I said I’d do regular updates on how writing my book in 90 days was going and, obviously, I have not done that. I don’t know why I thought hitting a very tough deadline was the time to pretend I was going to become a regular Substacker, but we live and learn.

Anyway, I’m 48k words in now and can see the finish line (this book is shorter than my usual. I’m aiming for 70k words, then 5 days to edit which will get me up to the required 75k words, as I tend to add words when I edit rather than take them away).

So, how is it going?

Well, today I cried because I wanted a bath but it was filled with my daughter’s toys and when I came back to my bedroom to sulk about it, I was faced with the stripped bed that I still had to make up.

Yeah, I’m really tired.

Unfortunately for me, I am currently in a period of no nursery. They shut down for 2 weeks in August, plus the bank holiday. So that’s three Mondays and three Wednesdays with no childcare. More unfortunately for me, Mondays are usually the one day I have childcare but don’t work for Jericho. Therefore, Mondays are my one and only deeply precious writing day. Ergo, I have no writing days for three weeks.

NOT IDEAL WHEN YOU HAVE TO WRITE THOUSANDS OF WORDS EVERY WEEK.

But it’s fine. So far, I am staying on track. Yes, my daughter has decided she now only naps every other day and, yes somehow the no-nap day always falls on the days I have her alone and need to write while she sleeps but it’s fine. It’s fine.

Honestly, there is very little point to this post other than to say sometimes having a job, a toddler, and writing a book is really hard. When people hear that I write books and have a toddler and have a ‘big’ job, they often say nice things that make me sound like I am a hyper-productive workaholic.

I am not.

I am just very tired.

Still, only 22,000 words to go.

Sophie x

Last week, I went to Harrogate for the first time. If you think I mean the town itself, you are probably not a crime writer.

Every year, Harrogate hosts a huge crime writing festival that, on the face of it, appears to be for readers but, for authors, basically functions as the social event of the year. (I enjoyed writing that as though I am Lady Whistledown.)

I’d never been before because it always seemed a bit dramatic to drive three or four hours just to chat to authors I already know online and hang around in a tent. But this year Jericho Writers was invited to speak on Creative Thursday, so my brilliant friend and colleague, Becca Day, and I spent the day teaching two workshops on the Psychology of Suspense. Ooo. Fancy.

After that, I embraced the Real Harrogate Experience - hanging around in the tent chatting to people I vaguely recognised from Instagram, meeting some of my favourite authors, and discovering they are, in fact, just like the rest of us. I also went to the Pan Macmillan drinks, nearly tripped over national treasure Ann Cleeves, accidentally stalked Val McDermid home, and spotted Pete from Cold Feet.

Anyway. Did I actually get any writing done? You know, the thing I was technically there to do?

Yes!

I

Did!

Did I get as much writing down as I planned / needed to?

No!

I

Did

Not!

But it’s okay.

I feel a bit like I’m cheating already because I’m writing this on the day I hit 20,000 words - all written in July. It feels off that my second update on this project has skipped straight there without much context. Sorry about that.

I promised I’d document how writing this book was going, so today I’m not going to worry about making this funny or even particularly interesting. I’m simply going to tell you that today I wrote 4,000 words and I am proud of myself (and tired).

If you’re also staring at a word count that feels insurmountable, here are three things that helped me today:

Skip the hard bits

If you don’t know how to write a particular scene, skip it.

Leave yourself a note (for example: WRITE A FUNNY SCENE WHERE THIS CHARACTER DIES) and keep going.

For me, it’s the only way to keep ploughing on. I’ll fix it when I’m ready (and less tired).

Go to a coffee shop

I don’t know why I can’t write at home.

I mean... I can.

It’s just much harder.

Today I spent the first hour at home writing absolutely nothing and faffing around with my emails. Then I went to a coffee shop and wrote 4,000 words in the next three hours.

The only thing that changed was my location.

(I am not immune to public shame. The possibility of a barista catching me scrolling Instagram instead of writing is apparently enough to stop me scrolling Instagram.)

Accept that some days won’t be productive

At Harrogate, I decided my goal was to write 1,500 words across the entire three-day trip.

