The Best Thing I Ever Wrote

The paperback of my book Far From My Father's House comes out on January 29th from Quercus. It is now available from Amazon as an ebook for 99p.


My agent still says this is the best book I ever wrote which is very frustrating because it means I'm not getting any better.  It was my second Saga and my new lovely publishers Quercus think it will sell in paperback. I do hope so. I chose the cover myself from a number of options because I think it looks like my mother and this book is partly about her.

She didn't like the book, she thought it misrepresented her and of course it did, it was my view of her early life and nobody can know what another's life is really like. She died fourteen years ago and by God, I miss her. She was beautiful, vital, dynamic and part of her is always there in the women in my books. The one I'm writing at the moment there my mother is, riding her horse down a beach into the water and being the outdoor person that I always wanted to be. I don't look like her, I don't think like her, on a good day I tell stories about her because it comforts me.

Annie is the main woman in the story, the man is David Blake. This was the first time I had made a man so important in my books, his voice is as complete as hers and the publishers have acknowledged it in that the audio will be read by a man in a northern voice. Oh joy!

I can't read some of the book because every time I look at it I want to cry. I used a great deal of my own experience. The funeral scene is my husband's funeral and what Blake goes through after it is the same hell that I went through when my husband died.  The nights where I never slept, the days when I didn't eat, the way that men would ask me casually if I wanted to go to bed with them, as though it was sex I missed and worst of all the awful loneliness which has never receded, raw and personal.

'Afterwards there was not a day in the rest of his life in which Blake could think about what happened without pain.'

That's me and that's why it's the best thing I ever wrote.

Alcoholic becomes shopaholic

My daughter sat me down over Christmas, when I had tonsillitis and was feeling weak, most unfair and she impressed upon me that I drink too much. I know, I know. I gave her all the explanations I could think of but it was no use. She was right. So I came home with the promise that I would cut down to half a bottle at night with a meal.
I'm sorry if this sounds pathetic. Don't read on if you are thinking 'what a stupid person'. On the plus side I thought it was my only addiction which is good because I have that sort of personality, unfortunate but true. I do everything I do to the nth degree. Very boring for other people, very boring for me as well but it's the way it goes.

I had antibiotics and didn't drink because I was quite ill before Christmas and that really would be stupid and then I thought, for God's sake, how ridiculous the whole thing is to let anything dictate your life to you but I can't bear the evenings. My dreadful empty evenings which I fill with work and food and wine. I know, I know, they say you should get out but my boredom threshold, part of my stupid depression, holds me in it so there are few things I can bear in the evenings. Every other time of day is manageable, evenings, forget it.

So there I am now, with my half bottle of wine stretching out until I go to bed and once there I can listen to stories and I like my bed, I'm happy there. The only thing now is I have much more energy in the mornings. Oh my God, I have turned into Tigger. I used to be Tigger quite a lot but life has ground me down. Here he comes again.  Boing!!  Boing!!  Boing!! Like bouncing on a mattress.

I get up and work at seven am, leaping out of bed to make tea first, I make soup at eight, I hit the shops at nine and boy, do I hit the shops. Yesterday I had to prise myself away from one of those cheese things that have mesh so that you can see the different kinds. This week I have bought sufficient groceries to keep an army going. I have rejected four different kinds of slipper boots which I do not need.  I have bought pyjama tops and pyjama bottoms - not matching, that's too easy. I have been to Sainsbury's as they opened and rifled through the sales there and I went to Next and bought a gorgeous new top in lots of different colours. I went to Wallis and Top Shop and Warehouse and then I went to Boots. I went to Marks and Spencer's twice and bought some very expensive make up. I bought six avocados at Tesco and special peppercorn sauce for my steak one night and my pork chop the next.
In Sainsbury's I kept the lovely young man who runs the fish bit of it in conversation for ten minutes - he had nothing else to do and was obviously impressed by my devotion to bream and sardines and trout, all fresh and all on special offer. I went home and finished off my already teaming freezer. I can get nothing more in there now, nor can I find anything. I don't even like fish!
I looked at shelf after shelf of wine because now that I am drinking less I am more discerning. If it's two glasses a night by God, it had better be good.
This is not a new year thing, I must say. I don't do new year things. I love food and drink. Giving up anything in January is nauseating so it isn't that kind of cutting down. My daughter wants me to live forever. I have tried to impress upon her that this is unlikely at best when my friends are being mown down by cancer all around me. I have already been wrecked by widowhood, being orphaned, had breast cancer, depression and swept aside my stupid family and most of the friends I liked very much but somehow couldn't manage.  I am ruthless that way but it's survival.
Today is Saturday and I have a plan. After breakfast, after making curried parsnip soup, I am going to Paperchase where the notebooks and the pens are on special offer, at least I hope they still are. I'm not walking into town, still a bit weak from blessed tonsillitis but I will take the car and wander the shops and wonder what else I can buy. I have rejected house buying, thankfully, I have a car and two new computers.  My garden has a new fence and my house a new coat of paint and my kitchen is less than two years old. I have walls covered in paintings and a wardrobe as big as John Lewis. I have bought furniture and tea towels. There are so many books in my caravan that the shelves are full. I have wonderful jewellery which my precious daughter buys me. Is there anything else?
Well, breakfast beckons now, soup has to be made and the shops are open. Can I get you anything while I'm there?  I know where everything is. You will recognise me. I'm the strange striped tiger rushing up and down the aisles, greeting everybody, smiling hugely, enthusiastic.
There is a lovely scene in the West Wing, one of my best ever favourite programmes, where the lovely president says to his sidekick something like, thinking of the economy, 'Would two weeks in the Caribbean have hurt you that much?' That's me, keeping the economy going single handedly. It's my duty to the country, getting and spending. Am I laying waste my hours? Should I be planning ahead? Or shall I just saunter into Paperchase and find all those notebooks. It's cheaper than cocaine, is shopping, it's better for you than smoking. It doesn't rot your liver like drinking and it doesn't expand your waistline like eating. So am I hoping for the best. See you in M&S.

