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I was sitting in the hospital waiting room when I found the leaflet.

I’m sure a story of sorts had existed in my head by then, because I had originally visualised The Book of Us as a series of letters between two best friends, one with a baby, begging for forgiveness, the other trying to pretend she’d moved on with her life whilst feeling like none of it was quite right.

But the story changed in the hospital waiting room. I’d found a lump in my breast and was waiting for an ultrasound. My partner sat there, drinking crappy coffee, reading the newspaper and pretending he wasn’t worried. This had happened once before, and it had been nothing, but I wasn’t sure if that was a good sign or a bad sign. (And oh, the ridiculousness of guilt when you find yourself to be fine, as you’ve wasted NHS time by being okay). So no, I wasn’t panicking yet, but as with most things as an author, you find a ‘what if’ and you let your mind wander down that road.

The leaflet I found was one of the many excellent resources provided by Macmillan, and it was about travelling with cancer. How to make sure you could still travel safely, what to consider, how to move forward. I thought, of course – the thing everyone says they’d do if they got sick is travel. And this must mean people actually did it.

Something about that was comforting, and I stuffed the leaflet in my bag as I went through for the ultrasound. Everything was fine and there was nothing to worry about. But I went home thinking about where I would have travelled if I had been sick. How I would have acted and arranged my life, what I would have regretted.

And then somehow, a story was born. A story about two women who loved each other, who had that sort of obsessive, two-halves-of-a-whole friendship until something had torn them apart. Something that felt like betrayal but may have actually just been growing up and growing in different directions. That’s a different sort of heartbreak altogether.

And I thought about a young woman, one who’d been vibrant and lived every moment and regretted nothing, and how a woman like that would deal with dying. Whether she’d be stoic, or chaotic, continuing to live each day or raging against the dying of the light.

Whenever I get too in my head, I think about what I’d like people to say about me when I’m gone, and of course it’s the boring stuff, because that’s what matters. Being kind, and loving and loyal. Being brave and funny and smiling a lot. People remember your smile, it’s often the thing I think about the people I’ve loved and lost.

And then I thought about this character, Cassidy Jones, and how much that would piss her off. Because being reduced to simple, friendly words when she held worlds within her would have really flipped her pancakes. Here was a woman who sang karaoke on a bar top at midnight, and could burp the alphabet and once refused a proposal from a diplomat’s son, and when she was gone you’d talk about how kind she was?

I don’t write this to be maudlin. I was safe that day and I have been incredibly lucky so far in my health and my life. But it was that moment of ‘what if’ that birthed a story. That birthed a person, a character, who was incredibly real to me for the months that I wrote her, and I hope very real now to those who read about her.

I probably should have posted this earlier, as now months have passed and surely I should have a huge list of books?! Sadly I haven’t been reading hugely, but the ones I have read have been crackers.

I feel like lockdown brain has left me a little listless, with an even worse attention span than usual. Add in the fact that I’ve been writing and editing my own books, and I haven’t committed in the way I would have liked.

But here are the fab books I’ve been reading – let me know if you’ve read any of them!

Eudora Honeysett is Quite Well, Thank You – Annie Lyons

I’ll admit, I’ve been dying to read this since the lovely author herself told me about it over drinks a year ago (yes, I get to have drinks with cool writers, aren’t I lucky?!) and of course, it was fabulous. If you’ve been feeling a bit down, this is the absolute antidote to those pandemic blues. It’s about life and death and agency, but more than that, it’s about how friendship can pop up in unlikely places and change your life. It also made me miss my grandparents and want to befriend someone like Eudora.

The book is out on 17th September and you can pre-order here

Take a Hint, Dani Brown – Talia Hibbert

I picked this one up based on a tweet that said how awesome it was. AND IT IS. Dani Brown is one of my favourite main characters ever, and I can’t wait to jump back in to Hibbert’s other books now I know they’re focused around the Brown sisters. Dani is this feminist, bad ass, witchy, bisexual black woman who is asking the goddess for a bit of bedroom action. She hasn’t got time for relationships, she’s got shit to do. But she would quite like someone to rock her world whilst keeping appropriate boundaries. Which is where Zaf comes in, the beardy rugby-star-turned-security-guard who loves a romance novel and has a bit of a thing for Dani.

This book was just so fresh, you know? The characters were vibrant and unique, there was witty dialogue and swearing and some downright filthy sex scenes and genuinely everyone in the book seemed like someone I’d like to be friends with.

You can order it on Amazon here

The Shelf – Helly Acton

If you haven’t heard about this, where have you been? This is clearly in the running to be THE book of 2020.

In a twist where Amy thinks her (horrible) boyfriend is proposing, but she’s actually being broken up with on live TV, this book has a great premise. Amy’s biggest fear, seeing her friends settling down, marrying and having kids, is that she’ll be left on the shelf. So when she ends up on a TV show where they try to ‘train’ women to be good girlfriends, and the public vote to see who gets left on the shelf, sparks fly!

