Debbie McGowan's Blog

Crying in the Rain - Second Edition - available now

Ten years ago (to the day), I released Crying in the Rain – a bi/gay love story (MM romance) and a stand-alone novel in the Hiding Behind The Couch universe.

Today, I’m releasing the second edition of Crying in the Rain.

I’ve been updating the formatting of all my books for a while now – optimistically I thought I’d have them all done in 2023, and I don’t have too many left to do, but it’s a lengthy task. While I’m at it, I’m reading through each story, correcting any errors I notice and sorting out my British commas. That’s all most of the stories need for me to be happy with them.

But then I reached Crying in the Rain, and, well, rather than paraphrase myself, here’s my Author’s Note from the new edition:

To be clear, I didn’t hate the first edition, but seeing the things I didn’t like about it crop up in reviews…well, there’s an argument there for not reading reviews, I suppose, but those readers weren’t wrong. There was too much ‘head-hopping’. Crying in the Rain is essentially a romance novel, and modern romance novels are usually written from one point of view at a time rather than the ‘psychic fly on a very nearby wall’ omniscient narration I most often use in the series.

So I’ve fixed the head-hopping. What I haven’t changed is the overall story or the characterisation, but I have developed both further, expanding some scenes and deleting others, including the original epilogue, which was from Fergus’s point of view.

The second edition is around 70,000 words (the first was about 58,000) and is available through the usual places – visit https://books2read.com/b/CryingintheRain2edn for purchase links or buy directly from Beaten Track here: https://beatentrackpublishing.com/cryingintherain

As this version is significantly different from the first edition, I’ve had to release it as an entirely separate book, but any readers of the first edition who would like a free update to the second edition (ebook only), please get in touch (via https://beatentrackpublishing.com/?n1=contact) and I’ll send it your way.

* * * * *

Blurb

For many years, Ade Simmons has been an outsider, trapped in an abusive relationship, seeking sanctuary in his job as a radio producer and in the checklists he makes in an attempt to regain control of his sorry excuse of a life.

Actor Kris Johansson is patient, gentle and passionate – everything Ade’s ex-boyfriend is not. When Kris takes a role in one of Ade’s plays, the attraction is mutual and instant. It is the turning point for Ade. He can either stay on the same path, with Fergus, the bully who has repressed, used and isolated him from his friends and family, or he can look in the other direction, towards Kris, the handsome actor with family and friends who readily accept him.

But Fergus will not give up his punchbag so easily. Can Ade finally find the strength to fight back?

* * * * *

Part of the Hiding Behind The Couch series. This story falls chronologically during the second half of The Harder They Fall (Season Three). The story continues in First Christmas (Novella) and In The Stars Part I (Season Four).

A big decision? #amwriting

Image by Darkmoon ArtThere is a theory (I can’t recall whose) that our decisions are already made at the beginning of a deliberation process, and the weighing up of pros and cons is merely a form of delaying while we find the courage to take the leap.

After three months of prevaricating, I’ve taken that leap.

Well, more of a step-over, as what I’ve done is congruent with who I am and my values, but I’m wary of the kickback it might have and how others could feel under duress to follow my example or plead their case, neither of which are necessary.

To be clear: this decision has no bearing on anyone else, nor is it a judgement of how other creative people do their thing.

Cutting to the chase (finally)…

I’ve re-priced all of my ebooks to 99c/99p (depending on where you are in the world). That includes all novels, novellas and short stories written by Debbie McGowan or J.S. Morley. The only exceptions are my box sets/multiple-volume books, which are 2.99 USD, and my free ebooks, which will remain free.