Now, given I’ve just told you I’m capable of writing 4,000 words in three hours, that sounds a bit ridiculous, doesn’t it? Three days away from home, on my own, and I only aimed for 1,500 words.

But I knew my brain would be full. I’d be teaching, socialising, staying up too late, talking about books all day and generally using a lot of energy. If I’d set myself a bigger target, I almost certainly wouldn’t have hit it - and then I’d have felt guilty for not writing instead of enjoying Harrogate.

Sometimes the right goal isn’t the biggest one. It’s the one you’ll actually achieve.

Those are all the tips I have time for today because I need to rescue my child from nursery and take her to the park.

Until next time.

Sophie

x

Once again, it’s been a little while.

Life has been rather busy lately - but also rather fun. I’ve started back as Managing Director at Jericho Writers, a job I love, after 13 months away. I’ve also got a new book deal.

Well, at the time of writing, I probably have a new book deal.

I got the offer a couple of weeks ago (more on that in a moment) and am currently in the not-so-fun waiting-to-sign-a-contract-and-actually-talk-about-it-stage.

(This is me not talking about it.)

The slight complication is that I need to start writing the book right now. As in, last week. Because despite it already being July and the contract still being negotiated, my hopefully-soon-to-be publisher wants the manuscript by 1 October, which gives me a cool 90 days to write an entire book*.

No worries, I told them. I can do that.

So, if you’d like to join me as I attempt to write a book in 90 days while managing a company and, more importantly (not really), managing a toddler... welcome aboard.

I’ll try to post something short each week to keep myself accountable and share all the ways writing a book can go wrong - or right - along the way.

But first, let me tell you about the day I got the deal.

A few weeks ago, we were on holiday. We had a lovely big lodge with a hot tub overlooking the rolling hills of Devon. Sounds idyllic, doesn’t it?

It was idyllic. And it was terrible.

Not only did we accidentally holiday during the hottest heatwave that has ever heatwaved in the UK, but my toddler also discovered she could climb out of her travel cot, roam free in the lodge, toddle out onto the decking, oh and let herself out of the front gate.

Which meant we had a holiday lodge on lockdown.

Do you know what it feels like to sit in a lodge with all the windows closed in 32-degree heat?

Not good, my friend. Not good at all.

Anyway…

At around 11am on the first Monday of the holiday, I got a very exciting email.

A book deal.

At 12pm, an exciting phone call.

We had a buyer for our house.

At 12:30pm, we put in an offer on the house we had been obsessing over for week.

Then we waited.

Toddler woke up from her sweaty nap and, noticing the sun had briefly disappeared behind a cloud, we decided to risk a walk to the pub.

We set off.

The heavens opened.

Toddler soaked. Parents soaked. Two dogs soaked. Run!

Then another phone call.

The house we wanted had received another offer. The seller had given us one hour to submit our best and final offer.

No pressure, then.

So we continued sprinting through the rain until we reached the pub. We made the call. We ordered drinks. We played pool.

We waited.

Then the phone rang.

We got the house!

What a day.

Meanwhile, the book contract still lingers on, because publishing moves at approximately the opposite speed to estate agents.

Still, it was a good day.

A very good day.

I finally lived my Location, Location, Location dream: making an offer and having it accepted while sitting in a pub with a gin and tonic in hand.

Now the small matter of 1,000 forms to fill in, solicitors to manage, packing up a life, managing a company and oh, yes. Writing a book.

Wish me luck!

Sophie

x

p.s if you’re wondering why I have told you nothing about this book deal apart from the deadline it is because I cannot tell you anything until my (hopefully) publisher-to-be does the announcement but all I will say it is is a bit different than my usual books and VERY excited about it

p.p.s the mathmaticians amongst you may notice that 1 October is not, in fact, 90 days away. I did linger over writing this post before the contract was signed but then decided, meh.

p.p.p.s those who know me may also notice that I’ve said we have a buyer for our house when all I talk about is how stressed I am trying to find a buyer for our house - this is because we lost our original buyer, but this buying a house in the rain story is fun, isn’t it? Much more fun than the subsequent broken chain story I am now living

I have been unwell for what feels like one hundred years. I went to the doctor this week (the second time in 2026, but the first time for myself, and it was much easier to take my temperature than my daughter’s) and she told me rather stiffly that I would start to feel better ‘in a few weeks’. Now, as I have not felt well since 2025, I of course burst into tears. This did not sway the doctor in the way I hoped and I left with no sympathy and even fewer drugs.

