so they want as many people as possible to attend. But they ask the author to do it for free so that it doesn’t eat into their monies raised for said charity. YET… the printers of the tickets are a business and will make a profit. The bookseller attending will make a profit. The caterers will be paid. The venue will be rented. Hmm. Sometimes they won’t even offer petrol either (so I’m also expected to fork out travel costs to turn up at an event I’m not even getting paid for). ‘BUT we can supply you with tea and coffee all day *smiley face*’ they say. Alas, tea won’t pay my mortgage. Try asking your plumber to mend your radiator in exchange for a cuppa and a Mr Kipling’s French Fancy. I nearly always have to ask what the fee will be when approached to do an event because it isn’t mentioned, as if the hope is I’ll forget if it's glossed over. Sometimes the answer is ‘a token fee of X, although most people waive it’. Ooh, a hint there that I’m possibly being unreasonable for asking - you greedy cow. It’s a breath of fresh air when you’re approached to appear and the fee is transparent from the off. And it’s both respectful and respected. 

My time is money. I have to take time away from my book which is what pays my wage. I have to work at writing a speech and you can’t write those in an hour, some take days. I have to practice, I have to travel to the event. My time is money, did I say? (I have a friend who isn’t even on Twitter because he won’t write ANYTHING he isn’t paid for. And he’s proud of it. And flipping richer than me by a country mile.) 

 

I felt a bit manipulated recently when I was asked to do something which would have taken a lot of driving time and appearance time for bugger all recompense apart from enough tea to drown me and so I asked Joanne Harris for some advice because I knew I could rely on her as a wise stick. ‘If you want to support the charity, fine, but expecting you do to it for free without giving you the choice seems exploitative and wrong’ she said. And that her experience of working for free is that all it really gets you is more offers to work… for free. She voiced what I knew already but I wanted someone to tell me that I wasn’t being a grasping bitch. I’m not and we shouldn’t be made to feel that way. Our time is ours to give away as we wish. As is our goodwill. Is there any other profession where people are made to feel like this? I'm already thinking 'dare I publish this'? 

 

Lit festivals never pay a lot, we know this and accept it. But you shouldn’t be out of pocket for attending. Not unless you want to be. There was a new lit fest being launched a couple of years ago by fellow author friends who quite candidly asked if there was any chance I could help kick it off. They couldn't pay and they'd understand if I didn't want. I went, I turned down the nominal £20 towards petrol and I had a whale of a time. It was my choice, no one tried to bully or trick me. It was a wonderful success which means the next time they do it, sponsors will most likely be on board and they'll be able to pay a going rate. 

And here's another bugbear while I'm purging. The amount of times I've trekked to the other side of the country to sign books for a bookseller and they haven't even asked me if I want a cup of coffee or said 'thanks'. I don't go back to those places now. Isn't that a basic courtesy? We even give our window cleaner a can of pop when he's doing my upstairs (not a euphemism). Value value value. Who values us if we don't value ourselves?  Once a four hour round trip to a place that couldn't be bothered advertising I was coming so in the two hour stint, six people turned up in total. Not a cuppa was offered. Not a thank you when I left. I thought 'they'll email me'. They didn't. They asked me back the next year. I, dressing it up in politeness, said that last year was a bit disappointing and why that was. I hoped for a 'Oh goodness, I'm so sorry. Let us put that right.' I got only silence and a big ball of tumbleweed blowing past my desk.

At a very early in my career event with a small readers’ group in Barnsley, a lady slid a tenner across the table to me and said ‘You’re a professional, you have to start charging’. She was right. Do an event for the WI and they pay you, let you sell your books and fill you up with butterfly buns. Fed, watered, good PR job, financially recompensed. Might not be a fortune - £50-£90 as a rough guide, but they're great. And they pass your details around to other WIs. Proper respect, proper value. By doing things for free, I’m not helping any solidarity with my fellow authors. It shouldn't be a shock to anyone to presume we should be paid for a job. It’s not greed, I’m a businesswoman not someone farting around on a typewriter for a laugh. Neither am I Elon Musk who is loaded enough to give up his time for nothing because he doesn’t have a mortgage and he doesn't care that his heating bills have tripled. Except he wouldn’t give his services gratis, he’d charge and want more than a cuppa as an appearance fee, because that’s how business works. No one would say, 'I can't believe Mr Musk has asked for plane fare and a hotel to come and talk to us about space!' It would be entirely expected. So why isn't it with us authors? If we are valued enough to be asked to do something, we should be valued enough to be given proper recompense for it. Raise the money question at the beginning like a business person would. It's a JOB. If you enquire about serving your boiler and the gasman then says 'It's £140' you don't slam the phone down and say 'Well, I can't believe he's mentioned a cost. How dare he, the greedy twat.'

 

Say NO whenever you want to. It’s not illegal. You are running things, they aren’t running you. Unless you let them and if you are - stop now. 

Good luck.