Author Archives: susan

The NHS gives the official definition of  carer as ‘anyone, including children and adults, who looks after a family member, partner or friend who needs help because of their illness, frailty, disability, a mental health problem or an addiction and … Continue reading →

Three books in three days! When your beach holiday turns cold, you read. Apples Never Fall is Liane Moriarty back to form. When Joy Delaney, the matriarch of a famous tennis family, goes missing, her husband Stan is the prime … Continue reading →

Reader: beware. This is a big ol’ whinge. I’m around 27,000 words which is half way, or maybe even a bit more, through a new novel. Up until the last thousand words, it’s been – if not exactly a breeze; … Continue reading →

When I asked my old editor what her publishing company had been excited about in 2021, she recommended two books, one junior fiction – A Glasshouse of Stars –  and the other, House of Hollow,  YA.  I ordered them both. … Continue reading →

You can’t judge a book by its cover. The really lovely illustration by Cornelia Li for A Glasshouse of Stars speaks of sweetness, magic and whimsy. Which are certainly here in Shirley Marr’s new junior novel. But it’s a much … Continue reading →

My second holiday book, read in a day and an evening. A Town Called Solace is set in a small town in rural Northern Ontario during the 1970s. It opens with seven-year-old Clara keeping a vigil at the living room … Continue reading →

Returned from five days in the Grampians. First holiday with my husband (except a one-night camping trip at a friend’s farm) for over 18 months. Plans during lockdowns just kept falling through, and with our ageing dog, it was all … Continue reading →

She felt like a ghost. She woke in the night. What was that music? Some troubled beast? Some strange bird of the night? Some lost soul wandering on the moors? Just her dreams? What wild and weird things existed here? … Continue reading →

Poets seem to be able to capture the flash, the illuminating instant, the second when an emotion – in this case, joy – pierces the heart. Walking yesterday to pop a note in a friends letterbox, I noticed blobs of … Continue reading →

Writers don’t need rules as much as we need the freedom to take risks and to make simple decisions for simple, practical reasons. If a piece of writing is a kite that the strong winds of feeling are blowing across … Continue reading →