Bear becomes Sarah-post from the tween herself

Secondary School

Hi. I'm Sarah, but Mother calls me Bear. I go to Worle Community School, and trust me, it's full of surprises

From evil teachers to love songs about classmates, Worle has a LOT of twists and turns. It begins at home, when Mother comes into the room shouting
"Get up! Time for School!"
"But Mum!" No matter how hard I fight against going to the dread that is School, Mum always wins. After being dropped off, I walk past the gate, still half asleep. Approaching my Tutor Group, I try waking myself up by singing in my head-most of the time I just drift off and think about lolling around at home, but soon I'm woken again by my friend Taydra, yelling
"Sarah! Over here!" I run, knowing the bell for Tutor Group time will go off at anytime. After it goes off, my Tutor Mr Tong walks outside, letting us into the class. It's not the biggest Tutor Base in the School (I think the Science and Maths rooms are bigger) but then again, it's not that small. Not as small as the MFL (Modern Foreign Languages) room. I usually just grab the seat nearest to Taydra, like friends do.

Lessons. The most boring (and important) part of School is lessons. Some lessons are unusual, nothing you'd ever find at Primary
School. (Well it depends which School you're on about) There's stuff like DT and Music. And for some odd reason, Citizenship. (I might be the only one in my Tutor who knows what that is without an explanation) THEN you have what every Secondary School has. Evil Teachers. Mr Titley (lol) the Science teacher said to us (on FIRST day!)
"Alright, silence, single file line. NOW" then, to make things worse, I whispered something to Taydra on the way in, Mr Titley heard this and roared
"SILENCE!" That's not it. My PE teacher made us change into our uniforms in under 4 minutes, (Which took 3 GOES!) then it turned out no PE, just information on kits and filling in our planners. There are loads more, IT teacher called me an ignorant brat, and after I broke a uniform rule (Shirt tucked into trousers-tried to hide it but got told off after being caught.) I really was scared. Geography teacher says we're all a pain in the ass, and when one back chatted to her in a test, she said
"Don't be a smart arse." Scary.

Break and Lunch-favourite part of the day. I mainly have a packed lunch, but the food at Cafe Willow is immense! Delicious sausages, mouth-watering brownies, delectable baguettes and even slushies! To make things better, I remember my best friend from year 2 Rosie (she left) is at that school! We met again at the Cafe, it was great! Not being biased! The packed lunch room is ace too! There's a TV (All it shows is the music channel-awesome because I remember when it played The Boy is Mine, Toxic and Don't Cha) and a Ping Pong table! Me and Taydra played against Sean and Kieran, two boys from my Primary School (I admit I had a little crush on Sean) and we lost 1-5. Buggar. There's also an outside part with benches, an arena-like floor, a model of a WWII Anderson Shelter and a graffiti smiley face with sunglasses on the wall. The dumb boys try to get in the Anderson Shelter, there's only one entrance, not that blocked-maybe cause it's blocked with a shoddy shovel- and they're always trying to 1) get inside, or 2) eat on top of it without getting into trouble. There's also an ant colony that's managed to eat their way threw a rotten apple and sandwich. Ew.

My friends are cool. At lunch Kiera's always offering grapes, and one time Libby offered our group Bacon Rashers. Everyone took one, not wanting to look like a freak, I accepted one to try. Nice, but horrible aftertaste. Most of the girls in the group are from my Primary School, so it's obvious we're friends. The only ones in the group that I didn't know before were Taydra and Bethan, two girls I never expected to be friends with, as on inspection day Taydra and I never talked, and all Bethan asked me was
"Can I borrow your pen?" (We sat next to each other in History, bur she was quiet) Oh well, they're awesome. The girls from my Primary School are Molly, Kiera, Emily, Libby and Megan. Then I've just mentioned Taydra and Bethan.

Of course, like at all Secondary School, their are the stupid teenage boys. In year 5, there was a guy in my class, (really he was in the other year 5 class) called Gabriel. (Or Gabi for short) And he was a complete douche. He got expelled and then sent to an anger management school. Gabi is at Worle, whenever he passes Kiera he calls her a midget. Probaly the reason I told Kiera to keep her head down whenever he passes.

