REVELATIONS AND REVELRY

I love weekends. I love the fact that they’re so promising, full of potential and that if you approach them in the proper manner then anything goes; Saturday and Sunday are very hedonistic in our house. It’s rare that anyone is dressed before midday (unless my eldest daughter has Saturday school because I’ve learned that the school don’t like you turning up in pyjamas. I did actually do that once on a very rushed morning but I don’t think anyone noticed because I had a sort of flashers mac on over the top). As far as I’m concerned the weekend is a chance to eat anything, drink anything and generally indulge yourself. Saturday has to be my favourite day of the week, I always feel a bit excited on Saturday mornings for no discernible reason. I quite like Fridays because I treat them as a dress rehearsal for Saturdays. I also like Thursday nights because I know it will be Friday when I wake up. I always feel like I can be a little bit frivolous; wear a slightly shorter skirt, slightly higher heels, maybe have a glass of wine at lunchtime if I’m in the right company on Fridays. And by ‘right company’ I mean those that drink alcohol when in a pub. I know, instinct to most of us, but I promise you there are those people who order wine for me and then something boring like orange juice and lemonade for themselves. That to me always has the air of “Well I can control myself but she can’t, better indulge her.” Usually thoroughly compounded by answering “Large, obviously” to the inevitable “Large glass or small?” question. It makes me feel like saying “Oh sorry, did I say large glass of wine? I meant large glass of water. Silly me.” There is nothing more off-putting when you’re drinking wine and feeling that slight alcohol-induced glow come over you than to be with someone who remains steadfastly and determinedly sober. Just no fun. And Fridays and Saturdays and their nights are designed for fun.

This of course is unless you’re me next weekend. There will not be much wine drunk next Saturday or Sunday (by me at any rate, I can’t speak for the rest of Hampshire) because on those days I am getting as close to work as I get. And I understand that one does not drink at work. Next Saturday I will be signing books in Waterstones in Fareham between 10am and 4pm which I’m very excited about. It will be lovely to actually talk to people as they buy my book, I think it’s fantastic to be able to see the person whose mind this creation has come from and hold that thought as you read the book. I know I’ve said this before but whenever I read a really good book, and I’ve just finished a tremendous one by Rosie Alison called The Very Thought Of You, I always want to know as much as I can about the author. How old are they, what do they look like, where do they live, are they married, did they go to University, how did they get into writing, how have they been successful – ad infinitum. I’ve been frustrated by Rosie Alison because I really cannot find out much about her. Lots, if not most, authors have their own website or blog or both, they’re on twitter and if you look you can generally find a lot of information which helps you build a picture of them as a person which helps in understanding their story. That’s why I’m as open as I am in this blog and generally on facebook and twitter – if people are going to bother to follow you as a writer then I believe the least you can do is share a little of yourself and your life with them. This is no comment against those who choose not to, I do understand that some writers prefer to stay quiet and private, it’s just that I prefer to share every single thought with as many people as possible. Anyway, I digress. So to come back to it – Fareham, next Saturday, I shall be delighted to be there signing books for as long as I am required. It is my first-ever book signing so I shall be learning on the job as it were, but I expect it to be a fun and rewarding experience.

And then we move onto Sunday. Obviously. But this Sunday will see me doing something that has never happened before – being up at 6am to scan the newspapers in preparation for being on the Nick Girdler Show on BBC Radio Solent at 9:30am. I have very kindly been invited on as a guest to talk about myself and Things He Never Knew and review the Sunday papers. This isn’t as daunting as it sounds, I’ve been told by the producer that all I have to do is choose three stories from any paper on which to comment. So I thought I’d go for something from the Sunday Sport.

Joke. Big joke. HUGE joke.

The red-top papers do not generally feature in my life. But joking aside, the stories can be as high-brow or superficial as I like. So I could talk about the previous night’s X-Factor if I want, except I don’t watch X-Factor so that would be a little silly. My husband has advised me to stick to my strengths which means that I won’t venture into political comment as I have a history of disasters in this area, and probably to focus on lifestyle stories. It was sod’s law this morning that I found at least seven separate stories that I could comment on in The Sunday Times; I only hope for such luck next Sunday. That said, I do always comment if I find an article that I’m interested in, I just don’t ever have hundreds of people listening to me. I’ll have one, if I’m lucky.

Well I’ve written 1,024 words so far and my Sunday night awaits. This means ironing school uniform and watching Downton Abbey, to which I am unashamedly addicted. Already.  With the slight disappointment that Rob-James Collier is playing a gay character, about which my husband crows weekly because I think he’s absolutely gorgeous. Rob-James Collier, not my husband I should clarify. Although the latter is pretty gorgeous too. But – we should not forget that it is Sunday which means the wheels of hedonism are still turning. I shall rush to drink orange juice and lemonade. This girl knows how to live.

As promised I have made available the first of three sample chapters from Things He Never Knew. As it’s the first one in seems only fitting that we start with the opening chapter so you can meet Steph, Theo and their girls in the way in which I intended.

All the chapters will be posted on the new chapters page which you can see in the top menu or just click here.

Hope you enjoy it and as ever would love to get your comments.