Buried in Birmingham

This is a direct quote from Anthony Trollope's Can You Forgive Her.

'A woman needs only one husband and mine is buried in Birmingham'.

This from one lady - and I used the term well because this is Trollope and all his women are ladies, when is receiving a proposal.

The title of the book is awful. It gives me heart. His titles are all awful but his books are brilliant and his plots so good and so relevant to our lives that they are ready to be lifted wholesale by lesser mortals.
To say that Trollope was prolific is like saying that it rains a lot in Manchester.  I am downloading his books on to my kindle, mostly for nothing or just a few pennies but best of all I downloaded Timothy West reading Can You Forgive Her.  I thought eighteen pounds a lot of money for an audio book but it's wonderful!

I fell asleep yesterday afternoon listening to his gorgeous voice and when I woke up after two hours ( I don't usually sleep during the day, I've had tonsillitis for the past three weeks and it's very tiring ) he was thirty thousand words on and Alice was still trying to make up her mind whether to say yes to her suitor, her cousin, George. I was so pleased I hadn't missed anything and yet I knew that I would be able to listen over and over again to the intricacies and I would enjoy each word.

Trollope does all those things which writers aren't meant to do. I don't know whether he just ignored such things but apparently Henry James didn't like Trollope's authorial intrusion. It's something I do myself and nobody's ever objected. It makes the story more intimate somehow rather than the other way about. Also unlike most other male writers, his women are incredible, so well drawn, so likeable, so funny on occasion, so wise as they consider and solve the problems which the writer sets before them. They are the best I have ever seen any writer tackle. Dickens pales beside him. A lot modern day male writers could learn a great deal from him.
He tells you what he's doing so that you don't get lost in the deep intricacies of his plots.  It's like gossip. It's all so delicious.

If you are new to Trollope I can't advise you better than to say download the audio of Barchester Towers. BBC Radio, God love them, presented this in play like form several years ago and it is funny, clever and highly entertaining, written apparently after a visit to Gloucester cathedral. The Warden was his first successful book.  Mr Harding, who is the warden of the hospital is possibly the loveliest character I have ever met and his two daughters are fascinating.

Part of Can you Forgive Her is set in the lakes, places I recognise and love, Penrith, Shap. Alice and Kate, the two main female characters go for long walks where their grandfather owns an estate and you feel as if you are there with them.
One of his characters, Mr Bot ( or possibly Bott, I haven't seen it written down yet ) is so awful and so aptly named. His names his characters for their characters very often. Mr Bot is from Manchester, a politician and monstrous tedious. Oh dear, I fear I have turned into Alice or Kate in my speech, strong, intelligent, honest women, they make their way through society disadvantaged in the ways that women were then, excluded from professions, sitting in the drawing room, finding husbands or not to the detriment of their futures, being kind to impossible men such as Alice's cousin George, who is Kate's dearly beloved brother. I fear that Kate betrays her cousin because of George. Alas.
This book is the first of the Pallisers, known as the Parliamentary novels. Trollope's books tend to follow his desires  and his lifestyle and he very much wanted to be come a politician. Early on he worked for the post office in Ireland and his first novels are set there.
I am so glad that I found Anthony Trollope. He wrote so much and I love all of it so far. I am reading Lady Anna, whose mother married a lord and then found out he was already married. What problems follow this!

