Books
My debut novel The Grass Widow is about a woman who finds more than she bargained for when she tries to get even with her ex-lover – her quest for petty revenge becomes a search for the truth about a murder.
The Grass Widow is available now from Amazon, Apple Books and other ebook platforms, as well as all good bookshops.
Praise for the Book on Amazon
“A hugely enjoyable thriller whose pace never slackens”
“A fast-moving page-turner and an impressive analysis of human emotions and desires”
“Well written and intricately plotted”
“Clever twists and turns”
“Crime fiction plus”
“Clever, witty and suspenseful”
“Gripping domestic thriller”
“A cracking read”
“A fascinating dive into the mechanics of envy and revenge”
Q & A
What inspired you to write The Grass Widow?
I wanted to write a novel where someone unlikely solves a murder through being in a situation prompted by a wholly unconnected hidden agenda. It was important to me that the main female characters were of a certain age: I was tired of the invisibility or stale type-casting (cosy grandmother or scatty menopausal, both technologically challenged) of older women in commercial fiction. My two main female characters turn fifty shortly before or during the timeline: they have fun, drink too much, enjoy sex, act foolishly, act wisely and help solve and avenge a murder.
What was the highlight of your novel-writing?
In 2019 Some Like It Cold was long listed for the Bath Novel Award and short listed for two other prizes. I was particularly thrilled to be on the BNA list of 26 titles out of 1,343 entries. The BNA posts ‘teaser tweets’ from their readers in the run up to the long list announcement and I was excited to see one which could have been mine …
I had a tense week before knowing that I’d made it onto the list.
BNA kindly invite long listed authors to the prize ceremony, which was a wonderful experience.
Why have you decided to self-publish?
Another highlight was being signed by an agent at the beginning of 2020. I was offered representation on the basis that we would ‘take Some Like It Cold apart and put it together again’.
I rewrote much of the book, retitled The Grass Widow, so that it would fit more conventionally into the crime fiction genre. I initially embraced these changes and enjoyed both the transformation of Some Like It Cold and the writing of a standalone novel, currently with the imaginative title Book2. It gradually became clear, however, that my agent wanted darker, grittier, less cerebral books than I felt comfortable writing and ultimately our difference of approach led to our amicably agreeing to go our separate ways.
I parked The Grass Widow in a virtual drawer, together with the original version of Some Like It Cold and the almost finished Book2, and took a break from writing fiction.
But my novels have been calling me and I decided that at least The Grass Widow deserved to see the light of day and that, having already been through the gruelling process of querying agents, I’d rather keep control over the book and its future. So I did another edit and took the plunge.
I now plan to do the same with Book2, which I suspect will in some sense free me to move on to write something completely different, though I don’t yet know what. Watch this space!
Finally, can you give us one small clue to the events in The Grass Widow? No spoilers of course!
