It’s three months since the publication of The Child’s Secret and I’d like to say a big thank you to everyone who bought a copy because it did amazingly well, reaching Number 14 in the UK Book Charts which is my highest position in the charts so far. I can’t tell you how thrilling it was but I’m already turning my attention to my next book which is due to be released on in August this year. I suppose that’s the good thing about writing two books a year, I don’t have to wait so long between publication days, even if it does mean twice the work!

Out 11th August 2016

My next book is called The Goodbye Gift and I can’t wait to share it with you all. It’s the first book I’ve written where I didn’t know the ending, or at least not until I was two thirds of the way through the first draft. It was at that point I had to make an impossible decision – which of my beloved characters was about to become an organ donor and save the life of a young woman called Lucy who is in desperate need of a heart transplant.

The fact that one of my characters would become an organ donor shouldn’t come as a surprise to the reader because Lucy is introduced in the very first chapter – just before we cut to the scene of an accident where the emergency services are trying to save the lives of multiple crash victims.

The story then switches to three women and focuses on their lives  in the months preceding the accident; three friends who have their own individual challenges and futures to plan. In that first draft, I didn’t want to know which character wasn’t going to make it because I needed to write each of their stories as if they were going to have all their tomorrows, and next weeks, and next years. I knew that if I decided too soon who wasn’t going to survive the accident, I would be tempted to tie up the loose ends of their life and I didn’t want to do that. Sometimes lives are left half-written and it can happen to any of us.

Now I know that sounds morose, and personally I’m happy to live life blissfully unaware of what might be around the corner, but there’s no harm in being prepared. Some loose ends can be tied up quite easily, one of them is registering as an organ donor. Click here if it’s something you haven’t got around to doing yet.