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  A revealing Q&A from the Pigeonhole a Book Club in your pocket   The Pigeon asks…   What research did you do for   Nasty Little Cuts ? Pretty much all my personal experiences went into this. I’ve had a LOT of bad relationships. Abusive, violent, control freaks, liars, addicts… Married 3 times. The book is dedicated to my current husband who is lovely. What a bloody relief. I also did research on domestic violence & murder suicides in Britain – this was before the pandemic. It got worse in lockdown Why do you think you became a writer? I always loved writing. My mum could barely write. She was a traveller & fairground people didn’t put a lot of stock on that at the time. Mental arithmetic was more important – so she could give the right change on the coconut shy. My grandad couldn’t read or write. My parents really encouraged me to do well at school. And I want to tell stories that resonate with me. How important is setting for your writing? I often focu...
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SUPERMARKET SWEEP

  Seeing my book being sold in Tesco and Asda superstores is like winning the Booker Prize for me. Before I ‘became an author’ I never bought a hardback book and paperbacks are still my first love. Growing up I never went into a bookshop either – mainly because we didn’t have one in my hometown. But I loved reading and haunted the library in the precinct, and my mum sent off for a copy of Paddington for my birthday present.          When I was a kid, me and my family cleaned the floors of Tesco and Fine Fare supermarkets in Coalville, Leicestershire. That was my job to earn pocket money. My dad also cleaned their windows for many years.        You can tell a lot about people by the way they treat cleaners. Along with the nice people who apologised for wheeling their trolley over the bit you’d just mopped and those who joked, ‘You’ve missed a bit’, there were always a few who looked at you as if you were something they...
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TROLLS

  When I was a kid, I had a collection of Trolls – funny little plastic figures with wild hair. One sat on top of my pen for years. I’ve always liked them.   But nowadays, online trolls are pure evil. So virulent are Twitter trolls, the counter movement #BeKind has evolved.   It’s all too easy to gob off online - a few late-night beers, and from the comfort of your own sofa, nastiness can wing its way into the life of some poor sod you’ve never met.        It’s no good saying, ‘but they’re famous’ as a defence. That’s like saying people are asking for it.        It horrifies me how personal some of the comments are. Women are slammed for being too fat, too thin, too old, having too much Botox, being frumpy or too sexy. We can’t win. Parenting styles are vilified. Often these comments are from other women. Sticks and stones can break your bones, but words can break your spirit. Verbal bullying can be worse than ph...
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Why getting published is like shedding a (Viper) skin

Fifteen years ago, I was medically overweight, and now I’m not. I lost two-and-a-half stone and I’ve kept the weight off ever since, thanks to that miracle cure of eating a bit less and moving a bit more. (It really is that simple and that difficult.) My current body, older and creakier though it is, feels more like me than the younger but chubbier body ever did.        But there was a time – quite a long time in fact – after I lost that weight, when I didn’t quite believe I could get into a size 10 or 12 and shopping was— confusing. My hipbones felt weird. I wasn’t too sure of my perimeters. (Note, I didn’t say boundaries, as I’ve never been very sure about them.)        I felt more vulnerable. A bit more naked, somehow.        That’s what it’s been like for me becoming (cue trumpets and bunting) A PUBLISHED AUTHOR!        Authors, to me, are mythical beasts.   P...
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WHY I’M GIVING 10 PERCENT OF MY BOOK ROYALTIES TO CHARITY

  I’m a very lucky woman. Sometimes I wallow in self-pity and forget it, but mostly I know how lucky I am. I have work, a home, a loving relationship and cats who are loving when it’s feeding time. I’ve been sober for 14 years, although it’s been a close call in lockdown. We’re all lucky. If you’re reading this on a computer, living in a First World country, despite the hellish year many people have endured thanks to COVID, despite our personal tragedies, we are all blessed to have so much more than MOST people on this planet.        I’m a survivor and I’m lucky.          I’ve supported Action for Children – formerly the National Children’s Home – since I worked at TV-am. I was a researcher on an item talking about child abuse. Daft as it sounds, it hadn’t really sunk in until that point that I’d been abused as a kid – both physically and sexually by several people. Until that moment, talking privately to the charity’...
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WHY AND HOW I POPPED MY NANOWRIMO CHERRY

    I’d never heard of NaNoWriMo until I started spending more time on social media during the very brief periods of time between working from home and sobbing aerobically from home for the last nine months, which have felt like nine bloody years . To be honest, I’m very new to social media and have learned all sorts of things in the last year – from NaNoWriMo to Writers Lifts and Pile Ons!        If you too are new to all this, NaNoWriMo stands for the National Novel Writing Month and during November, the aim is to write every day a minimum of around 1,6000 words so by the end of the month you have 50,000 words towards a novel. I think it started in the States.         This is literally all the information I had, gleaned from one single Tweet I saw on November 1st, although I then became aware of writers (often young and bushy tailed) announcing their daily word totals. Being me (knackered, grey droopy tailed, ...
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WHY I WRITE ABOUT CLASS

  The way I say ‘class’ tells you mine. I am a working class hero. The easiest answer to anyone who asks me why I often write about class is that it’s just who I am – my class is the heart of me. My background shaped my opinions and my nature. It’s what I sound like and look like and identify as.          But you could point out, ‘Yeah, but you now live in Crouch End down that there London. You left your hometown of Coalville (a now defunct pit town, rather than a metaphor like Coketown in Dickens’   Hard Times ) decades ago. You have a Smeg fridge.        I do. It still makes me laugh. I’m immature as well as common.        I was the first in my family to have a flash fridge, the first to have a washing machine, the first to go to University, the first to have a credit card, and the first to date a lord. (I felt like a different species. I couldn’t get my head round how someone didn...
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