The Women of Heachley Hall

 4.4/5

I wanted to give this 10 stars, I absolutely loved it.

Goodreads Reviewer

I utterly loved this book. Beautifully constructed.

Amazon UK Reviewer

One of my favourite books I’ve read this year.

Goodreads Reviewer

The story is intriguing and at times had me on the edge of my seat. The book is beautifully written and the story tempts the reader with snippets of clues throughout the book. The house itself is almost a breathing entity with its own personality and I loved this about it. A cleverly written plot that drew me in and had me wandering the rooms of Heachley Hall along with Miriam. A story about love, regret and the secrets families keep. Highly recommended.

Brooks Cottage Reviews

Only women can discover Heachley’s secret.

The life of a freelance illustrator will never rake in the millions so when twenty-eight year old Miriam discovers she’s the sole surviving heir to her great-aunt’s fortune, she can’t believe her luck. She dreams of selling her poky city flat and buying a studio.

But great fortune comes with an unbreakable contract. To earn her inheritance, Miriam must live a year and a day in the decaying Heachley Hall.

The fond memories of visiting the once grand Victorian mansion are all she has left of her parents and the million pound inheritance is enough of a temptation to encourage her to live there alone.

After all, a year’s not that long. So with the help of a local handyman, she begins to transform the house.

But the mystery remains. Why would loving Aunt Felicity do this to her?

Alone in the hall with her old life miles away, Miriam is desperate to discover the truth behind Felicity’s terms. Miriam believes the answer is hiding in her aunt’s last possession: a lost box. But delving into Felicity and Heachley’s long past is going to turn Miriam’s view of the world upside down.

Does she dare keep searching, and if she does, what if she finds something she wasn’t seeking?

Has something tragic happened at Heachley Hall?

Miriam has one year to uncover an unimaginable past.

Also available online at Waterstones and WHsmiths.

Yew Trees and graveyards

Lincoln Cathedral

How does a ghost story begin?

Draft after Draft

I recently read Kate Atkinson's Life after Life and thoroughly enjoyed it. The life of Ursula is repeated throughout the novel and each time it replays, her various choices and outcomes lead her down different paths.

Reading this novel reminds me of the feat of writing one. If I'd titled a novel Draft after Draft it would go something like this:

Write opening chapter. Appalling. No grab. Characters asking me who they are all the time. Ditch it.

Write opening chapter again. No better. Writing style undeveloped. Words fail to materialise. Blindly rely on thesaurus. Falter. Ditch it.

Write opening chapter, then next one. A bolshie character is shouting at me. Telling me what to do. Yeah, it's working..... perhaps not... the rest of the ensemble of wandering around waiting to be written. Poking holes here and there. Characters disintegrate. ditch it.

I make it to chapter three, it's getting a head of steam. Chapter four. Chapter five. Major plot failure. Why didn't I see that coming? Ditch it.

Jump to middle of book. Lose the thread of who is who. Keep checking scrawled notes. Read countless blogs about how to write a novel. Realise doing it ALL WRONG. Head explodes. Ditch it.

Try something different to break writer's block. Write the last chapter. Except, miserable characters beg to be killed off - they're shells with no personality, no back story. Ditch it.

Start first chapter again. Totally different plot. Pantser it. Roll with it. Story arc is swerving all over the place. Flounder. Grind to a halt. Not my style - making it up as I go along. Leave that to Indiana Jones. Need an outline. Buy novel writing software. Spend ages watching tutorials, tweaking fonts, fussing about layout... nothing written for days and days.

Try writing the end again. Working backwards, concentrate on plot. Theme crumbles. Losing the will to write. Emotionally drained. Ditch it.

Take a long break. Read a ton of books. Write short stories. Tell everyone the book is going well. Lie.

Deep breath. Open blank file.

Revisit beginning. Introduce new characters, new plot threads. Keeping the faith, building confidence, finally flowing, can't write fast enough, on a high. Life is good.

Draft finished.

End result - big fat book.

Sequel entitled - Edit after Edit.

~2016

Unlikely encounters - how realistic are they?

“How unbelievable is that?”

“That would never happen in real-life!”

I’m sure some of us have said these things when reading a novel.

How far should authors go with storylines that rely on remarkable events and coincidences, especially ones that requires readers to suspend their incredulity for the sake of moving a plot forward?

But remarkable events do happen in real-life, including encounters with strangers that turn out to show how connected we all are to each other.

Here are some of my true-life experiences.

While working in the library of a national museum, I got talking to a visitor. I needed his home address for a transaction. I noticed it was somewhere close to where I grew up as a small child. Turns out he was taught by my father, and had strong, very complimentary memories of my dad.

At the start of a new career, I attended a training course for new employees of the company. Sitting next to me was a man a little younger than myself. We discovered we had grown up in the same county on the other side of the country and attended the same high school, although not at the same time. He had been taught by my mother.

After a lovely holiday in Greece, sitting on the floor in Athens airport waiting for my fight, I glanced behind to see a man walking across a plaza. I recognised him immediately. I scrambled to my feet and just caught up with him. He gaped in surprise too. He had been my music and occasional piano teacher and we hadn't seen each other in years as he had emigrated to the Middle East. I would have missed him but for some reason I had looked over my shoulder at the precise moment he walked by.

On honeymoon in Mauritius, I fell ill with a viral infection. The hotel called the local general practitioner, a young man who had trained as a doctor in the UK. Nothing especially remarkable as many study medicine in the UK, until he said he had worked at a familiar local hospital and lived in a small, rather boring town - the same place I went to high school. (I didn’t disagree about the boring part).

Another airport, this time Chicago. I was transferring flights on the way home. Chicago a big airport, yet my companion and I managed to miraculously bump into the sister of friend. We had no idea the other was on holiday. One person among thousands as we dashed from one gate to another. What are the odds?

Then there were my university days. I was one of twenty-six postgraduates, we came from all over the country and several overseas students too. One turned out to have lived in the same village as myself, though separated by a few years, but we had mutual friends. It’s one of thousands of villages! Another student attended a London spots centre, and while she bounced up and down on a trampoline, I was in the sports hall fencing. Only a curtain separated us. But because I wore a protect head guard, we never recognised each other and only found out when we pinned down the exact location and day of week.

There are over 70 million people in the UK, and yet I have met people I know or whom have strong connections with my family or places I have lived in, and these discoveries are spontaneous, based on chatting or gentle probing.

I like to categorise my books as magical realism because then I can explain away bizarre improbable encounters in my books as 'magical'. However, perhaps I'm being too cautious. Life is full of such coincidences and we shouldn't be surprised to read them in a plot. Under a different pen name, I write crime novels. The first in the series is called Chance Encounters. There is no magic in this story. The plot relies on the very thing I make magical in my other books - coincidences.

So, I ask myself, having two strangers bump into each multiple times while travelling, is that entirely feasible? (This is the idea behind my next book, A Summer of Castles). Maybe there is some other force at work - something or somebody that can influence the direction of our lives, would that be far-fetched or a good plot ploy? Well, it probably doesn’t matter anyway. Writers can get away with anything. It is fiction after all!

The Women of Heachley Hall

Only women can discover Heachley’s secret.

Miriam has one year to uncover an unimaginable past.

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Beyond the Yew Tree

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Only women can discover Heachley’s secret.

Miriam has one year to uncover an unimaginable past.

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