It’s a funny feminist story about the standards women are held to, and how to figure out what you really want from life. I had so many moments where I wanted to yell, but also so many where I thought ‘oh god, yeah that’s happened to me’. Very funny, very smart writing.

You can get it here.

Some smaller reviews (because I read them earlier in lockdown!):

My One Month Marriage – Shari Low

Really enjoyed this – 5 stars and would recommend! Great sisterhood storyline and imperfect characters and sassy dialogue. Skilled use of flashbacks and lots of fun!

Find it here

The Stranger in Our Bed – Samantha Lee Howe

I struggle with stories about infidelity but this was one of those psychological thrillers that whilst it was emotionally hard to read for many reasons, had one of those super satisfying twisty endings. It stressed me out to read, but I did stay up until 2am to do it. So that’s a good sign, right?

Get it here.

In non-fiction I’ve become obsessed with The Science of Storytelling by Will Storr (you can also hear his great interview on The Creative Penn podcast).

My upcoming reads are:

I bought The Labyrinth of Spirits after I heard Carlos Ruiz Zafron had sadly died. Shadows of the Wind is my favourite book and I’m torn between reading the whole series before I start this, or just jumping in. Any thoughts?

On Kindle I bought The Wrath and the Dawn by Renee Ahdieh, which appears to be a YA retelling of A Thousand and One Nights. I got suckered in by a beautiful cover and an instagram ad (don’t tell me those things don’t work!)

From my local library Borrow Box I’ve borrowed the ebook of Destination Wedding by Diksha Basu which I’ve heard great things about! (And I really need to start ASAP!)

And that’s me for now! I bought a bunch of books on writing structure and technique at the beginning of lockdown but got distracted by writing out two new novel ideas, and now I’m working on my edits for my 2021 book, so perhaps I’ll do another blog on those when I finally get to read them all!

Happy reading!

I am so into crazy supportive female friendships right now.

I write this whilst watching Booksmart for the first time ever (yeah, I’m always behind on everything, don’t worry about it) and I am OBSESSED with this friendship. The support! The love! The overwhelming need to tell your bestie just how freaking amazing she is!

Which reminds me of a really similar relationship, the one that launched a thousand Galentines: Lesley Knope and Anne Perkins. The ultimate girl duo, who are there to support each other, push each other, drive each other mad and know each other’s kinks and needs.

Why don’t we tell our friends we love them all the time? Where is that ‘drunk girl in the club bathroom’ energy on a Tuesday morning?

Which brings me very neatly onto my newest book: The Book of Us.

It’s a book about female friendship, but that complicated, all over the place kind of friendship. The kind where you’re in awe of the other person and love them, but you also are a teeny bit jealous of how they shine? The problem that you want to be around them all the time, because you have the most fun, but you’re also stuck being the person you’ve always been.

When you’re part of an awesome duo, and things have always worked, there’s no space to grow.

When I first started thinking about this book, I was intrigued by the kind of friendships where one is the leader and one is the follower. Sometimes that’s comforting, it lets you push and be pushed, helps you to grow. But they’re pretty impossible to break out of.

The two movies that I always think of when it comes to those relationships are Beaches and Me Without You.

How hard is it, to love someone but also know they’re not good for you sometimes?

Lauren and Cassidy in The Book of Us are complicated people, capable of real cruelty to each other. Because often you’re awful to the people you love the most. And when you’ve got an intense amount of love and loss and distance to cover to get back to that place you once were, it can be ugly.

So this Galentines Day, if there’s a friend you miss, or have drifted apart from, or want to reach out to, DO IT NOW!

So many of us love books because they give us an opportunity to enter a new world. Whether that’s a magical, alternative world or a country you’ve always wanted to see, fiction can take us there. I’d argue, in a way that non-fiction doesn’t.

Seeing characters you know experience and explore somewhere gives us an emotional insight as well as a practical one.

One of my favourite books (if not my absolute favourite ever) is Shadows of the Wind by Carlos Luis Zafron. It’s set in historical Barcelona and it’s so incredibly magic, so that when you go to Barcelona, you can see it in all the mystery of the book.

Places tie us in fiction. Whether it’s a comment about Kings Cross station platforms, or the description of a seaside resort you visited once as a child, fiction can make us feel connected through recognition.

So when the time comes to write books, it makes sense to take inspiration from the places you’ve been to, and the places you dream of.

My upcoming book, The Book of Us, was a mixture of these places for me. It’s a story about two friends going on the trip they’d always meant to do after university, but had never managed because they had a falling out.

