The Wait is Over!

It’s been twenty long months since I was last able to announce a new book title and cover reveal but finally the wait is over. This is the cover of My Daughter’s Lies, publishing on May 23^rd but available to pre-order now and I really hope you like it. I popped it on Facebook and Twitter/X when it was unveiled (the day before we flew out to Spain on a family holiday – more on that later) and received some lovely feedback particularly about the colours used on the cover.

My Daughter’s Lies is Melissa’s story predominantly revolving around the differences in the relationship she has with her daughter, Ruby and the one she has with her mum, Linda. Ruby is a much longed for only child and the story starts on the evening of her eighteenth birthday party. Melissa has Ruby on a bit of a pedestal so is shocked to discover a handwritten note slipped between the pages of the speech she is about to deliver saying,

                                     SHE’S NOT WHO YOU THINK SHE IS 

Melissa initially assumes the note is about her daughter, but what if it’s not? Could it instead be about her best friend of forty-seven years, Sadie or even about herself, as the speech was supposed to have been given by her husband, Steve?

I’m hoping to give you a short excerpt in my next blog but to whet your appetite more you can read the full description on Amazon… and maybe pre-order while you are there. It will also be available as a paperback and audiobook, more details on that next time. I can hardly believe it’s only a little over six weeks to publication day – exciting!!!

To be honest, March has been pretty full-on. It started with the flying visit to Cornwall which I wrote about in my previous blog and gathered pace as the month went on.

I was working on the copy edit for My Daughter’s Lies but also spending time finishing this crocheted Easter bunny for my granddaughter in preference to buying her chocolate. I feel a bit guilty for making a bespoke version in my football team’s colours particularly as Crystal Palace are not having the best of seasons. We have some key players out injured but should hopefully survive another season in the Premier League. I suggested Crystal or Alice as the rabbit’s name but I’m not sure what was decided on.

The weekend after we got back from Cornwall was Mother’s Day. My day was organised by our children. We were invited to breakfast/brunch at my son, Dan’s where I have to say the tomatoes roasted in balsamic vinegar were absolutely delicious. I was gifted a beautiful basket of plants in shades of pink.

We went home, I snuck in a quick Pilates session in my home gym and then we headed to our daughter, Sophie’s for a roast dinner, along with her partner, Reece’s mum, Lisa. We were both lucky recipients of a gorgeous bouquet of flowers, but I must say the words inside Sophie’s card were my highlight. I was so touched by them that I felt I simply had to share…

Not gonna lie, I might have shed a tear or two even in company!

We weren’t able to get to Nottingham to see my mum, but we’d already arranged to go the following Sunday to tie in with a charity function I was attending in Leicester, organised by British Polio. It’s an annual event of indoor games such as scrabble and seated darts and I was pleased to be asked to attend the gala dinner and hand out prizes to all the winners. 

Once again it reminded me how fortunate I am that my paralytic polio has not affected me as severely as it could have. I have nothing but admiration for the courage and determination shown by my fellow survivors in the face of such a daily struggle to do things that most of us take for granted. Sadly, polio is not yet consigned to the history books, so it is still so important to stay vigilant and have the vaccine.

Speaking of vaccinations, I’m sure many of you will have seen the TV advertisements regarding the shingles vaccine. I’m not the biggest advocate of vaccines generally however, my mum developed shingles several years ago, so I have born witness to the pain it causes her. Although I fall into the category between 65 at your next birthday and over 70, and would not normally be considered eligible, I was offered the vaccine because of my compromised immune system as a result of my Chronic Myeloid Leukaemia. The jab itself hurt a lot more than I was expecting (the Covid 19 ones were barely a scratch by comparison) but it was the reaction afterwards that was way more severe than I thought it would be.

This was my arm after twenty-four hours and it stayed that way for the best part of a week! I can honestly say I’m not relishing the idea of the second dose which you have eight weeks after the first, but I guess it is still preferable to what my mum suffers periodically.

So, following the British Polio event on the Saturday evening, we drove over to my mum’s on Sunday morning for a light lunch. We did a kind of indoor picnic of sandwiches and crisps, and Chris bought some little cakes as a treat. They were Mr Kipling mini Battenburg cakes which we haven’t had for years, and he had no idea that Battenburg has long been a favourite of Mum’s as she adores marzipan.

She also loved her gift, this solar powered mosaic lantern. I actually bought two from QVC after showing them on air a couple of months ago because I thought they were so pretty, so I’m glad Mum was also enamoured.

I managed to finish the copy edit of My Daughter’s Lies on time and then the next stage, the proofread edit landed on my computer at around the same time as we touched down in Alicante for the hour and twenty minute drive to Javea.

I booked the villa back in January because it looked perfect for our party of eleven, by far the biggest family holiday we’ve done. Sometimes, photos are misleading, and the house is a huge disappointment, but this villa was exactly as promised, in fact possibly exceeding our expectations. I knew it was the right choice as soon as I saw the colourful glass dachshund, a similar breed to our son’s dog!

The views of the Montgo mountain (locally referred to as El Elefante) were amazing and you might just be able to make out a faint rainbow? 

We certainly didn’t have wall to wall sunshine but that didn’t stop us making full use of the swimming pool – thank goodness it was heated! I got plenty of lengths swum along with playing games with the kids and teaching them to dive, even though I can’t do better than a belly flop myself!

Because the weather was a bit iffy, we did a few things that we might not have done in the height of summer as it would have been too hot. We’ve been visiting the Javea area for twenty years but had never climbed up to the castle in the neighbouring town of Denia. It rained for most of the drive over the elephant’s trunk but stopped as we were parking the cars and stayed dry and sunny as we explored . 

The view from the top overlooking the modern-day harbour was pretty impressive as was the castle itself, although all the information boards about the various parts of the castle and its history were in Spanish. 

It was a good job we had my daughter’s stepdaughter, Amber with us as she’s studied Spanish, and I have a bit from when we had a house there and also from my stint in a theatre show in Barcelona in 1976.

We visited our favourite restaurants and enjoyed ‘pasta a la Julia’ a couple of times at the villa too along with a couple of BBQs courtesy of Reece. I was also responsible for preparing the eleven bowls of fresh fruit on the mornings that we were all there together… phew!

I hope the others really did enjoy it as much as they said they did – I laughed more in that ten-day holiday than I have in the past two years I think. And yet despite all the fun, I managed to finish my proofread edit a day early and I read The Last Resort by Heidi Perks. Good result all round I’d say.

There is no competition this month, but congratulations to both Carol and Lisa who were the winners of the Easter chocolate goodies and the signed copies of My Mother’s Secret on last month’s blog – I hope you’ve enjoyed both. I’ll do a double competition again next month.

Before I finish, another ‘cover’ reared its head in March. Someone tweet/X’d  the TV Times magazine cover from… wait for it, 1984! That was the year the American gameshow, The Price is Right hit our UK screens, and yes, that is me alongside Leslie Crowther! Where does the time go?

Thanks for reading,

Love

Julia xx