My reasons, in brief:

I’m fortunate that I don’t rely on income from my writing. My income is my university salary.I have wonderful friends who are accomplished editors and proofreaders and (I hope) are happy with the non-monetary exchange of favours, if that’s the word for it.I don’t care about money. Yes, I know that’s a privileged statement. My salary pays the bills, and we’re comfortable.While it was true five years ago that the price of an ebook was seen as a reliable measure of its value (i.e. how well it was written and edited), this is no longer the case, and deciding on what is a ‘worthy’ price tag for my books is nonsense to my socialist worldview.Many readers have to ration their book purchases. Equally invalid as the previous point’s argument is ‘you pay that for a cup of coffee’. The world changed in 2020 and remains a harsh terrain. The last thing I want is for the cost of an ebook to be the reason someone can’t enjoy a few moments’ respite from reality.Knowing that people are reading my books motivates me to write. Worrying about why they aren’t buying my books does not.

I haven’t made all of my books free, as I want people to read them (see last point above), and it’s too easy to download a free book, simply because it’s free, only to delete it later.

To reiterate: this is NOT a judgement of any other author’s pricing practices. There are many costs associated with publishing a book, and most authors make a pittance if they make anything at all. I will continue to buy ebooks and respect every person’s right to fair pay for their work. I would be very dis-chuffed to find out a reader has used my decision as a criticism of another author.

Lastly, I’m working through my back catalogue, converting my ebooks to ePub 3 format and taking the opportunity to fix bits and pieces. I’ve only updated three books so far (Beginnings, Hiding Behind The Couch and No Time Like The Present), but if you want to check whether you’re reading the most up-to-date version, check the copyright page, which will provide a date range ending in 2023 (e.g. Copyright © 2012–2023 Debbie McGowan).

Thanks for reading. :)

Find me on Books2Read:

books2read.com/DebbieMcGowanbooks2read.com/JSMorley

Why writers should never read books (or watch TV)

Nige - my other half – is a singer/songwriter. He'd likely tell you otherwise, but I heard his songs (and learnt all the lyrics – it's an affliction) before I even set eyes on him, so whatever else he claims he is, he is also a singer/songwriter. I mention this to qualify something he said to me not long after we became friends: there are only so many ways to combine the musical elements; inevitably, people will write melodies that have been written before.

Or something like that. I'm paraphrasing to fit the theme of this blog post, which will be short. I'm trying to get back into the habit of posting more often than once a year.

That point about songs came back to me a couple of weeks ago when I was watching artists on YouTube demonstrate how to draw faces, and one of them said something about all art being derivative, stolen from others. The key is to learn to 'steal like an artist'.

So I don't sidetrack, I'll just add a link to a TED talk by Austin Kleon, whose book entitled Steal Like an Artist is a bestseller. I haven't read much of it…or watched his TED talk yet. However, one of the points Kleon makes is that 'nothing is original', and if we keep trying to create something new, we will fail because it's not possible. Once you can embrace that, he says, you free yourself to create. Well, I've a way go yet, hence this blog post.

It helps that all creative people share these feelings. We bandy about the term 'imposter syndrome' as if we have no right to our creativity and are merely playing at it, faking it, which is nonsense, yet we believe it. Case in point: last week, an author friend of mine was horrified (might be too strong a word) when he discovered in a book he was reading a scene identical to the one he had written in his most recent novel. I assured him it happened to us all, our conversation ended, and I thought nothing more of it, until…

Until I, too, fell face first into the pit of self-doubt about the 'novelty' of my writing. By this point, I should probably bring slippers, I visit so often. Why on earth do we call them novels?

Here's what happened (short post, she said…):

Nige and I have a peculiar, semi-binge-style TV habit. We enjoy crime series but nothing too heavy, and once we latch onto a series, we watch every episode, one after the other, until it's exhausted. We're quite disiplined, though, and make it last by only watching one episode each night, alongside whichever other series currently take our fancy. At this point, we're up to date with NCIS and Father Brown, watching Season 3 of Death in Paradise and only a few episodes from the end of NCIS New Orleans. Before those, we watched Bones, Lie To Me, Suits, Psych…and so many other series in the same way. Then it's over, and we're sad, but eventually, we move on, find new things to watch.

