Simply the Best!

“You know every time I hear this song from Tina Turner, I cringe, not because it's weird or anything like that, but it reminds me of our old neighbour’s birthday. Not that I was there, lordy, lordy, no! But my Mama was and believe you me you would cringe if you knew what she got up to, but let’s not go there for now. It’s not good for my street cred! Erasing that scene from my brain, I’ve been thinking more about the words and have decided that this song is my Mama and sums her up perfectly.

“You can easily recognise her, or maybe I should say, you would hear her long before you spotted her. Not that she shouts or anything, she just giggles… a lot!

“When it comes to clothes, these days she has lots, but in the past her wardrobe would have fitted into a draw, which it did. But no amount of coat hangers she now has can change what she loves and that is anything that glitters; the more bling the better. I’m sure if she could wear one of those twiddling dance room balls, she would.  Before our World turned upside down, and believe you me it catapulted us out of the universe, Mama bought a dress from a charity shop. It was almost given to her because no one would buy it. The lady who worked in the shop said it was hideous, but my Mama thought it was the best thing she’d seen in years. I almost freaked out when she cavorted into the lounge, flinging her arms in the air, and crying out, “Da daaaaa…” Stunned, I stared. The dress was short and covered in purple sequins. I was speechless! The next day she wore it to a meeting at a posh bank we had to attend after everything had kicked off… (Sorry, I’ve been told not say any more about this, though I’m allowed to say, it’s all in The Birthday Card).

As well as giggling, my Mama smokes way too much, believe you me I wonder how my lungs still work with all the fog that fills our lives. I swear she’s kept Mr Greedy, (the corner shop) in tobacco business over the years.

During my Mama’s short life, she’s in her mid-thirties, a lot has happened, some ordinary stuff and some blow your mind stuff, but whilst she is a crazy, giggling scary Mama, she is my Mama and I love her to the moon and back, but don’t tell her as she’ll go all weird and want to cuddle and kiss me…. Gross! I’m seventeen for goodness sake!

She sang this song, using an empty beer bottle for a microphone after leaping onto the neighbour’s coffee table and belting it out at Jack’s birthday party. Thankfully I wasn’t there. So this is for you Mama because to me you are simply the best.

Simply the Best by Tina Turner

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1ZzNKVJs0M

You can read all about, Doreen Wilkinson and her daughter, Trisha, in

The Birthday Card and Sometimes It Happens…

Available from all Amazon sites…

Amazon co uk

Amazon com

*Warning* You might find yourself laughing out loud or worse giggling far too often.

Chill Award Newsletter

The latest news and Awards are in November's Newsletter from Chill Awards

Click HERE to catch up on which Independent Author received an Award in October

Based on a True Story - Magnolia House

Magnolia House is my debut novel and when published back in 2009, I never dreamed I would go on to write six more novels, and, learn so much.

Whilst Magnolia House is fiction, the concept is based on a true story. The real story was heart breaking and ended very different to Magnolia House. Some events never leave you and sometimes you have to share them.

When tragedy strikes the Leonard family instead of standing together as a united family they are instead bitterly divided. Jane Leonard’s gift, of less than a year earlier, of fifty percent of her house to her only son is now the cause of her imminent homelessness. The home she had not only lived in for five decades, but had conceived and brought her two children into the world and watched them grow, is now the centre of a hostile sale. Magnolia House must now be sold and the proceeds divided.

“Magnolia House is a beautiful story about families and how one tragedy can set in motion events that will change the lives of those involved in the selling and buying of Jane Leonard’s home. At times the reader will find humour and other times great emotion, but this book will leave the reader reaffirming their beliefs in kindness, friendship, family and hope.”

Magnolia House is available in paperback and Kindle from ALL Amazon sites and can be ordered from all High Street book shops.

You can see what readers have said…HERE

Doreen Wilkinson is in Love!

The lovely Doreen Wilkinson is in love! You can find out what has her heart beating a tattoo over on her Blog. Click here.

In The Cold Light of Day

Published in Kindle and paperback

Bertie Costain has worked hard all his life in the building trade and now owns his own London-based company. In 1967, approaching fifty and still unmarried he enjoys a playboy lifestyle, but when he meets Kitty, an attractive, wealthy widow ten years his senior, he swiftly proposes.

Swept off her feet, Kitty adores him. The happy couple seem to have it all, but Bertie has a secret. Kitty has no idea their home is mortgaged to the hilt, or that the many expensive gifts he brings her come out of his winnings at roulette.  Proud of his apparent success and ignorant of his gambling addiction, she happily loans him large sums of money, ostensibly for his business.

Convinced with each spin of the wheel that his run of bad luck will change, Bertie gambles for increasingly high stakes, falling deeper and deeper into debt until, facing financial ruin and with nowhere to turn, he resorts to fraud. As their lives begin to unravel, Kitty learns the horrifying truth.

In the cold light of day can their love survive the pain and destruction Bertie’s addiction has wrought?

Available in Kindle and paperback from ALL Amazon stores including

Makes us want to Dream...

