Hop over to Goodreads to win a signed, first edition of 183 Times A Year. Competition ends on 4th October 2016. Good luck!

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Six years ago, I did a half day course with Michael Hauge. Who’s he, you ask. Well he’s the guy that most of Hollywood goes to for help to improve their scripts and storylines. He’s worked with the likes of Will Smith and Julia Roberts and Morgan Freeman. His credits include everything from Sci Fi […]

via The second time is the charm — Take Five Authors

Today I’m thrilled to say it’s my turn to host the blog tour of The Museum of You by the very talented Carys Bray. Carys’ first novel, A Song for Issy Bradley, was winner of the Authors’ Club Best First Novel award 2015, and shortlisted for the Costa First Novel award 2015 and the Desmond Elliott prize 2015. A hard act to follow some would say but, judging by recent reviews, The Museum of You looks equally amazing!

Here, Carys talks about her writing process for her new novel and, just to whet your appetite, is followed by an excerpt of The Museum of You.

Writing The Museum of You

As I started to think about writing a second novel I remember listening to a couple of radio interviews with dads who, due to tragic circumstances, were raising their children alone. These men articulated their devastation with moving eloquence. As I listened to them, I wondered how a self-effacing parent might respond in such a situation. And I began to imagine Darren Quinn: bus driver, allotment tender and single Dad of twelve-year-old Clover.

My first novel A Song for Issy Bradley was set in my hometown of Southport. I wanted to write another local novel so I climbed aboard a bus to Liverpool, notebook in tow (the poor driver probably thought I was spying on him), and I wrote a long account of the journey. Then I interviewed two friends who are bus drivers.

As I made notes for Darren, I thought about how it would feel to make plans to leave a place, only to end up circling it every day of your working life. I made notes for his daughter Clover, thinking about what it would be like to grow up in the saddest chapter of your Dad’s story, and how it would feel to hear a carefully rehearsed recitation of the story of your birth, all the time suspecting that things had been omitted, smoothed over somehow. And then I started writing.

I opened the novel at Darren’s allotment which is (conveniently) situated at the same plot as my own allotment. I took my notebook with me and wrote about the place. It’s amazing how writing about a place can make you see it differently. I took photographs, not realising how beautiful it is there until I rediscovered this picture of the allotment behind ours, weeks later, as I played with my phone.

Clover Quinn also has a notebook. And she has an idea. Unbeknown to Darren, she intends to spend her summer curating a museum in the second bedroom; the room that is full of her absent mother’s belongings. Her exhibit, Becky Brookfield – the Untold Story, will tell the full story of her mother, her father, and who she is going to be.

The Museum of You – Excerpt

When she got home from the museum Dad was kneeling in the hall. He’d unscrewed the radiator and his thumb was pressed over an unfastened pipe as water gushed around it. The books and clothes and newspapers that used to line the hall had been arranged in small piles on the stairs. Beside him, on the damp carpet, was a metal scraper he’d been using to scuff the paper off the wall.

‘Just in time!’ he said. ‘Fetch a bowl. A small one, so it’ll fit.’

She fetched two and spent the next fifteen minutes running back and forth to the kitchen emptying one bowl as the other filled, Dad calling, ‘Faster! Faster! Keep it up, Speedy Gonzalez!’ His trousers were soaked and his knuckles grazed, but he wasn’t bothered. ‘Occupational hazard,’ he said, as if it wasn’t his day off and plumbing and stripping walls was his actual job.

Once the pipe had emptied he stood up and hopped about for a bit while the feeling came back into his feet. ‘I helped Colin out with something this morning,’ he said. ‘The people whose house we were at had this dado rail thing – it sounds posh, but it’s just a bit of wood, really – right about here.’ He brushed his hand against the wall beside his hip. ‘Underneath it they had stripy wallpaper, but above it they had a different, plain kind. It was dead nice and I thought, we could do that.’

Dad found a scraper for her. The paint came off in flakes, followed by tufts of the thick, textured wallpaper. Underneath, was a layer of soft, brown, backing-paper which Dad sprayed with water from a squirty bottle. When the water had soaked in, they made long scrapes down the wall, top to bottom, leaving the backing paper flopped over the skirting boards like ribbons of skin. It felt like they were undressing the house.

The bare walls weren’t smooth. They were gritty, crumbly in places. As they worked, a dusty smell wafted out of them. It took more than an hour to get from the front door to the wall beside the bottom stair. That’s where Dad uncovered the heart. It was about as big as Clover’s hand, etched on the wall in black, permanent marker, in Dad’s handwriting: Darren + Becky 4ever.

‘I’d forgotten,’ he murmured. And then he pulled his everything face. The face he pulls when Uncle Jim is drunk. The face he pulls when they go shopping in March and the person at the till tries to be helpful by reminding them about Mother’s Day. The face which reminds her that a lot of the time his expression is like a plate of leftovers.