In the search for those new things to watch, I discovered Professor T, starring Ben Miller, and I knew right away it would be our kind of series, but why does it have to be about a quirky crime-busting professor of forensic criminology*?

Sound familiar? It should. It's the stuff of many a TV series, book series, no doubt radio play too. See? Nothing is original. And that's OK. Or so I keep telling myself. Maybe one day I'll believe me.

*(Side note: 'Forensic criminology' is not a real academic discipline; I can only assume the production company truncated, having decided Forensic Psychology and Criminology was too long-winded.)

To conclude, here's the opening to a novel (or series – that was my intent) I started writing in September 2021, although it's only one chapter long at this point. The series/book (whichever it turns out to be…if it turns out to be anything) is called Mindbender, and it's [sigh] about a quirky crime-busting professor – of social psychology rather than 'forensic criminology', admittedly, but still. Go figure.

I didn’t hate Mondays in general, but that particular Monday, I was making an exception. Only eight thirty and already it was turning into a day the devil himself could have dished up. Out of coffee at home, I stopped off at a petrol station, filled the car’s tank…couldn’t fill my own from the out-of-order machine. To top it off, the only space I could find was in the farthest corner of the university’s town-sized car park and—by that point it came as no surprise—the lift had gone kaput again, so I climbed the three flights of stairs to the social science faculty office on vapours.

“Morning, Jenna,” I called in greeting to the woman at the desk adjacent to the wall of mostly empty pigeonholes. With a large picture window looking out over the campus greenery, the office was as pleasant a workspace as any, providing one didn’t mind the constant interruptions.

“Morning, Mac,” Jenna replied stoically—her usual style. To be fair, in my caffeine-deprived state, my attention wasn’t on her but on the large, book-shaped parcel stuffed in the dark, nameless, bottom-shelf cubby I had been allocated five years ago by the dean, despite her continued refusal to make my position permanent, since I’d been there long enough for the postal service to find me.

Books2Read links and flippin' eck, I'm writing!

Illustration by John HainEvery time I open a text message or email at the moment, it's from one of my utilities providers telling me my bill's about to increase. Meanwhile, my union has paused strike action hoping it will contribute to a more positive negotiation climate. Seriously, the common people are on their knees and STILL we're sucking up to government and big capital, not that those two are separate entities.

All is not well in the Western world. Yes, for all of the above, I realise I'm very fortunate. I enjoy a comfortable standard of living but nothing more than that, and my private rants about the unfairness of a system that piles guilt onto us – the barely comfortable – while the bunch of w*nkers at the top don't give a single sh*t on a platinum toilet…are much longer and swearier.

But I didn't come here to rant; it escaped and expanded while I was considering the intended topic of this post, which is a couple of recent changes that have impacted on how I go about my daily business.

The TL;DR version

I have set up Books2Read pages for my books, from where you can find links to buy/download them via the online store of your choosing. You can find me here:

books2read.com/DebbieMcGowanbooks2read.com/JSMorley (children's books)

What are these big changes?

First of all, Amazon retired their Smile programme, which allowed customers to nominate a charity that received donations each time the customer made a purchase. I had nominated Carla Lane Animals in Need Rescue in Liverpool, from where we adopted our two puppers. It's a fantastic shelter with a no-destruction policy and huge overheads. My tiny contribution via the Smile programme wasn't ground-breaking, but every penny counts for animal rescues.

The Border Collie Trust GB in the Midlands (whence came Moo, who is no longer with us) have reported that the end of the Smile programme means losing out on around £3,000 of donations per year for them. That's not small change.

From here on, I'll be using Give As You Live where possible, but shame on you (yet again), Amazon. Like you can't afford the admin costs…which can be offset against tax – ah, I see the problem now.

Moving on…

Secondly, Booklinker changed how their universal links work. Until last year (2022), you provided Booklinker with one of the Amazon purchase links for a book, and it created a universal link that ensured the customer clicking on it was directed to their 'local' Amazon. This was necessary because, for instance, a UK customer landing on the US page for a Kindle book will be greeted with a 'book currently unavailable' message.