In one instance I took some wonderful memories I had of touring Australia and put my characters in a surf camp on the Gold Coast. I visited Surfaris about 10 years ago and it was magic. It was my first time travelling alone, having to make friends and spending my time saying ‘Yes’. I loved surfing and always wanted to go back to surf camp. So I sent my characters there instead.

Another place featuring in the book is Seville. I set the book there and wrote it knowing that I was due to go in February last year. I came back and made a few changes, based on what I’d learnt and added in a few images that I’d loved. I would never have guessed how much Flamenco was being performed in the streets, for example. So I added that in.

I definitely found that using real experience made it more real. Which was why I was a little concerned writing about the third place….Finland.

Mainly because I’ve never been. I’ve chased the Northern Lights (unsucessfully) in Iceland. I’ve been snowboarding in some lovely places. But I’ve always wanted to go to one of those beautiful glass igloos. So I spent time researching as if I was going on that holiday myself! I can’t say it was difficult!

What books and places do you love? Are there any places you discovered through fiction that you went on to visit?

Well hello there! Happy new year!

Are you thinking this is the year you write that book? Maybe you’ve been doing that for a while already, but you’ve got new goals a’brewing?

Or maybe, like me, you’re not entirely sure what your writing goals are.

So many writing goals are based on things we have very little control over – it’s not up to you if you get published, or get an auction over offers, or get an agent. All you can do is THE WORK.

So, is 2020 the year you do the work?

Here’s some things you can do this year to make it a successful writing one:

• Keep writing! Anything at all. Short stories, poems, lists, reviews, morning pages, drunken scrawled notes on your phone app. Whatever it is, don’t stop writing!
• Stop comparing yourself – I know, I know. It’s hard. We all say it, none of us do it. There’s bee a lot of looking back at the last decade instead of just the last year and there are so many authors who have achieved loads! Think of it as a long game! Whether you win this year, or reach those goals in 5 or 10 year’s time – you’re still going to be writing, right? So take the wins where you find them and keep going.
• Enjoy it! If you’re not enjoying that form of being creative, then find something else!
• Take a risk! Whether that’s writing something outside of your comfort zone or ordinary genre, submitting to an agent or publisher, joining a writing group, making new friends…who knows where it could lead?!
• Be polite! The writing and publishing industry is small. If you get rejected, take it with a touch of class, thank them for their time and take whatever feedback forward. Onwards and up!
• Read! I know well enough that if you’re doubting your writing ability, reading some excellent books can really make you feel particularly rubbish. BUT, being a reader is going to make you a better writer. Never met a great writer who wasn’t a passionate reader. The more you read, the more you naturally understand story, rhythm, character and what your audience wants.

Whatever your writing goals in 2020, I wish you quiet time, inspiration, support from the people who matter and excitement at those voices in your head. And for the love of all things holy, BACK UP YOUR WORK.

Happy writing!

Andi

I haven’t been quiet about revealing my new book. After almost a decade spent writing novels, this is the one I’m so incredibly excited about. I’ve spent the last two years working on it, and I remember the exact moment the idea struck.

I was hoovering my flat, (shocking in itself) thinking about these two best friends who had fallen out, and how they’d send letters back and forth to each other as they tried to rebuild their friendship.

Of course, as is the way of these things, that’s not what this book looks like at all any more. But it is about female friendship and trying to rebuild something once it’s been broken, and the years have passed.

It’s so easy to take those youthful friendships for granted, cemented by routine and consistency and knowing each others’ families and histories. It becomes harder to make friends as you get older, to truly commit to people and reveal who you really are. To have the same types of friendships you had when you were younger.

So what happens when that person you loved most in the world betrays you? What if you chose the wrong side? What if you spend ten years holding a grudge but they might not be around much longer to bear it?

The Book of Us is about two friends with their complicated, loving (and sometimes toxic) friendship. How it fell apart and how they’re trying to rebuild it before time runs out. It was inspired by movies like Me Without You and Beaches, where the relationship between two friends is more important than romance. Where sometimes jealousy and love and pride can form into something painful, but you can’t quite let go.

Sometimes you need to lose your friends to grow up, but sometimes you need to find them again to remember who you were.

It’s currently available on netgalley, and the story starts just after Christmas, so it might be the right time to get into it! Let me know if you’re reading with the #thebookofus on socials!

In my class on Writing Romantic Comedy last week, we discussed recognisable tropes, and when they were comforting and when they veered into stereotype.

Don’t get me wrong, I love a trope. Give me a ‘hate-to-love’ romantic pairing, forced to share a room with only one bed in the middle of a storm in December – I will read the heck out of that.

But what about the romantic tropes that haven’t aged well? How do we walk the line between what romance is, calling out bad behaviour and not writing ‘woke’ characters just for the sake of it?

I guess it’s about perspective.

