Life is Better at the Beach…

No, this is not the title of a new book, although I may use it in the future if I self-publish again as I certainly agree with the sentiment. It is actually one of the wooden signs decorating the restaurant at the Ocean Point resort in Antigua from where my husband, Chris and I have recently returned after booking a last-minute holiday… more on that later, and not one but two prizes in this month’s competition as an apology for being two weeks late in posting this blog.

Firstly though, I wanted to share this photo taken with my brother and my 96-year-old mum, Josephine on Mother’s Day last month. Chris and I drove up to Nottingham, where my Mum lives, in the morning and met my brother, Richard and his wife, Remy there before she went to spend time with her son and his family and the four of us settled down to lunch and lots of chatter. We all feel so blessed to still have our mum, I include my sister in this who lives too far away to have been present on the day, and for her to be in such good health both mentally and physically, and I’m not even going to add the caveat ‘for her age’. She is sharp as a pin, with a wonderful sense of humour and has terrific posture which is probably due to years of teaching dancing.

We didn’t stay too long at Mum’s as she likes to have an afternoon nap, besides which we had to get home for the roast dinner my son, Dan was cooking for his mum and his sister’s family. He makes his own Yorkshire Puddings whereas I ‘cheat’ with Aunt Sally’s!!! All in all, a day filled with love and appreciation, and gratitude that we are so close as a family. 

These two vases of flowers were made up from the glorious bouquet my two bought for me.

The second arrangement only stayed looking that way for a short while until Wilfie the cat bit the heads off the tulips – he seems to have a thing for tulips!

Later that week I had a 360 health check at Nuffield Health. It’s the first one I’ve had since before the start of the pandemic, and I know the importance of them because my chronic myeloid leukaemia was discovered during the one I had in 2012. Yesterday was actually the 11^th anniversary of my first visit to UCLH following the blood test result that had rung alarm bells. I had no idea what to expect and I certainly hadn’t imagined I would be having a bone marrow biopsy that day (very unpleasant) to confirm the suspected diagnosis – the confirmation was made ten days later and we still try to get together as a family on April 26^th  to celebrate me surviving another year. It hardly seems possible that something so potentially life-threatening could have flagged up in a routine health check. 

Thankfully, there is nothing of immediate concern following my latest check, although the list of recent health issues (the ankle op, eye surgeries and pituitary gland macro-adenoma to name but a few) makes me sound very unhealthy unless you know me! 

A few days later, Chris and I were on a plane to Antigua, a holiday which we booked six days before we travelled. I mentioned on my last blog that I’ve been experiencing writer’s block, too much going on in my private life at the moment, so the hope was that Antigua would unlock the key and also help with research for a book I first started writing five years ago but put to one side when I signed with Bookouture for my DCI Rachel Hart series. The good news is… it worked!

From the moment we arrived at Ocean Point, I knew we had made the correct decision. It’s graded as a 3 star resort by Virgin Holidays who we travelled with but for the life of me I don’t understand why. Our room was newly refurbished in fresh light colours and extended out onto a generously sized balcony with two sun-loungers and views over the swimming pool to the ocean beyond. The bathroom was a bit ‘rustic’ but it’s not as though we spent a lot of time in there, so it wasn’t an issue for us.

My three favourite things in order of importance were:

1.  Willing and helpful staff – nothing was too much trouble, and all done with a smile.
2. A very big saltwater pool (it took me 40 strokes of breaststroke to get from one end to the other).
3. Waiter/waitress service in the restaurant for all meals and in fact, the restaurant itself with its ‘beachy’ décor.

I made plenty of use of the signs in the restaurant to get some lovely shots of my books – perfect timing for The Woman on the Beach as she is currently a Kindle Monthly Deal for April so priced at just 99p to download on Amazon. Funnily enough, I noticed she had 2023 ratings/reviews yesterday matching the year we are in – little things do amuse me.

I even asked two of our waitresses to pose with my books which they happily did. Weirdly, one of them was wearing red and blue hairclips in her hair, not only the colours to match the book cover, but also Crystal Palace’s colours, the team I support. Palace had not won a single game in 2023 and had just sacked their manager, Patrick Vieira in favour of reappointing Roy Hodgson. That day they beat Leicester City, and I told the waitress that she had to wear the hair clips every match day for the rest of the season. I don’t know if she has, but Palace have won both their subsequent games… long may it continue!

That’s not the only weird thing that happened while we were in Antigua. I’d picked up a couple of paperbacks at the airport to read while away despite have a Kindle loaded with books I’ve yet to read. One of them was called Apples Never Fall by Liane Moriarty, an author I haven’t previously read although her name did sound vaguely familiar. I really enjoyed the book, and it was only afterwards that I realised why I knew the name. In the long description of The Woman on the Beach on Amazon, after the blurb about the plot, my publisher’s have written; Fans of Amanda Prowse, Liane Moriarty and Susan Lewis will absolutely love The Woman on the Beach… quite something to live up to!

But this is even weirder. Several days into our holiday I’d popped to the loo in the reception area of the hotel, the entrance to which was located behind a bookcase filled with books people had read and left for other holidaymakers to enjoy. I was glancing through the authors, John Grisham, Jojo Moyes, Danielle Steel and let out a gasp. There on the shelf of Ocean Point resort was not one of my ten novels, but my memoir One Hundred Lengths of the Pool, the book that started my journey as a novelist! You could have knocked me over with a feather.

There were a couple of other things too including discovering that Sarah, one of the people I’d had lovely long chats with shares the same birthday as me and chatting to an elderly lady the day we visited Halcyon Cove who had first stayed in the Rex resort that used to be there in 1975, the year I first visited that very beach while I was on the cruise ships.

These odd coincidences feel as though we made the right decision to go especially as my writer’s block is now well and truly unblocked – I spent the final four days of our holiday manically scribbling down ideas and plotting not one but three books in two notebooks – watch this space as my creativity juices are flowing.

We also got chatting to another young couple who were on their honeymoon, Tom and Fiona. Chris had mentioned to her that I was an author and promised her the copy of The Woman on the Beach that we had been photographing which she subsequently went on to read. 

The Dilemma went to Sarah (same birthday as me) after we’d finished trying to recreate the cover – not a bad attempt… well, the hair is similar.

I didn’t mention my books to any of the other guests we chatted with so imagine how chuffed I was when Malina posted this picture of herself on Instagram having seen a story I posted and Ocean Point reposted. I’ve always found it quite incredible that once your book is on the worldwide web it can be downloaded anywhere in the world but actually ordering a paperback copy in New York city is a whole other level – I just hope she enjoys it.

I’ve rambled on quite enough for one month, particularly as I have my new projects to be getting on with but, as promised there is a competition and there will be two prize winners this month. As my book Alice in Theatreland was published in April 2017 and we’re just after Easter, the two winners will get a signed copy of ‘Alice’ and some yummy chocolate eggs. The question should relate to Antigua I think, so:

In which sea is the island of Antigua located?

1. The Pacific
2. The Indian Ocean
3. The Caribbean

Leave your answer in a comment below before midnight on April 30^th – sorry, UK only please – and we’ll notify the randomly selected winners on May 1^st.

Just before I finish, one final photo. I didn’t have a paperback copy of my first novel, Life’s a Beach and Then with me, but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity of a photo with the sign, so we improvised. I’m not sure I’d be able to read a book on my phone with my eyesight, but I know lots of you do.

Until next time

Much love

Julia xx