I consider myself very lucky. I cancelled the subscription on my last Meditation App because I got tired of the reminders to hold onto the moment and be grateful. I do, I truly do. All I need now though is an App with rain and beach music. Or actually just open my window…

It helps that at the moment while everyone is shivering at home in Melbourne, I’m enjoying a European summer. And that it’s an extra long break because (and I even give thanks to Covid for Zoom) I am working remotely one session a week supervising, teaching and doing emails. Having a few weeks with my children and their partners with us here also added to what has been a lovely couple of months.

Some of the time away has been active—completing a section of the Shikoku pilgrimage in Japan opened my eyes and mind to a wonderful and very different culture (I’d been before, but never immersed like this); a quick tour of Croatia and Slovenia (less tourists and selected by my son, and well worth the trip) and a quick stint at a crime festival in Bristol (okay crime writers) where I got to hang out with Andrew Child (Lee’s younger but not shorter brother) and Felix Francis (Dick’s son). But even during these stints I had book or kindle open each night and a computer out most days. So much to read and write!

On the subject of reading, I read quickly and a lot of crime—the festival gave me some new names but even there (and definitely if scouring Amazon) it was hard to decide the quality of what I was getting until I’d read a bit. There is some good self published works but its not the way to bet—because time and good editing is time consuming and costly and easy to cut back on if you’re doing it yourself. Publishing companies tend to be a bit more of sticklers…though I have had a reputable editor and company tell me a book was as good as it could get and yet several readers and editors later I am quite sure it is at least 10-20% better. Some of the less edited books are easy to read and draw you in(often the first in the series isn’t bad and then as they get published every six months or less, the quality decreases) but you start tripping over cliches (which get thrown out in subsequent edits if I put them in) and the plots become less nuanced and boring. And I want to be reading well written books to help my own writing…

I don’t want to target any writers (this business is way too hard as it is) though the most recent one that fell foul of me does way better than me! Thousands of reviews and good ratings, and perhaps part of the problem was it was too action focused for my taste and I tend to lose interest when they move to exotic locations (a female Jack Reacher but at least a much lower body count). And there is definitely comfort to be had from a cosy kindle unlimited (my dad finds westerns! And mum likes a nice familiar Faith Martin female cop story (my main complaint with this series is every book describes her figure in pretty much the same 1950’s way)).

So how to find a good book that’s also a good read? Well there’s the long list of Aussie crime to peruse so start there (and I’ve read a lot of them). Then Good Reads can help – I tend to look for something that gets over 3.5 with at least fifty reviews and read the two and three star ones. These won’t necessarily put me off—I’m looking for what they don’t like because I know what I don’t like. If it’s because it’s a crime book and they don’t normally like crime I ignore it! But if cliché and predictability are mentioned in more than one review I might think twice.

I read newspaper and FB friend reviews too. After Adrian McKinty’s review of Small Mercies by Dennis Lehane I bought it immediately. The killer line from the review was that good books didn’t necessarily have themes/big questions but great books did, and that this was a great book. I’d read and liked Mystic River by Lehane so it was a no brainer. And yes, despite an unlikeable protagonist (at least to start with), this is a great book (themes of racism set in the Boston riots in the 1970s when school busing happened—I learnt a lot). McKinty also writes great books (The Troubles series) and it is good to see he has another one coming out soon.

I then thought why not read all Lehane’s books, but like McKinty’s non-Troubles books, I found several of Lehane’s books not on topics on my interest. Since We Fell however passed the test—again well written but he plays with structure and it was interesting to think why I didn’t like it as much as his other (yet felt it was still worth reading).

Which brings me to the writing. Sitting in a country house in France there’s been a lot of that. In the process of investigating publishing options we had quite a bit of feedback on Out of the Blue (where we have played with structure) which was to be out in October but will now be next year (date and tour details will follow when I’m allowed to talk about them—but suffice to say there will be a lot of activity and book events!). It’s a novel in thirteen episodes, set in a mental health facility covering at the coalface issues, evidence based medicine and a good dose of psychotherapy (My latest crime book Locked Ward is also but it’s a crime book in an Agatha Christie style—the new book is drama with some light moments).

We are on our twenty third complete draft having started thinking about the idea in 2020. Four years from start to end. The story hasn’t changed much but the addition of a clear antagonist enhanced the reason to read and relate, and an extra twist in the patient story in one episode took it from the weakest to one of the strongest. Time has meant the characters are more fleshed out, alive and with stronger motivations. I hope there’s more compassion there too. This is a book about working in the mental health system and its struggles to meet the need, but inevitably it is also about mental illness—and after more than thirty years working with women and their families, I don’t want this to be just about disorder and pain but rather to have the character’s courage in the face of obstacles to shine from the page. I want families and friends of those struggling to be able to pick this up and learn something about a range of disorders that affects someone we all know. And yes, I hope it’s a book that a reviewer—and someone with lived experience—says is not just a good book but a great one, not for the quality of the writing but for the dark and tough terrain it tackles but with a light touch and heart.