This is not going to be a normal blog post for me today. Frivolity and accounts of my sometimes bewildering life will go out of the window, and self-imposed structure will replace it. The intention behind this essay-style entry is to give you an idea of the background to Things He Never Knew and to help you understand the motivation of my characters to do what they did. And this is relevant whether you have read the book or whether you haven’t. Plus I spent the two A-Level years of my life doing 45 minute timed essays at least three times a week on such riveting subjects as Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, Elizabeth I’s foreign policy, Calvinism, Othello, The Tempest, Chaucer and Wilfrid Owen. Therefore I must make the most of any residual skills – though I will not be restricting myself to 45 minutes by any stretch of the imagination.

Imagination however, is a key word. Because it’s important to remember from the start that these people are entirely fictional. I know that I’ve already made this point about Steph, because I was forced to, but they are not real, I have conjured and created them from the depths of my mind. That said, they are made up of real people. Their experiences, emotions, decisions, desires and motivations are all very real ones. There is nothing in Things He Never Knew that is impractical, implausible or unbelievable. In fact I would go so far as to say that the exact situation that I describe in the book has happened and is happening out there right now. But I digress.

My main characters are called Steph and Theo Hammond. They met at school when they were very young. They lived a typical, slightly-incestuous, village life in their early days where everyone knows everyone else and what everyone else is getting up to. It was a closeted environment with little outside interference and little to disturb the day to day ordinariness of life. It was probably much like my own early life, except that I left the village where I lived to go to school half an hour away in a much bigger town. Steph and Theo did not, they lived, played and were educated in the same place. And this inevitably bred in them a naivety about the Real World. And a restlessness to see what else life could offer them which in turn leads to slight recklessness. This would have been subconscious, they were not seeking opportunities to stretch boundaries, but yet when they make the decision to leave their village, the lack of life experience afforded to them is undoubtedly a factor. Both in a curious sense, and in an immature sense. Steph and Theo would have been better to have done some planning, made some realistic plans and worked out what it was that they wanted before endeavouring to find it. It is a difficult situation which prompts their departure from the village and one which they don’t handle very well and thus end up alienating a very close friend of their, called Ed, whom they also met when they were very young. Ed is a bit of a strange character; quite aloof and alone he struggles to make friends easily and relies heavily on both Steph and Theo in this sense, developing a strong attachment to the former which he imagines to be love. Of course it isn’t, but there is no way that Ed can understand this at such a young age. Taking this into account, it is easy to see why Ed is so hurt and upset when Steph and Theo essentially abandon him. He can’t understand why they have done it, nor why they should want to, and this has a lasting impact upon him, ultimately changing him fundamentally as a person. He harbours a deep grudge and lasting resentment, though this last stands him in good stead so far as determination towards his career goes.

The life-altering mistake that Steph makes is dual-fold. It results from a piece of late-night stupidity and then from overwhelming fear and shock. And probably her biggest problem is that once she makes this particular mistake, it is irreversible. Of course she could stand up at any point over the next ten years and admit to it, but the human psyche doesn’t work like that. In one of the chapters I describe Steph as thinking very much like a child; with the time that passes from the crime, the assumption is made that so must the danger of being discovered too. However this is not the case. What Steph has managed to do, and do very well, is convince herself that if she isn’t looking at her mistake – metaphorically speaking – then it will not be looking at her, and thus she can avoid the consequences. This is a very childlike and naïve attitude, and one which she is able to have because of the sheltered life she has led. Steph has gone from village childhood into cosseted adulthood. Theo is lucky enough to have been extremely swift at climbing his career ladder and carving out a privileged life for them all. They have a large and expensively decorated house, the twins attend a private school and they have all the accoutrements of wealth; as well as their loving marriage and happy, healthy children. In other words they have everything, or so it appears to the outsider. The point of the whole story is that it is possible to appear to have everything and yet be missing some of the crucial underpinning to life. Steph has personal ambitions which she has not properly acknowledged, let alone achieved, because before she can do that, she must deal with the fact that her entire life is based on and wrapped in a tissue of deceit. There are many things that could and should be happening in Steph’s life, but because she is trapped in this vortex of lies she can’t progress any of them. And this is something which Theo fails to understand. Necessarily protected from the truth, he can’t understand why Steph behaves as she does. And the one criticism that we can level at Theo is that he doesn’t think as deeply as he might about Steph’s behaviour, nor afford her the luxury of being able to see that something must be very wrong for her to act as she does. He deals with his wife in a very shallow way. He doesn’t mean to, but their lives have knitted together in such a way as to make him believe that nothing can possibly be wrong and he resents it enormously when Steph refuses to give him what he wants.

In some ways it is a sad story, and yet I was careful to write through exactly what my characters were experiencing. I dislike it when authors ‘bookend’ the traumatic main event of a book, i.e. they devote chapters and chapters leading up to whatever it is that’s going to happen and just as the climactic point of the story is reached, they drop the narration and pick it up again on the other side, once the event has happened so we see the aftermath but not the actual event. I didn’t want this for Things He Never Knew, I wanted my readers to have to go through every horrible emotion that Steph and Theo do because it is only then that you can understand them properly. And it makes a better book in my opinion. It’s harder to write but ultimately you craft a better and more satisfying story.

So that’s it. That’s the bare bones of my thinking behind Things He Never Knew, ahead of making the first chapter available to read tomorrow online.  And I tell you what, it was a darn sight more interesting and easier to write than essays about Henry VIII and the Nuns Priests Tale.

That was obviously where I went wrong at A-Level, I clearly should have studied my own work.