Last year, Booklinker embarked on a partnership with Apple, so now the universal link opens a second page where the customer has to choose between Amazon and Apple and click again. That's only a minor inconvenience, but it's hard enough to get someone to click in the first place without adding further obstacles. What's more, now Booklinker and Apple are buddied up, Amazon affiliate links can no longer be associated with Booklinker accounts, so I've lost the small kickback I received by using Booklinker with my affiliate links, and I publish my books to Apple via Smashwords, so I can't even benefit from Apple's affiliate link.

Agh, those big corporate b*stards! [Shakes tiny prole fist.]

My solution: Books2Read

If you read all of that, thanks. You're too kind…or too bored. Either way, I appreciate you hanging around.

I'd been looking for a solution to the universal-links issue for a few months and for some inexplicable reason completely disregarded Books2Read the first time. Well, no, it is…explicable, as when I shared what I was doing on Facebook, my dear friend and fellow author Hans M Hirschi asked what the catch was, and as far as I can tell there is none, but I must have thought the same when I dismissed it as an option. Perhaps I assumed it was only open to Draft2Digital authors; perhaps it was because the internet is full of promises for 'free' stuff – a literal web of lies.

But then Kaje Harper, another good author friend of mine, who also trusts me to format her books, asked me to add a Books2Read link to one of her ebooks, and it reminded me that I still hadn't resolved my universal-link problem.

Well, now I have! Hurrah!

In short, Books2Read is a free universal linking service, and I can once again use my affiliate links to Amazon as well as to Google Play and Smashwords. I don't really care about the money (I'm still weighing up whether to substantially reduce the price of my ebooks), but if I can squeeze a penny or two out of those glomping giants of technology, then I will.

Here are those Books2Read links again:

books2read.com/DebbieMcGowanbooks2read.com/JSMorley (children's books)

And finally (writing stuff)…

If you've read this far then your boredom will soon give way to sleep…or you like what I write and thus might be delighted – even as delighted as I am – to know that I'm writing actual words of fiction again.

Here's a wee snippet from this morning's scribbles of what is, potentially, Elementary (Hiding Behind The Couch Season 8):

George checked his phone again and set to work, still mulling over [REDACTED BECAUSE SPOILERS] for a while but then caught a hint of a song in the vacuum cleaner’s tone as it shifted with the different surfaces. He whistled along, chuckling to himself at the memory of his mum yelling at him to cut out that bloody racket. He hadn’t realised he did it until Josh pointed it out, using almost the exact phrase George’s mum had, but there was nobody to yell at him today. The only protest he got was Jinja bolting out the cat flap and Blue shifting from the kitchen to the living room and back again once George was done in there.

She still finds plenty to moan about, George mused, carting the cordless vacuum cleaner upstairs. He’d been quite happy shoving around the heavy old Hoover she’d bought off Jono for a tenner, which puffed out more dust than it picked up, and before that the rusty carpet sweeper with squeaky wheels that sounded like Farmer Jake’s guinea pig enclosure at feeding time. Then he’d moved in with Captain Gadget and his fancy cyclone-action cleaner, soon after replaced by a cordless version identical to the one in George’s hand. There’d been nothing wrong with it, but “Mam, do you want our old hoover?” was safer than “Mam, we bought you a new hoover.” She’d accepted with a reluctant, “Ta, lad,” and complained about it ever since.

Dead To Me - A (very) Short Story

I hear the front door close, the clang of your keys as you drop them into your pocket. My peaceful afternoon is about to end, just as soon as you’ve taken off your shoes, checked the mail, poked your head into the sitting room, slammed the kettle with your dismay and laid your disbelief upon the naked kitchen table. I can almost hear you tally your point score as you climb the stairs to my studio—THE attic, as you call it—and I should brace for your arrival, but I don’t give a damn.