Finally, time to talk relationships, and in 7PN, (my Tutor Group) there's love in the air. Especially that whenever we're in music, Miss Mac sings a love song about the 7PN couples. So far only two (Majenta+Jordan and Laura+Scott) but I have a crush-on TWO boys! (Is that bad?) Ryan Thomas...and Sam whatever-his-last-name-is. Ryan's funny and Sam's cute-he has the same hair as the Sam from Glee! Kiera, she either has a crush on Liam or Jarom. Taydra loves Jordan (Not Majenta's boyfriend, Jordan from another Tutor Group) and I just don't see how he's cute! (At that point, Tay's giving me the 'are you serious?' eyes)

Despite some catastrophes -such as Libby losing an earring and me getting scared by fiersome teachers-Worle's a fantastic School. Though my sister Vix, who went to Priory, can't believe I'm what, according to her, a 'Worle Sket.' It's amazing to have great teachers, and lessons in the performing arts. The best thing is having incredible friends. I was shy in Primary School, so I didn't have that many friends, but I'm better now, with seven amazing friends-five of whom I already knew. I know that Secondary School will be great, though in my five-year journey, they'll be bumps and bruises, I've got a whole experience to look forward to. That's what School's truly about.

Kids on Cash

A couple of weeks ago I had a bunch of cash on my bedside table. I'd left it there for bits and bobs during the week, groceries and such. I was tending to take a tenner here and there and that was working just fine. One morning as we were rushing around getting ready for school and work I shouted up to Bear to bring me down a tenner for lunch and stuff. She did and I thought no more of it.

Until a few days later when I was off to the shops and went to grab some cash... only to find it conspicously absent. I moved the bed side table and such, searched in the drawers thinking it had dropped in one of them but nothing... where I wondered was my pile of cash? Stymied I went off to the shops and sort of forgot about it until that very night when I was tucking young Bear into bed! Yes, the plot thickens does it not, and I'm sure you know where I'm going with this. Sat on HER bedside table was a neat little pile of notes.

I realized immediately what had occured and turned to look at my little thief.

"What is this young lady?" I asked.
She tried to put on an innocent expression and replied. "Money."
"Whose money?" I asked.
She bit down on her little lip and smiled. "Mine."

Now I had to give her points for the sheer brazen-ness of it, despite a fair bit of shock.

"Did your money come from my bedroom?" I asked.
She nodded slowly.

I knew of course what had happened, upon seeing my cash pile when I asked her to get me a tenner, her little eleven year old mind decided to grab the lot for herself. However, as I have since told her, it wasn't very well thought out. Where was she going to spend it and how? I take her everywhere, she'd had to have fessed up before trying to launder it. Anyhoos a lecture followed and she was told quite clearly that money hanging around the house is not hers for the taking.

She won't try that one again I told the chap...

Skip forward a fortnight and I ask her to grab something from my bag, she does, I think no more of it. Until that night, again tucking her in, I spot a tenner on her bedside table!

"Bear!" I said. "State where you got this money from."
"Your bag," she replies.

Yes, once again my little kleptomaniac had helped herself to my money! Now Bear is the cutest little thing in the universe, despite a slightly mischevious glint in her eye (see picture above), and that allows her to get away with a fair bit. However, this was the limit. Theft I told her is theft.

"I wanted some money," she said in a perfectly reasonable tone.
"Yes, but you can't just take mine," I said.
"Why not?"

Why not indeed! I've always told the girls that everything we have belongs to all of us. I'm not precious about possessions, whoever gets to it first uses it, so I could kinda see where she was coming from. But money is another thing entirely. Again she was given a fairly stern lecture and told in no uncertain terms the meaning of stealing, or as we've since labelled it 'appropriating cash for her own purposes'. I'm not angry about it, Brip to the Brap and so on, but I am slightly put out by her lack of forward thinking.

Where did she think she was going to offload it? Where was she planning to utilise it and how? I'm always a bit annoyed when my kids show such lack of forward planning. It suggests a lack of imagination, not good for the offspring of a writer. And as I've since told her, if she wants a career as a diamond thief she's gonna have to get a bit more creative!