So for 2015 I'm going to fill my reading time with Trollope and delight in the entertainment he gives me and learn about fictional relationships from him. And indulge in his plots which are like a good television series. I shall wait impatiently for the next exciting instalment.

P.D.James

All over the country, on hearing that P.D.James has died, people have been talking about her and I'll bet that not one of them had anything negative to say about her.
I can't claim to have known her but I did meet her. I think it was 1980. She was sixty and I was almost thirty. I don't even remember the conference. I used to go to a lot of conferences those days. I had had nothing published but a couple of short stories and I was so excited about the idea of being a writer.
She was standing behind me in the lunch queue and I had no idea who she was. I'm hopeless, I never know who anybody is and we started chatting. I think it was that afternoon that she gave her talk about her new book, Innocent Blood. (I was so impressed that I went home and put a murder into the romance I was writing.)
I think it was the following morning. I was up early. I was always an early morning person and I went into the dining room and there she was, waving at me as though we were good friends, sitting me down beside her to have breakfast. At first I was so over awed I didn't know what to say but she could handle all that. I think her daughters were probably about my age at the time and I love talking to people about my own daughter's age so perhaps she was the same. I had the loveliest breakfast. We were joined by some bloke who was running the Society of Authors. I don't remember much about him either, other than he was very nice and wearing a lovely suit!
After that I saw her occasionally on television. I remember a year or so back she'd been asked to one of these review programmes where people tear apart theatre and books and such. It was a circle and she was the last to speak. It was about a musical and they had really gone for it. I hate musicals and probably would have done the same, but not P.D.James. She said that she thought it had been absolutely delightful and she beamed around at them.
We were to have lots in common. I'm not rich and famous and never was half the writer that she was but we both had tragedy in our lives. Her husband, a doctor, went to war and came back broken and when he died after a dreadful time, the authorities would not give her a pension and she was obliged to work very hard in order to bring up her two young daughters.
My husband died when my daughter was seven.
Tragedy puts steel into you. Yes, she was a great writer and a lovely woman but by God she knew how to get what she wanted, she was a fighter She never married again. Neither have I.
The last time I saw her in person was when she came to Durham Cathedral to speak about her work.  The place was packed and she came in on the arm of the great Ian Rankin, a tiny frail figure at his side and they wowed the audience together. Two of the greats in my favourite genre. They have both made it their own in different ways. There she was, giving it rock all, as she alway did.
She had great faith. Rest in Peace, wonderful inspiring person and thank you for the memories.

Hermit Crab Goes on Holiday

When I go away from home I usually have my daughter to light the way so when I decided to spend a week at a holiday cottage to write I was not prepared to be this strange person who takes her own tea towels.
Tired and with an upset stomach ( stress takes me that way ) I arrived in pouring rain to find my cottage cold and confusing. I had to work out the heating, the hot water, Sky television, the Kindle internet, phone internet, where I had put my toothbrush and whether to throw out the prepared beef stew which for some reason was four days old by then.  NASA rockets have been launched with less kerfuffle.
It's fifteen years since I stayed in a cottage and I had Timmy my spaniel with me then. I walked him on the glorious Northumbrian beaches at least twice a day. At the moment I have pain from arthritis in both knees so walking is more of a nice idea than an actual event.
When I was a small child my family had a static caravan at Hauxley Bay. As I began to grow up I found the place boring and longed for excitement.
Northumberland is full of memories for me, best of all being the year when I took my daughter to Lindisfarne. The bedroom was where the boats kept their sails and I can remember the night when I opened the window and held her so that she didn't fall so that she could see the moon across the grounds of the monastery.
The best part of my week this time was spent sitting on the balcony gazing out at a blood red moon on Remembrance Sunday but I need new places and to make new memories. The past is all very well but the future holds the fun.And I don't need to go anywhere to write, I do it here in the evenings with dinner and wine in my little back room which overlooks the garden. Goodbye, Hermit Crab, I'm off to Miami next year, to try to see dolphins in the bay beyond my boutique hotel. I have bought lovely full length dresses to wear in the evenings. Luxury is my way forward, making my own casseroles is over.

The Face That Launched a Thousand Headlines

Dear God, here we go again. Renee Zellwegger or however you spell it,managed to get herself on to the main six o'clock news yesterday all because she has altered her face Apparently people care whether she did it with the help of a surgeon and others are concerned that she felt pressured to do so.

More to the point I can remember one actress saying that she had spent the whole day under Mel Gibson while they kept on shooting and shooting one particular scene and all the shots were of him. Oh yes, a glamorous life. Being an actress, like most other jobs, is tedious. The bottom line being that one hopefully occasionally gets paid for it. Rather like writing really. Gritted teeth and unpaid bills. Lonely. At least as writers we spent most of our lives not being looked at.