That creaky top stair denies you your stealthy approach, yet I act as if you will still catch me unawares. The square of blue above my head holds my attention, patchy and ragged as if the skylight were a giant phone and the sky a wash painted by a clumsy finger.

“I bet you do that all day.”

I fake a start, as usual, and spin my chair so my back is fully to you. If you could manage as much as a civil ‘hi’, I’d respond in kind. But the kindness has all gone. We are embittered, estranged echoes of our past.

“Actually,” I say but find I no longer feel any requirement to justify my actions to you. No, I don’t sit staring at the sky all day. Not even five minutes of it. You have no idea that those few seconds I do spend, just before you come home, keep you alive.

You’re in my every story. I’ve plotted a thousand conclusions to us. Once upon a time, we held hands and danced through fields of buttercups. Twice upon a time, we overcame adversity, married, had kids. Nine hundred and ninety-seven times…I killed you. Poison, falling pianos, out-of-control articulated lorries, serial killers, cases of mistaken identity, guns fired or misfired, terrible diseases, some as yet unknown to medical science…

I’ve covered my tracks or I’ve served my time, or it wasn’t my fault. Sometimes I’ve grieved; sometimes I’ve tried to save you. Inevitably, I failed.

Still, you stand there waiting for an answer of some kind.

“Coffee?” I suggest, rising from my chair and passing you by.

“Sure,” you agree, adding, as I precede you down the stairs, “You know, I could push you, and everyone would think you’d fallen.”

“Original.” I pause at the bottom, let you precede me down the next flight.

“Or you could push me,” you say.

I smile at your back. Not today, my sweet. Today, your demise resides in a deliciously undetectable dash of arsenic in the coffee I will make for you because I’m only an author and you’ve been out at work all day.

Fear not. I have no intention of killing you off-page. Why would I kill my muse when your many deaths have paid for my studio, the skylight, this house and every stick of furniture it contains? An unwitting and, in all senses of the word, ignorant messiah, you must die so we might live until The End.

Story ©2023 Debbie McGowan
Image by Free Fun Art from Pixabay

Reverberations - HBTC novel - is now available

Phew! [wipes brow] I've finally done it! My new novel is out in the wild (admittedly, it's still sitting on Amazon's doorstep waiting to be let in).

Reverberations is a stand-alone-ish novel in the Hiding Behind The Couch series – purchase links will appear on Beaten Track as soon as they're live. The ebook is already live on the Beaten Track store.

Mysterious happenings are mounting up for Josh, Sean and their estranged alumni.

Josh Sandison-Morley was born a sceptic. Why else would he insist there’s no such thing as ghosts when he’s eliminated every plausible explanation for the noises in his former therapy rooms?

Sean Tierney’s having some ‘performance issues’. His GP says there’s no physical reason: his blood pressure is under control, and he’s stayed off the booze, ergo it’s all in his head. In the circumstances, being a palliative clinical psychologist isn’t proving (self-)helpful.

Despite two decades of friendship and their grand plans to open a private psychotherapy centre, neither man confides in the other. That is, until news reaches them both, via different avenues, that their experiences are but part of a bizarre cluster of unexplained phenomena, for which there is only one common denominator.

Whether real or the product of overwrought imaginations, Josh, Sean and their alumni must lay to rest the spectre of a once-beloved friend…or admit defeat and crawl back under the safe, weighty stones of the jobs and relationships they’ve left behind.

https://www.beatentrackpublishing.com/reverberations

Josh vs The Loft: an update (in other words, I've finished writing Alumni - Reverberations)

Alumni – Reverberations is finished! Now I wonder what all the fuss was about. :D

To explain further/recap, here’s the Author’s Note I’ve added to the start of the book:

As a way of making light of how long it’s taken me to finish this novel, I’ve spent the past five(!) years saying, “Josh has been stuck in the loft for [x] years now.” That was where I left him at the end of Reunions , published in April 2017—dangling from the loft hatch in his former ‘surgery’, a space he previously rented but now owns.
It might, therefore, be somewhat confusing to find that Josh is not stuck in the loft at the beginning of this book. This isn’t because he cunningly escaped while the author was under siege from burnout. Rather, the five-chapter epilogue of Reunions and the first seven chapters of Reverberations overlap. This was always my intention—to add in the ‘how did we get here?’ background to events at the end of Reunions —but it should, I hope, also serve as something of a Previously…in Hiding Behind The Couch.