Emma x

The Rogue Cupcake

I was down to my last slither of pink icing. So far I’d managed to ice 11 cupcakes, there were another 25 to go.
‘What shall we do mom? Do y’reckon we can get one more done?’ asked Bear.
I lent down until I was on eye level with the cupcake. ‘We have plenty of chocolate icing and frosting,’ I replied. ‘But we have to get one more done in pink, it has to be an even dozen.’
Bear shook her head and sighed – she reminded my irresistibly of a plumber eyeing up a dodgy pipe. I expected her to start sucking through her teeth and saying, Hmmm not gonna be cheap love.
‘We should just chocolate what’s left,’ Bear insisted.
‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m going to go for it, we WILL ice one more pink.’
Bear stepped a little closer, hesitant, yet eager to see what was going to happen. You see icing a cupcake is a delicate procedure. You can’t just slop the stuff on. I’d started the night armed with piping guns and had created – thus far – eleven perfectly formed treats. Now though I was working to a different set of rules entirely. I was attempting to do it minus the gun, I was going to scrape the remaining icing from inside the tube and free ride it.
I was treading the line, hanging over the precipice... I was going to ice... with a spoon!
‘Careful mom!’ Bear said as I picked up the cupcake.
I nodded slowly and gently, oh so gently, applied the spoon. The icing slowly, oh so slowly began to move onto the cupcake. I eased a relieved breath and moved the spoon away.
A significant portion of the cupcake came with me.
I gulped and gritted my teeth. ‘Bear.’
‘Yeah?’ she said (sprinkles already in her hand – awaiting the completed cupcake).
‘We’ve got ourselves a...’ I stopped unable to continue.
‘A what mom?’ she asked, gripping the sprinkle tube a little harder (I think one or two might have shot out of the topless tube up her nose but I digress). ‘A what?’
‘A...’ I paused and took a deep breath. ‘A rogue cupcake!’
Bear stepped back, shock etched on her face. ‘No mom noooo!’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It’s gone rogue.’
A rogue cupcake is a tricky thing, entirely in the hands of the cupcake fates it can go either way. It might let you salvage it, it might not. It might be present on the line up of perfect cupcakes or it might be dropped in the mixing bowl for immediate consumption.
It was entirely my own fault of course. Had I admitted defeat by the lack of pink icing and accepted the need for chocolate, the cupcake would have been fine. But I hadn’t, I’d pushed it, insisting that I’d get just one more... like a thief planning one last heist I’d pushed my luck over the line.
Now the cupcake was exerting its revenge, like that same thief I was languishing in jail and trying to plot a way out.
‘What can we do?’ Bear asked worriedly.
I shook my head and looked down at the sizeable lump of perfectious sponge attached to the last slither of pink icing.
‘There’s not enough icing to make it stick,’ I said. ‘We’re gonna have to go chocolate.’
‘Like I said in the first place, I think you’ll find,’ Bear reminded me.
She passed me the chocolate piping gun and I frowned down at it. I’m a mathematical person and I knew, I just knew, that not achieving a perfect dozen was going to annoy me for days to come.
I looked form the chocolate to the pink... plotting, planning. We’re the bars thick enough, how close was the security guard... were the cupcake fates going to be nice?
Inspiration came to me and before I knew it I was dropping the chocolate icing into the hole of the rogue cupcake. I replaced the errant sponge and pushed it into place (pink icing and spoon still attached).
‘Pass me that knife,’ I said.
Bear (the perfect cupcake assistant) was at my arm in an instant, implement poised.
I nodded slowly and gently, oh so gently, applied the knife to the last slither of pink.
The icing slowly, oh so slowly began to move off the spoon and onto the cupcake. I eased a relieved breath and once again moved the spoon away.
The errant sponge stayed in place.
The cupcake was complete.
‘Bear,’ I said. ‘The cupcake has rejoined ranks.’
She nodded and moved forward to welcome it with sprinkles.





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Super Sweet Sixteen

Just under sixteen years ago something happened in my life that changed me in ways I could never have imagined. An event that shook me to my very core and would have far reaching effects that I could never have envisaged.

You see sixteen years ago this thursday my princess, Victoria Elizabeth, was born. I could fill the internet with words declaring my love for her. Telling you all how wonderous she is, how happy she makes me and how lucky I feel to have her in my life. We all think our children are perfect don't we and I'm no exception. I adore her in ways it would be impossible to describe. I love her smile, her laugh, her wit, her outrageousness, even her washing up phobia - everything about her... everything but one incy wincy little thing...