She didn’t say anything, and although she wanted to, she didn’t trace the heart with her fingertips. Instead, she went up to the bathroom and sat on the boxed, pre-lit Christmas tree dad bought in the January sales. When you grow up in the saddest chapter of someone else’s story you’re forever skating on the thin ice of their memories. That’s not to say it’s always sad – there are happy things, too. When she was a baby Dad had a tattoo of her name drawn on his arm in curly, blue writing, and underneath he had a green, four-leaf clover. She has such a brilliant name, chosen by her mother because it has the word LOVE in the middle. That’s not the sort of thing you go around telling people, but it is something you can remember if you need a little boost; an instant access, happiness top-up card – it even works when Luke Barton calls her Margey-rine. Clover thought of her name and counted to 300.

When she went downstairs Dad had recovered his empty face and she couldn’t help asking a question, just a small one.

‘Is there any more writing under the paper?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘She didn’t do a heart as well?’

‘Help me with this, will you?’

They pulled the soggy ribbons of paper away from the skirting and put them in a bin bag. The house smelled different afterwards. As if some old sadness had leaked out of the walls.

The Museum of You is available from your local bookshop and online.

A moving and surprisingly funny novel – The Independent

Author Carys Bray, photographed near her home in Southport, Lancashire.

I’m absolutely delighted to be involved in the cover reveal of the lovely, fellow author, Samantha Tonge’s upcoming novel Breakfast at Poldark’s.

I’m sure you’ll agree how beautiful it is!

Due for release on 28th July from CarinaUK, HarperCollins, you can pre-order your copy here 

From the start of this novel I was captivated. Great humour as well as punchy dialogue. I can often predict the ending of a book but this one kept me guessing…

Looking for your next holiday read? Take a look at the most recent review of 183 Times A Year! Thank you for your Amazon review, Nicki at Nickisbooks!

What is it with 2016 being the year to take some of our much loved and multi-talented celebrities? On Wednesday it was the wonderfully witty Victoria Wood, prior to that it was the great David Bowie and the wonderful Alan Rickman, not to mention the very talented Terry Wogan and hilariously funny Ronnie Corbett, to name but a few. And then of course, yesterday, we were informed of the death of the iconic musician Prince.

Prince’s UK publicist said “It is with profound sadness that I am confirming that the legendary, iconic performer, Prince Rogers Nelson, has died at his Paisley Park residence this morning at the age of 57.”

Prince was allegedly a great believer in Chem Trails – perhaps he was onto something or perhaps 2016 is just proving to be a crappy year for the loss of some great and influential people.

I loved Prince. His music played a huge part in my formative years. I often remember, with great fondness, slow dancing to Purple Rain, along with the likes of George Michael’s Careless Whisper and Spandau Ballet’s True, at the end of school and college disco’s. And 1999 – what an amazing song. When I listened to that song, I was young, inexperienced about life and 1999 was a lifetime away. I was pretty convinced when that particular year did come around, my angst ridden years would be long gone and the world, and my place in it, would make perfect sense. How naive was I?

It wasn’t just Prince’s music that I loved though, a multi-instrumentalist, actor and record producer, he was also flamboyant and eclectic. Like David Bowie, he dared to be different, which was a nod to those of us that didn’t quite ‘fit in’ that it was actually ok to march to the tune of your own drum.

Prince produced and released many albums over the course of his career, some of the notable releases were:

1. For You. 1978. Prince’s debut album, released when he was 19.
2. 1979. Included his first signature tune, “I Wanna Be Your Lover.”
3. Dirty Mind. 1980. Featuring Prince in a thong on the cover, the record helped cement the singer’s ascendency to pop superstardom.
4. 1982. The album’s title track would become an anthem for millennium parties the world over.
5. Purple Rain. 1984. The soundtrack album to a movie of the same name, the record would later be recognized as one of the greatest of all time.
6. 1986. Featuring arguably his most-recognized song ever, “Kiss.”
7. Sign o’ the Times. 1987. A defining soundtrack to the 1980s, Prince demonstrated his musical scope with a swirling kaleidoscope of sounds.
8. 1988. Prince sparked controversy by posing nude on the cover of the album, which includes the classic “Alphabet St.”
9. 2006. Prince’s 31st studio album, debuting at No.1, marked a major comeback and his first album to hit the top spot since “Batman” in 1989.
10. 2014. Featuring his backing group 3rdeyegirl, the record showcased Prince’s continued hunger to experiment, innovate and entertain.

(This list was copied from The Telegraph article by Raziye Akkoc and David Lawler which you can read here)

I listened to Purple Rain as I lay in bed last night and was amazed at how all the old places and experiences of my youth, played out across my thoughts like grainy old film footage.

Goodnight sweet Prince and thank you for the music.

I leave you with the opening verse from the aptly titled Freedom, a song from the 1999 album.

Don’t sleep, ’til sunrise, listen to the falling rain
Don’t worry, ’bout tomorrow, don’t worry ’bout your pain
Don’t cry, unless you’re happy, don’t smile unless you’re blue
Never let that lonely monster take control of you