Either way, all you need to know is that at the start of this story, Josh isn’t stuck in the loft…yet.

Reverberations ended up being a bit longer (149k) than I’d aimed for (80k). Partly, it’s because I switched from writing the next ‘season’ (#8, which would have been titled Alumni) to writing a follow-up to Ruminations, and I’m still undecided which of those it is (hence Alumni – Reverberations).

Ruminations followed Josh and Sean to university at the start of their academic journey. Reverberations, set twenty-plus years later, likewise focuses on Josh and Sean, along with one of their alumni, Genie. The story is told from the points of view of those three characters with brief appearances from ‘The Circle’ – the central cast of Hiding Behind The Couch – and other alumni caught up in some ghostly goings-on…

SNIPPET:

Genie was still smiling as she exited her room, ready to give her best efforts to seeing Xander’s ghosts, but the smile quickly turned to horror as she reached the top of the stairs. All four portraits had tipped sideways; the one immediately to her left—her great-great-great-grandmother’s—continued to sway until, before her eyes, it lifted free of its hook and slid down the wall. The frame broke apart on impact with the step, one half staying where it fell, the other still attached to the painting, which bounced, end over end, all the way to the bottom of the stairs. A further noise had Genie grabbing for the banister: the familiar tinkle of a small bunch of keys dropped onto the bureau.

“Hey, Mum. I’m home. Where are you?”

Nige is almost done with his alpha-read, after which comes beta-reading, editing, proofreading…and it still needs a cover. On that score, AI (DreamStudio) came up with some interesting ideas for the prompt ‘A dream of a haunted attic, dark objects, Ouija, abstract, scales of justice, therapy’.

I WILL release Alumni – Reverberations before the end of 2022.

BLURB:

Mysterious happenings are mounting up for Josh, Sean and their estranged alumni.

Josh Sandison-Morley was born a sceptic. Why else would he insist there’s no such thing as ghosts when he’s eliminated every plausible explanation for the noises in his former therapy rooms?

Sean Tierney’s having some ‘performance issues’. His GP says there’s no physical reason: his blood pressure is under control, and he’s stayed off the booze, ergo it’s all in his head. In the circumstances, being a palliative clinical psychologist isn’t proving (self-)helpful.

Despite two decades of friendship and their grand plans to open a private psychotherapy centre, neither man confides in the other. That is, until news reaches them both, via different avenues, that their experiences are but part of a bizarre cluster of unexplained phenomena, for which there is only one common denominator.

Whether real or the product of overwrought imaginations, Josh, Sean and their alumni must lay to rest the spectre of a once-beloved friend…or admit defeat and crawl back under the safe, weighty stones of the jobs and relationships they’ve left behind.

New Website

Three blog posts in one day…

There is a method to my seemingly sudden enthusiasm for posting, and it’s a one-off.

Along with starting and never finishing stories, over the past few years I’ve been trying to come up with a streamlined, stripped-down layout for my website, the former incarnations of which had lots of pages and lots of content, but mostly it was duplicating what was available elsewhere.

For instance, I had a page for the Hiding Behind The Couch series, but I also have hidingbehindthecouch.com, so that was pointless. All my books are listed – along with blurbs and purchase links – on Beaten Track, and then there are the pages and posts on this blog, and I thought…

Work smarter, Deb.

Which is why I’m posting about my forever-ongoing works in progress today. Twice.