I've called her princess from the moment she was born and now, well, she expects to be treated like one. Those far reaching effects I mentioned, one of them has been the steady decline in my bank balance! She wants, she asks and I, being wrapped around her little finger, am helpless to resist.

The latest incursion on my financial stability (and there have been MANY over the last sixteen years) is the PARTY. Her Super Sweet Sixteenth birthday party. I blame MTV, they spent a whole year showing little rich girls having these ridiculously expensive parties and Vix decided she too would quite like one. This is all well and good and were I rich I'd be wholeheartedly on board. But I'm not rich, I'm happily comfortable when not faced with party bills in the many digits.

'It must be the best, it must be perfect, I can not have a substandard party MOM!' Vix said to me, mere hours ago when I questioned the need for a three tier cake.
'Yes but...' I replied.
'There are no buts mom!' she insisted, with a I-want-I-must-have-do-not-try-and-gainsay-me gleam in her eye. 'Do you want me to die of shame in front of my friends? Do you want people to say my party wasn't epic? Do you? I'm only sixteen once mom, this is the only time I'll ever be able to have a sweet sixteenth and you're moaning about money?!'
I mumble something along the lines of it doesn't grow on trees.
'Don't you want to make me happy?' she asks, her perfect brown eyes suddenly all wide and her little lip pouting. I rush to reassure her that of course I do, that she's my princess and I always want her to be happy.
'You're the bestet mom in the world,' she replied, taking my reassurance as agreement to her latest demand. And that was that.

You see Vix knows just how to get her own way, she knows I am putty in her hands and this is how a small party with her closest friends has turned in to this huge event, in a bar, with a DJ and seventy people, and food, and drinks, and decorations, and an expensive outfit and so on and on. In later life I stongly suspect that she'd make a wonderful dictator.

So I will spend the next week making decorations and baking cakes and doing a million and one things to get everything perfect for her. Perhaps I should be sterner, maybe I should put my foot down and tell my princess that she can't have the stretch limo or the hundred balloons or the custom made cupcakes. Some might indeed say that she is just a wee bit spoilt... and I might, just might be inclined to agree.

But you know what, the last sixteen years that this wonderful person has been in my life have been the bext sixteen years. My Vix has enriched me in ways it is impossible to state. She's made me laugh, made me cry, made me run the gauntlet of emotions. There isn't a day that I don't feel eternally grateful, that I don't feel shockingly blessed to have been given her as my daughter. What's a healthy bank balance compared to that?

Gleeful GaGa

There are a few things sacred in The House of Burning Bras. Unlimited chocolate consumption, the freedom to wear pyjamas all day, the agreement to stack books on every clean surface. Lately though, by vote, we've added two more to the list. These two are so important to the fabric of the house that I felt a blog was neccesary, they are, of course, Glee and GaGa.

It all began a few weeks ago. We were watching the Lady GaGa episode of Glee, I should say from the off that we've been watching Glee from episode one and have all fallen in love with it, furthermore GaGa has been playing on loop in the car for months. So there we were, our fav show, our fav singer...

'It's legend, clear legend,' Vix said. 'I don't see how they can possibly beat it.'
'The Bad Romance performance was wicked, wicked,' Bear agreed.
They were right, the episode was indeed the pinnacle of gleedom. I looked across at them both and knew immediately what we had to do.
'We can do a better Bad Romance than that,' I said.
'Huh?' Bear asked, tearing her gaze from the final few minutes.
'We can beat that,' I said again.
I looked at the clock, half ten on a school night. It was possibly a smidge late, might possibly be a smite too noisy for our neighbours but this was Glee, this was GaGa - in one go - what choice did we have?

I waited until the end of the episode, as soon as the credits rolled I turned to the princesses. 'You have fifteen minutes to assemble a GaGa costume, fifteen minutes until the music starts and then we will perform Bad Romance.'
'Ohmegod Mom are you serious?' Vix asked.
'Not up for the challenge?' I said. 'Bear and I can do it alone if you're not.'
She bristled, as I knew she would. The very possibility of a show occuring anywhere within a five mile radius without Vix taking part was enough to make her swell like a bullfrog. I could see her begin racing through costume possibilities in her mind.
'Yes I wanna do it,' Bear said - her little face all excited.
'Right then,' I said. 'The fifteen minute costume creation starts... now.'
They ran faster than the last time I shouted the words cupcake and I followed desperate to get my hands on the pink tights before Vix snagged them.

