So, the proofs are back, changes have been made, a few more minor corrections may be needed, but it exists! My debut short story collection Remember Me To The Bees, nestled in my hands with its heart beating like a live thing.
And here’s the front cover for you to gaze at, featuring bespoke artwork by the talent Louise Boulter.
And here’s the spine…
Not long at all now till it will be available to buy. What do you think?
My lovely father-in-law knows I would love a house with a proper garden so he dug up and potted a daisy for me!
I already have a patch of lawn growing in a pot of earth on the desk in my writing room. Must confess to feeling quite horticulturally blessed, but I know most gardeners would be quite bemused.
What other reasons (innocent and perhaps not so…) could someone have for potting up something as simple and common as a daisy?
Today’s guest post comes from bestselling author Sophie Hannah, and explains how authors can use fiction to explore the truth behind controversial subjects, as she did for her novel A Room Swept White.
In the UK there have been several high-profile cases of mothers losing more than one child to cot death and subsequently being accused of murder: Sally Clark, Angela Cannings and Trupti Patel to name just three.
Clark lost two sons to SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome), and Cannings and Patel each lost three babies. The women protested their innocence, but the dominant view at the time in legal and medical circles seemed to be that it was simply too much of a coincidence for more than one infant from the same family to die an unexplained death; many people believed these babies had been murdered.
Choose a subject with the potential to consume you
One expert witness who testified against both Clark and Cannings, paediatrician Professor Sir Roy Meadow, said that within a single family, ‘One cot death is a tragedy, two is suspicious, three is murder’. This came to be known as ‘Meadow’s Law’.
Clark and Cannings were both convicted of the murders of their babies. Immediately, campaigns were launched to secure their exoneration and release, on the basis that there was no concrete evidence to prove that either woman was a murderer. The only evidence of murder, supporters argued, was disputed medical evidence. Continue reading
For this week’s writing prompt I’ve decided to feature a photo I took a few years ago at Bristol’s Balloon Fiesta. The gentleman in the balloon basket is Scottish ballooning pioneer Don Cameron of Cameron Balloons.
The ragged-looking balloon about to carry him away is the Bristol Belle, the world’s first modern balloon, which don and his buddies at Bristol Gliding Club constructed in the 1960s – it first took to the air in 1867!
There are countless directions you could take this story in – you could draw in the history of this ballooning legend and his first balloon, or you could disregard that and focus instead on what you see – an old man in the basket of a torn and frail-looking balloon about to set off on what may be their last adventure together…
In her psychological thriller A Room Swept White, Sophie Hannah examines the contentious subject of guilt and innocence surrounding cot death cases.
A serial killer is targeting women accused of murdering babies. The first victim is Helen Yardley, a woman convicted then acquitted of killing two of her own children, who then went on to campaign for the release of other women in the same circumstances. A mysterious card is found on her body, marked with seemingly meaningless numbers laid out in neat orderly row.
The story is told through the viewpoints of the police involved and a woman named Fliss Benson who has been given the job of making a documentary of the acquitted women, and who has received an card identical to the one left with Helen Yardley. Continue reading