I mean, I have published other stuff in the time that Scene But Not Herd and Alumni – Reverberations have been gathering virtual dust.

See? Not as bad a writing drought as I thought! And I have a lot of titles out there (Meredith’s Dagger was my 50th book, published on my 50th birthday), which is why I wanted a website that was a starting point – a pin in a map – from which all things Deb online could be found.

Simple, uncluttered, easy to maintain.

Unlike this blog post, so I’ll cut to the chase:

You can see my new website at https://www.debbiemcgowan.co.uk

Work in Progress: Scene But Not Herd

Scene But Not Herd  is book 2 of Front of House, a Hiding Behind The Couch The Next Generation if you will.

Scene But Not Herd follows on from Goth of Christmas Past (Front of House #1).

Draft blurb for Scene But Not Herd:

Amy is so done with people trying to organise her life. By people, she means her bossy older sister Fi, who insists she’s protecting Amy’s proprietary rights to her software, but that doesn’t make it any less annoying.

Meanwhile, Hadyn’s fallen into a black hole. Literally. Managing the studio is taking up all of his time, his hopes for pursuing a relationship with Amy are teetering on the event horizon, and his new songs suck.

Krissi and Jay’s prodigies aren’t the only ones who are fed up. Krissi’s ‘opportunity of a lifetime’ is driving her nuts, Jay’s stagnating behind a desk, and virtual ice cream and swings just doesn’t cut it.

Then there’s the not-small matter of what do about Stu…

Work in Progess: Alumni - Reverberations

Poor Josh has been stuck in the loft for five years.

That's how long I’ve been working on Alumni – Reverberations. It’s part of the Hiding Behind The Couch series and started life as Alumni (Season 8). That was in 2017, after I published Reunions (Season 7 – which ended with Josh bravely climbing that ladder), but for various reasons, I had to set Alumni aside.

Even now, I can’t honestly say the end is in sight, but it’s a lot closer than it was, which is good news for Josh.

OK, minor spoiler: he does eventually find a way down from the loft. I know because I wrote that part about three years ago. The trouble was, the further I progressed with this instalment, the harder it became…until I realised I wasn’t writing Season 8. I was writing a renaissance of Ruminations. At last, it all made sense.

So here we are, five years later, and Alumni – Reverberations is still a work in progress. I haven’t decided on the final cover other than it being Ouija-board inspired. However, I do, astonishingly, have a draft blurb! Note: if you’ve read Ruminations but nothing else from the series (or you’re reading the series and haven’t got as far as In The Stars – Seasons 4 and 5), there is something of a spoiler in this blurb, so you might want to look away now.

Mysterious happenings are mounting up for Josh, Sean and their estranged alumni.

Josh Sandison-Morley was born a sceptic. Why else would he insist there’s no such thing as ghosts when he’s eliminated every probable and possible explanation for the noises in his former therapy rooms?

Sean Tierney’s having some ‘performance issues’. His GP says there’s no physical reason: his blood pressure is under control, and he’s stayed off the booze, ergo it’s all in his head. In the circumstances, being a palliative clinical psychologist isn’t proving (self-)helpful.

Despite two decades of friendship and their grand plans to open a private psychotherapy centre, neither man confides in the other. That is, until news reaches them both, via different avenues, that their experiences are but part of a bizarre cluster of unexplained phenomena, for which there is only one common denominator: Jess Lambert.

Whether real or the product of overwrought imaginations, Josh, Sean and their alumni must lay to rest the spectre of their once-belovèd friend…or admit defeat and crawl back under the safe, weighty stones of the jobs and relationships they’ve left behind.

My goal is to publish Alumni – Reverberations in 2022. Seems doable.

I’ll keep you posted. :)

Deb
aka Mother Goose
(My younger daughter changed my name on the title page waaaay back and then sent me a frantic message some weeks later, worried I’d published the book with the wrong author name – the name she and her sister have given me (see also: Goose Face). It’s still in the document… :D)