It was a frantic fifteen minutes, Vix ran around the house screaming for her PVC leggings, Bear shuffled along on size 6 multi-coloured striped high heels (she's a size two) and I had to do some serious stomach sucking in order to fit into a black basque becuase the one I wanted was mysteriously absent. I was first to the livingroom where I had Bad Romance on the ready. I looked at the clock and bit my lip when I realised it was almost eleven. The neighbours were gonna moan, the kids would be late to bed...
'Don't look at me!' Vix shrieked as she entered. 'I want it to be a suprise!'
'Don't look at me either,' Bear insisted as she tottered in. I thought I heard her slip on the heels again and stiffled a giggle.
'Press play mom!' Vix shouted.
'But I can't look,' I said.
'Bloody hell mom, do it with your eyes closed.'
'Don't look at me,' Bear said again.
I, somehow made my way over to the dvd player and assumed position. 'Ready?' I asked.
'Yes, yes, press play!' they said.
So I did.
I turned round as 'RA, RA, RA, RA, RA' started to see Vix dressed in black PVC leggings and a fab lacy black basque - a basque that looked suspicously like the one I was looking for. Bear looked amazing in a pink tutu, black vest and face net. She was also perched on Vix's five inch heels and I had strong doubts about her ability to dance her way round the wooden floors without serious injury.
'Let's do it!' Vix screamed.

So we did, we danced, and we sang and we followed Bad Romance with Just Dance and then Poker Face and then Bad Romance again, it was a GaGa fest. We were probably pretty awful (in fact we've since been compared to Jahm on last nights X Factor) but we didn't care. By the time we'd finished it was going on for midnight and I thought I'd heard the neighbour stomping up the stairs more than once.
'You've got school tomoz,' I said. 'And I've got work.'
The girls grinned, they were hot and sweaty and both looked a picture. Now I suspect if we lived in any other house but The House of Burning Bras that we wouldn't do this sort of thing. If I was more of a stern-type parent I would have insisted they go to bed, hell I wouldn't have even made the suggestion in the first place. But you know what, sometimes being a parent is not just about sending the kids to bed at a certain time, it's not just about making them eat their veg and brush their teeth. It's about fun, it's about being impulsive and it's about building memories. In ten years time we'll remember this night (I've photographic proof for future blackmail purposes) and we'll remember the fun we had - the three of us together. GaGa, Glee and my Girls - it doesn't get much more perfect than that.

The Tapestry of Love

I'm always astounded by how weird it is to have friends who are published authors. I often get a jolt when I walk in to Waterstones and see a friends book on the shelf or better yet when I have them sat on my own shelves to read as I wish. It also means that I have access to a whole bunch of authors who I can tap up for various publications like MUSE, my newsletter and this blog. Last week saw David Bridger guest blogging on To Stalk a Publisher and this week I have really hit the ball out of the park. Rosy Thornton is my guest today and I am absolutely delighted to have her take part. So delighted in fact that I've popped her on The House of Burning Bras as well!

It all began on wednesday when a package came through my door, you'll recall that I wrote a brief blog about it just to whet your appetite. Well it was a book (I love receiving literature through my letterbox) and not just any book but a review copy of Rosy's latest novel, The Tapestry of Love.

I started it on wednesday night and by the early hours of Thursday I'd finished. It really is one of those books that just flows through you and urges you to keep going until the end. I love books like that, it feels like the author has done you a favour in some way.

So what's it about? Well first off I thought ToL (as I now think of it) was a romance, I expected romance to be the dominating theme, how wrong I was. This book is much, much more than a romance it's a journey of finding oneself, at a point in life where you imagine to already have done so.

The book starts with our heronie Catherine, a divorcee with grown up children on her way to her new home in rural France, the Cevennes mountains in fact. She's starting over, beginning a new life, a different life. I always enjoy reading about new starts, they speak, I think to somethng inside each of us that yearns to run off to the mountains or the beach or the jungle and begin again. Catherine is doing just that and from the very opening chapter Rosy sets the scene splendidly. Chapter two keeps you exactly where you want to be, her first interaction with a native is wonderfully written and this is the bar (a high one) that the rest of the book follows. There's one part in the last but one chapter that I'm desperate to copy here for you because it is so beautifully written and it's one of those bits that you'd imagine working perfectly in film. Alas I can't, it would spoil the story for you, I'll ask instead that readers tell me if they can spot it once they've read the book and drop me a comment letting me know what you think it is.