These wonderful words were on Facebook about The Birthday Card. I’m smiling and crying… such an emotional person these days. Thank you lovely reader for this.

5 out of 5 stars

Makes us want to dream...

"If there's one thing I like more than Barclay's writing, it's her characters. They are ALWAYS believable. She knows them like the back of her hand and three pages into THE BIRTHDAY CARD, you'll know them as well as she does. Doreen and her daughter will have you trapped in the story of their difficult but delightful lifestyle in class-conscious Britain for the duration. And when that lifestyle turns upside down...well, no spoilers here. And when yo...

The Birthday Card is available in Kindle from ALL Amazon sites

From Canada: Eileen Schuh

I am running a season of talking to, Award Winning, authors from different parts of the world. My lovely guests will talk about their country, their books and a little about themselves too. Today, I have an author and, someone I am proud to call a friend, who I have known for several years. Please welcome, Eileen Schuh from Canada.

I’m so excited to have been invited to sit beside Pauline’s pool. Not only because that means I get to talk about my books, and my country...and myself...but because we Canadians are on the cusp of winter. Therefore, lounging in the sun beside a pool is an opportunity I cannot decline.

Pauline told me she’s honouring Canadian writers on her blog this September and I thank her. There are a lot of us writers here in the Great White North and many of us have an affinity with British writers (and other things British like princesses, tea and the ‘u’ in colour and neighbour).

Canada is known for its successful celebration of diversity. We welcome ideas, foods and yes, even, words from cultures around the world. Plus we have some of our own words, like toque and kayak and sic.

An artist tends to see the world, well maybe not ‘differently’ but certainly more intensely than most. I notice this when I compare my vacation photos to others in my travel group. My companions will have grand mountain scenes with a group of us smiling tourists in the foreground and I’ll have a ten photos of a dew drop on a wild lupine.

This artistic perspective has served me well in my novel-writing. Most of my stories take place in Canada, in my particular province—Alberta. Whereas my friends and relations might not initially find their homeland an exciting locale to read about, when I put strong, poetic words to the everyday sights, sounds and smells of their world, they suddenly find beauty in what they’ve always taken for granted.

They can feel at home when “Katrina looked past the parking lot to the brilliant autumn colours. This used to be her favourite time of the year with the fire of the foliage under the mellow glow of a sun riding low on the horizon, the honking of geese flying white against the azure sky.” [THETRAZ].

Additionally, for those unfamiliar with my prairie home my use of powerful words can portray my everyday world as an exotic location. “Katrina drank in the astounding beauty of the Alberta September. Across the river, gold leaves glittered behind the red berry bushes lining the bank. Interspersed in the dazzle of fall colours were the spruce trees, stretching their deep green toward the rich, late-afternoon sun. The air was thick with the pungent scent of autumn. Fallen leaves, some mottled and some striped, crunched beneath her feet.” [FATAL ERROR]

Although my ongoing BackTracker Series [THE TRAZ, FATAL ERROR, FIREWALLS and OPERATION BACKTRACKER] is set in Canada, to expand my horizons I include a healthy dose of my southern American neighbour in my SciFi flicks, DISPASSIONATE LIES and SCHRÖDINGER'S CAT (this helps appease my American publisher, too!)

In SHADOW RIDERS, a crime novel running parallel to my BackTracker series, a good portion of the story happens in South Korea, a country I visited and found immensely and intensely vibrant.

I’m going to have to towel off now, don my parka and toque and go back to Alberta’s prairies and boreal forests and write about this amazing sapphire pool of Pauline’s, lapping at my toes as I laze thinly and youthfully, bronzing my alabaster skin beneath the warm rays of a tropical sun...

Or something like that.

One more thing before I go, Congratulations to Pauline on her new release, THE BIRTHDAY CARD. A great summer read...or autumn read. Even a winter read if the snow happens to come early this year.

The BackTracker Series


Connect with me online:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EileenSchuhAuthor/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/eileenschuh
Web site: http://www.eileenschuh.com
Blog: http://eileenschuh.blogspot.com

A Haunting Story, White Stones by Kit Domino

I am delighted to have back around my pool, the lovely Kit Domino, whose latest book was inspired by a visit to mansion back in the seventies. It appears this was no ordinary mansion!

Thanks for inviting me back, Pauline, I always feel at home around your pool. In response to your question as to what inspired me to write my latest novel, White Stones, the story goes way back many years.

I’ve always had a fascination with the supernatural, not that I believe in ghosts as such as I believe all paranormal activity has a rational answer. Most can be easily explained; for the remainder, it’s more a case that the right explanation hasn’t been found yet. But, like many of us, I can’t resist a good, old-fashioned ghost story – it’s just when I hear them, I’m always searching for reasons using science and logic.

In the early 1970s, I lived in a large Georgian mansion perched high on the Cotswolds. It was an isolated, wind-swept location with magnificent views. The house wasn’t spooky but there was a certain “atmosphere” about the place, especially when there alone, which was rare. We had two pianos: a full-size grand in the dining room, and an upright in the children’s dayroom; neither of which I could play, I didn’t know how to.