I’ll give you two examples:

There’s this guy who is head over heels for this girl, but she doesn’t know he exists. He goes back to the coffee shop she works at a couple of times a week, just hoping to get the chance to talk to her, and even if he doesn’t, just to see her smile and laugh with her colleagues makes his day feel a little brighter. He teases her, and she always bites back with something sarcastic, he takes it as a good sign. She might not realise he’s been trying to ask her out for the last three months, but he’s hoping eventually she’ll realise.

*

There’s this guy who is head over heels for this girl, but she makes him feel like he doesn’t exist. He goes back to the coffee shop where she works every day, he’s memorised the times she starts and ends her shift, eager to get to talk to her. He waits until she’s finished work and locking up, because he wants to talk to her alone, without any of her stupid colleagues who always stop him from talking to her, or insist on taking his orders instead. She flirts with him, she smiles and nods when he makes jokes, so she must be interested. She’s said no every time he’s asked her out, but he’s just not asking the right way, clearly. When he does, he’s sure she’ll say yes.

There’s a distinct difference there, right? At least, I hope so! The first one is how I met my soon-to-be husband. The second is the start of some creepy stalker story.

The difference? Misreading signals and ignoring the word ‘no’.

With so much focus on consent and power, along with a big focus in fiction right now on emotionally abusive relationships (See: Our Stop, The Flatshare, How Do You Like Me Now?) it’s important to remember to represent a good kind of love (if that’s what your story is about). If your romance is unhealthy, it’s going to be hard to get behind. Just because your leading man is hot, doesn’t mean he’s not a creeper.

A good way to check this is to see if the same dialogue and actions could be carried out by someone you didn’t consider an attractive male lead – does it still seem dominant and appealing, or does it seem forward and creepy?

There are so many of these actions in older books, films and TV that just don’t hold up now – look at so many of John Hughes movies. Getting a girl drunk and swapping her for a different girl with some guy. Making a deal in return for a girl’s underwear. Inappropriate touching without consent.

There’s so much creepy stuff that we just kind of accepted as part of the story. Luckily, I’d say we have a much higher level of expectation for what’s acceptable in life as well as on screen, but that means your story has to keep up.

Is your male lead strong and attractive, or is he bullying and obsessive? Is he rude and teasing, or is he negging? Is your female lead giving into her own desire, or is she being manipulated?

Consider whether the kind of relationship you’re giving your main characters is one you’d want your kids to be in. If it seems like an epic romance for your character, but if your daughter bought that dude home you’d kick him five ways to Sunday, it’s not woke enough.

What do you think, do writers have a responsibility to write good romance? Are there any examples of good or bad romantic relationships that have made you pause?

I was at a conference this week, where I happened to mention I was an author. The person I spoke to immediately asked: ‘Ah, self published?’

Dear reader, this is not the first time this has been said to me, automatically. It also takes a superhuman sort of strength not to deny this vehemently, and try to show off about your achievements as an author.

Which, of course, does nothing but make you feel worse and like you’re a fraud.

But I wanted to unpack that automatic assumption about self publishing.

There is, obviously, nothing wrong with self publishing, and the authors I know who are most financially successful, and most savvy, are self-pubbed. For those in the writing sphere, we know that self publishing is the way to excellent money for those who are smart, hard working and willing to put in all the publishing work on top of the writing work.

But that’s not what people outside the fiction circle think.

When someone’s first response is ‘Oh, you’re self published?’ what they’re really saying is, ‘Well, I haven’t heard of you.’

This is because, dear reader, mid-list authors are invisible. If you have not heard of me, I cannot exist. I cannot possibly have sold tens of thousands of books, I cannot have written multiple novels in the last ten years.

This is because the story of publishing shows us two options: the failed writer, never publishing, sitting amongst their rejection letters and unfinished manuscripts, and the successful author, being part of a six-way auction for their debut novel which goes on to sell millions.

We do not see the mid-list authors, working away year after year, releasing book after book, and doing well! Doing well! You do not need to sell millions to be an author. You do not need to be famous, or a household name. There is a whole wide world of readers out there, and you can have your corner of it.

Mid-list authors are invisible because they don’t appear in books (no, we write ourselves the fiction we want, of fame and fortune) or movies or television. Even the marginally successful authors in TV have book tours, or ridiculous advances.

This industry is a strange one, but I hope that this realisation offers hope and is comforting – there is not simply ‘bestseller’ or ‘never makes it’. There’s a whole group of authors who are selling and writing and making deals and seeing their words in other languages, and finding new readers every day. There are writers who make this their life’s work, without quitting their day job.

They are still writers. They are still doing this wonderful work. Just as there is always room for readers, there is always room for new writers. So whether you’re starting out, or have been doing this a while, whether you’re hoping for a big break or happy with your lot, whether you’re self pubbed or trad pubbed, I want to celebrate mid-list authors.

Because we may not often be seen, we’re trudging on every day, creating worlds and words, and I think there’s something incredibly beautiful about that.