Again in the intrests of not spoiling the story I'm not going to tell you the plot - I'll say only that it deals with family ties, the pangs of absence and the wonderfully tentative beginnings of new love - because I'm imagining that after reading this and Rosy's interview below that you are going to click here and go buy it.

It's a perfect book to take with you on holiday, forget the trashy romances that'll be forgotten the next day. Rosy's book, Catherine's story will stay with you long after the holiday has finished. Also as a side note the cover is lush and the book will look cracking on your shelf.

So Rosy is here to answer a few of my questions... here goes...

Hi Rosy, thanks fo joining us today let's start the ball rolling by asking how long have you been writing for and what got you started?
I only began writing fiction six years ago. It came completely out of the blue, after watching a television programme! I loved the BBC’s adaptation of Elizabeth Gaskell’s ‘North and South’ in 2004; I went online to discuss the serial, discovered Gaskell fanfic, and thought I’d have a go at writing some. Three months later, I found I’d written a full-length pastiche sequel to ‘North and South’! It was utter drivel, of course – but by then I’d been bitten by the writing bug, and I carried straight on to write my own first ‘proper’ novel, ‘More Than Love Letters’ – which, Gaskell geeks will spot, contains more than a few nods to ‘North and South’.


How tough was the journey for publication for you?
It took just over a year, in all. I did find an agent to represent my Gaskell pastiche, but it didn’t attract a publisher, and that agent didn’t like ‘More Than Love Letters’ at all and gave me leave to try to find another agent for it. That was a slog. I think I approached every fiction agent in the Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook, and was rejected by all of them! Then, by mistake, I wrote to an agent (Robert Dudley) who, at the time, was listed only as representing non-fiction. By pure luck, he happened to be looking to move into fiction, and liked the manuscript, so he and I set out as fiction virgins together. I worked through two major edits under his guidance (he is a fabulous editor!) and then he sent out the book – which was eventually taken, a few months later, by Headline.


Tapestry of Love is book number four for you, how does it feel to have those four books sat on your shelf and know that they're all yours?
It’s very unreal, to be honest. Mainly, I think, because I reached my forties without ever thinking of writing fiction. For my day job I am a legal academic, and have published a lot of extremely dull things about law. Lawyers are such pedantic analytical thinkers, famed for lacking imagination or creativity. I could define and classify things, make distinctions, split hairs – but I had no idea at all that I might be able to invent a story. I still have no idea where it came from.


An unusual question but... do you have all the covers blown up and adorn your walls with them (I'd be strongly tempted to and the cover of ToL is lovely).
LOL! No – I must admit I hadn’t thought of this! Though I did have a mug made for a friend of mine with her book cover on it when her first novel came out. You’re right, though – the cover visual for ‘The Tapestry of Love’ is utterly gorgeous. (Even if it is clearly a doorway in Provence and not in the Cévennes.)


You've picked quite an unusual setting for the book, how did that come about?
I had a fortnight’s family holiday in the Cévennes twenty years ago and have never been back, but for some reason the region just found its way under my skin. Maybe because it is the most beautiful place on earth!


Catherine comes across very much as a woman opening a new chapter to her life and setting in to the unknown, have you drawn on your own experiences for this, if not how did you convey the trepidation and the alieness of the situation?
I suppose on one level we all know what it’s like to take a step into the unfamiliar and be an outsider: every time we move house, begin a new job. But for the specifics of moving to France I had good examples to draw on, because my family have all made the same journey. My brother married a Frenchwoman and lives in the Rhône-Alpes; he runs his own small business and I pumped him for information about the nightmares of French bureaucracy. My parents moved to Loire Atlantique when they retired, to a crumbling old stone house, so I have also stolen some of their experiences, mainly in the realms of plumbing and electrics.


At first I took this book for a romance but it is much more than that, how central was the romance aspect to you - the writer - in the story?
I suppose the inclusion of a romance gives a story shape. I am a confirmed ‘pantser’ – that is, I don’t plan my novels, I just write them by the seat of my pants – and knowing that there is a love story to develop does give me a sense of at least one direction in which the book will move. But for me – as for Catherine – the romance did not become the central preoccupation of her new, emerging life. The book is as much about isolation and loneliness, but also about family and friendship, belonging and community and how we out down roots in a place, and about the relationship of man to landscape, as it is about romantic love.