Conversations often revolved around a particular houseguest some years before who had frequently complained of being disturbed during the night by someone playing the piano, not that anyone else heard it. This occurred so often, after a while the guest refused to stay in the house. During my time there, I never heard anyone play either piano, day or night! The story intrigued me, and we often discussed what the cause might have been, no explanation ever being found.

I had forgotten the story until some 20 years ago when I heard a piece of classical music I hadn’t heard before; a beautiful tune I couldn’t get out of my head, but I had no idea what it was called or who the composer was. This was back in the days before the internet so finding out was exceedingly difficult. During my search, the seeds to a novel were sown, my mind being cast back to the story about the piano-hearing houseguest. It was a simple step to merge both, and thus White Stones grew into the story of a perceived haunting, mysterious music and a frantic search to find the source and the composer, and along the way create Filton Shields, an Unexplained Phenomena Investigator who is already on the hunt for his next case.

Blurb:  

“Walls have ears, but sometimes they also have mouths with which to speak.”

What strange forces are at work causing Penny Cornwall to see and hear people from the past and feel all their emotions? More disconcerting is the tune she doesn't recognise play over and over inside the Cotswold stone cottage she shares with Harry Winchester. Music that will not go away, threatening to destroy the rural idyll she and Harry have found. Thus a fruitless search to find the source of the music and its title begins, a quest that rapidly becomes an obsession taking over her life.

Can the intervention of an eminent archaeologist find the answer to the music's connection to their cottage in time and, in so doing, unravel the tragic story of a love bound by the music transcending the barriers of space and time?

A signed copy of White Stones is up for grabs to the first person who correctly names the theory discussed in White Stones.

Please leave your answer in the comment box and how we can contact you… thank you.

White Stones is now available worldwide in e-formats and released as a paperback on 17 September 2019. Links: books2read.com/Whitestones

Kit Domino Author & Artist

Website & blog: Website and Blog

Twitter: Twitter 

Kit Domino Art: Kit Domino Art

Fun, Funny, Quirky...

“Ms Barclay has succeeded again with this heart-warming prequel to the delightful book Sometimes It Happens. Doreen Wilkinson is one of the most endearing characters you will find in fiction today: fun, funny, quirky, and possessing a big heart; you will be routing for her every step of the way. Be sure and get both books so you can enjoy Doreen and her daughter as they embark on the change of a lifetime. Highly recommend both!”

Thank you so much lovely reader.

Available in Kindle

From all Amazon sites.

Amazon co uk

Amazon com

Phew!

What a week plus! No internet for over 10 days, but back on line with a new provider. 

Sadly I've not been able to talk about my lovely Doreen. If you've read her wonderful story, do let me know, The Birthday Card, because sometimes it happens! 

August Newsletter

To catch up on all the Awards, news and much more, read Chill Awards August Newsletter.

Click HERE to go the newsletter.

Letting her Guard Down...

Friday morning, and as usual, Doreen was running late for work, but before she could contemplate a day mucking out for her three clients, she needed her tobacco fix. Racing out of the front door, she noticed a balloon bobbing, on a ribbon, tied to her neighbour's door handle. “Happy Birthday” the message read in sparkling colours. Doreen chuckled. Her old neighbour was a birthday boy.

Pulling her jacket zip up, she hurried down the corridor towards the staircase that would take her out of Wentworth House and to Mr Greedy’s, the corner shop. Lengthening her stride, Doreen decided she would get the old boy a card.

Rooting through the poor selection in the shop, Doreen sighed, ‘Blimey there aint nothing suitable for an old geezer.’ Excepting she was out of luck, she dropped the motley collection back on to the box top she had lifted them from. Shrugging, she gazed down on the floor and saw a card lying there. Picking it up, she giggled. ‘Perfect,’ she cried. The words could not have been more appropriate if she’d written them herself. On a dull day, Doreen’s face lit up, maybe life wasn’t all that bad, she thought and headed to the counter to add her purchase to her slate.

Upbeat with her find, and standing at the counter, she let her guard down and before she realised her error, Mr Greedy talked her into doing something she vowed she never would…

It would be a few weeks before Doreen realised that buying a birthday card for her neighbour would change her life.

The Birthday Card

A feel good read, filled with laughter.

Amazon co uk

Amazon com

Rhino on the Roof!

Today, I’m not sharing words about my books, but this picture of a rhino on a restaurant roof!! What more can I say?

Maybe also pop over to Doreen's Blog. Today, she's talking about seeing the Queen!

Click here to visit her.

Sniff... Tears!

I've just received an email from a reader... it made me cry!

"I’m in bits here. I’ve just finished Satchfield Hall. So glad my make up was delayed this morning. Sitting here with tears streaming down my face. The last time I remember that happening with a book was Gone With The Wind and I was about 14. Have left a review on Amazon - I don’t do that often either.

Hard to Put Down!!!

This weekend, I saw this on Facebook regarding, The Birthday Card, needless to say, I’m smiling. No doubt Doreen is giggling!!

“...just reading, didn't think it would be, but it is hard to put down!!!!”

Available in Kindle from all Amazon sites

The Birthday Card