Why do top actors have to look beautiful?  Why can't they just look like people? I blame Hollywood. I watched the original version of the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and guess what?  No beautiful people. It was so much more honest than the American version which I thought was dreadful. All blue eyed gazes and love scenes which were more Enid Blyton than Masters of Sex. Why is Hollywood so coy and yet needs beauty all over the damned place? I'm tired of it.

Luckily I was brought up to believe that you are what you are and whatever you are in every respect is damned well good enough. I would never have made an actress. Sometimes I hate being at home and working but I can waffle around the garden in my pyjamas, water the plants in my dressing gown and watch afternoon tv. At the moment I'm researching shepherds so I watch - fittingly enough - Escape to the country. Very funny. All these women who don't know how to use an Aga. Come out the way, woman, I can cook a dinner on twigs.

In the meanwhile for God's sake leave poor old Renee and the other actresses alone. They have enough to worry about.
Now I have my pyjamas on and the fire and it is just time for a nice glass of fizzy. Oh the joys of being a writer.

A Man ( or woman ) by any other name

Fiction is a strange thing. Whoever can look at a Jane and not thing of that wonderful grey figure in Jane Eyre? I cannot think of the name Barbara without thinking of the person as fat even though the two Barbaras I know are very slender. Names evoke character. I cannot envisage Bob as anything more than a dog with silky ears whereas several of the men in my books have managed the name Rob with no trouble.

My men are not heroes. I hate the very word. There is no such thing. Some of them have evil qualities but I try to keep them human or I feel as though I have failed the reader. Most of them are decent, and to me that's the most important quality of all.

There are fashions in names. In my latest book, the Fall and Rise of Lucy Charlton, which is set just after the Great War, the two main female characters are called  Gemma and Lucy and as somebody pointed out these are not the sort of names which women used at that time. Well, tough. They suit the sisters and I like them. Sometimes you have to get past the obvious even in history. You expect your reader to overcome disbelief and slide willingly into your story. Otherwise she should be reading something else.

My favourite man in a book is not the psychotic Heathcliff, the arrogant Mr Darcy or the bully Rochester but a slight unassuming figure, Freddie, the main man in Cotillion by Georgette Heyer.

Freddie is not clever and not handsome, he is not tall. He is rich, I have to say and I did wonder rather whether Miss Heyer took her character partly from the bumbling Bertie Wooster, my favourite man apart from Freddie in fiction.  I have this dream that one day I will be twenty and beautiful and will marry Bertie Wooster and spend the rest of my life dancing late at smoky dark clubs, drinking champagne and being looked after by the inimitable Jeeves.

I will wear gossamer dresses and drive sports cars, write stories for Aunt Dahlia's My Lady's Boudoir and be unfailingly polite to the horrifying Aunt Agatha. I will of course be kind to Bertie's uncle who looks after the Wooster millions. We can sit by his study fire and talk of books My background would be perfect and so high in society that my family can talk of nothing but matters that don't matter.

I sometimes think that mothers burden their sons with special names so that no clutching female will come along and skin of them of their cash, as Bertie would say.  Cecil is not the kind of name where he would nick off from wife Ann for a floozie named Posy.

My mother obviously didn't think when she named me Elizabeth Rosemary. Many is the time I have signed my name Elizabeth R and heard titters.

Quentin only in Enid Blyton, same for Julian and Dick and even George.

My favourite name of all time is Harry. There's something sweet and yet wild about Harry, I can see him now sitting in the dark corner in a pub. He's just come back from war, the woman he adored has married another man and he is brooding, drinking a lot. He will never forgive her but he desperately wants her back.

And if you doubt me this is part of the story of one of my books, Swan Island. There is no hero in this book, just two decent men doing their best after the hell of a war where everybody lost someone. It's also my mother's story. The man who loved her went away, I think to Burma during World War Two, to fight. Her first husband had died, ( that's in my story, though differently ) and thinking she had lost her second love to the war, she married my father and then Harry came back. The other man in the story is called David Black and like my father is a decent upright hard working rather clever man and Ella loves him so what is she to do?

My mother used to tell the story so well, of how my father had taken her to a dinner dance at some lovely hall in Darlington and she saw the man she had loved and promised to marry walking across the dance floor toward her. There she is beautiful, black haired and blue eyed and pale skinned in the Irish way that she had, wearing a silver and peacock coloured dress, wondering why fate is doing such a thing to her.

My mother was called Bertha Ann but she was always known as Pat because her father saw her in the cradle and said 'What a little Pat. '  Irish to the core and a borders lass too. There you go, you see. A  rose by any other name, my lovely lovely mother.