You convey a real sense of emotion, the book really makes the reader feel the situation, it's a skill few writers posses. Has that developed over time with each book?
I think perhaps, with increased confidence, I’ve become less afraid to have a go at conveying emotion. My earlier books were funnier, I’ve noticed – as if somehow I had to be at least partly sending myself up all the time. ‘The Tapestry of Love’ has some elements of humour but they are now far lower in the mix. Maybe I’ve become less afraid to take myself seriously now and then.


The family ties, the absence and the worry it produces in Catherine, again was that drawn from personal experience?
None of the specifics of Catherine’s situation are drawn from my own life. But I’m a mother, a wife, a daughter, a sister, a friend. Anxiety for loved ones, the pain of absence, bereavement and loss - these are things familiar to all of us.


What's next in the pipeline?
I don’t want to say too much for fear of jinxing things, but I have one completed manuscript currently with my agent (rather more sad and serious than any I’ve tried before), and am half way through a new novel, which has gone back in the other direction: lighter and funnier, a retro ‘rom com’ set in 1980.


I'm giving you that link again lovely blog readers just in case you missed it, click here to buy and if after you've read ToL you fancy reading a bit more of Rosy then I would suggest Crossed Wires.

Oh, how could I forget! Rosy also featured in issue one of MUSE, so skip over here to read more about her or better yet visit her website.

The Return of the Bear

So I resisted the overwhelming urge to drive down and get Bear, I waited it out with what I think was quite admirable restraint. On Friday morning, the day I named 'The Return of the Bear' I woke up feeling all excited and brimming full of anticipation. The princess was coming home and god damn I'd missed her.

I had booked the day off work and I had it all planned out. I would be there way before she arrived but I would not act like a Smother (mother who smothers), I would be all calm and collected. I would resist the urge to sniff her hair and squidge her little belly. I would NOT be embarrassing, I would be you know... all cool.

So 12 o clock arrived and Vix and I (who was off school for the afternoon and yeah... ummm... she had permission...) were ready and waiting outside the school. It was blazing hot and we were both struggling with the heat. Neither of us can do heat, we both shrivel like vampires. In fact the girls have been known (on a Saturday afternoon when they've been up for less than an hour - a practice I thoroughly encourage) to scream it burns it burns if I dare open the curtains.

I digress, so there we were cringing from the sun when Vix gives me the LOOK.

'I'm hungry,' she says.
'Yes,' I agree. 'Me too.'
'There's a Subway round the corner.'
'We might miss your sister, we have to be here when she arrives,'
Vix fidgeted, 'Yeah I suppose... they've got steak and cheese on though and cookies.'
I fidget a bit too and give her the LOOK back. The LOOK is our way of saying yeah we shouldn't but let's argue a bit to pretend we're not gonna and then do it anyway.
'We have to be really quick,' I say.
'Of course.'

Two foot long steak and cheeses later, two chocolate chip cookies and a pint of diet coke and we're still waiting. The coach is stuck on the motorway - typical eh? The sun continues to torment us and I can't even have a crafty smoke seeing as we're on school grounds. A half hour later we hear a rumbling and there it is!! Haha she arrives. The coach drives right past me and I can see her little face in the window. Vix and I rush up to the coach and... wait. Unsurprisingly she is the last off the coach.

'Hi mom,' she says as I wrap my arms around her. I wait until her air supply is nearly gone before letting her free. The be cool don't smother resolution has disappeared. I sniff her and hug her and kiss her and though she pulls a face I can see she loves it.
'How was it babe?' I ask.
'Fine,' she replies, 'it was fine.'
I notice that her hair may not have seen the brush all week and her skin has the slightly greased up look which suggests an extreme lack of showering.
'I had a good time, there was chips and burgers and pasta and peas.'
Clearly my worries were unfounded, clearly there were no coded messages in the postcard - I was fretting over nothing at all... I look down and notice her socks. They look strangely familiar.
'Bare when did you last change your socks?' I ask.
She gives me her I will be a diamond thief when I'm older and there's nothing you can do about it mom look and smiles.
'I haven't.'