So, what do you do when you have a rambunctious toddler to look after and a virus that will not shift? You try to buy a run-down house that you absolutely have no skills or funds to fix1 and start plotting a new book.

I’m in that lovely ‘this novel is going to be amazing’ phase that lasts until around the time you finish the first chapter. To hold onto this magic, I have decided to delay starting the first chapter until the last possible moment.

This will be the sixth book I have written and yet I am starting again as if from scratch. When I first started writing, I read all the books on writing I could find2. Somehow, in all these years of writing books and helping other people write books at Jericho Writers, I missed reading Save the Cat. I think because I heard this book referenced so much by other writers, I almost felt like I had read it.

But anyway, I’m now reading Save the Cat and going ‘Aha! This is where I have previously gone wrong! Everything is going to be so much better now!’ and still not writing a word. There is something deeply comforting when you are staring down the abyss of a blank page knowing you need to turn it into 90,000 words, about having a roadmap set out for you, as is done in Save the Cat. But then, every plan feels foolproof until you actually set out to do it.

This new book idea is a completely different genre and probably won’t involve any dead bodies at all but instead some people falling in love. Which is quite nice, isn’t it? We shall see.

Other than moaning about how ill I am while running around the park after my toddler in the rain (who absolutely couldn’t care less that I, her dear mother, look like Voldemort in a muddy coat) I have managed to drag myself to a local literary club event to talk about my books, which I enjoyed thoroughly. Yes, I did lose my voice for two days after this but was it worth it for an adult evening discussing books? I believe it was.

And of course, when I’m not sleeping because I can’t breathe through my nose (who knew nose breathing was so essential for sleep?) I have managed to read some brilliant books which I shall now list below as my mind has lost the ability to write in paragraphs:

• A Neighbours Guide to Murder by Louise Candlish - I love Louise’s book as I believe she might be the only other person who spends as much time on Rightmove as I do. An excellently plotted book which I read at the same time as reading the beat sheets in Save the Cat, and noticed just how perfectly this book hits every beat.

• The Hollow Boys by Tariq Ashkanani - This was a proof sent by one of my favourite publishers and I adored it. Set in a creepy town that is eventually going to succumb to the flames that burn beneath the earth from abandoned coal mines. Turns out this is a real thing!

• Heartburn by Nora Ephron - I love this book so much and I will read it again and again forever. The only thing I don’t like about Nora Ephron is that reading her writing makes me feel like I can’t write at all.

• I Feel Bad About My Neck by Nora Ephron - See above. I love her and everything she writes.

• Connie by Charlotte Duckworth - This was a very dark book! Super interesting to read the point of view of a female serial killer and it says something about the writing when you actually kind of end up seeing their point of view. V good.

• The Secret Lives of Murderers’ Wives by Elizabeth Arnott - Another proof about serial killers but this time from the point of view of their wives. Really enjoyed this!

• The Summer We Lied by Rebecca Hardy - I’m only about 25% of the way through this proof, but I had to share it because this book was written on our Jericho Writers Ultimate Novel Writing Programme! Nothing makes me love my job more than seeing our writers go on to get their books published. So far, I’m completely enthralled by this creepy thriller, set around a murder in a small English village.

Aside from that, I’m also on the last few episodes of the Gilmore Girls (again - I have watched this series in full possibly 100 times) and so do spare a thought for me when I move onto A Year in the Life and see all my hopes and dreams for my favourite girls go up in flames.

But alas, my daughter now needs picking up from nursery and while I have managed to make no progress on my book whatsoever in my child-free time, it has been nice to write this to you.

Sophie x

I was going to write to you about money. I did in fact, write an entire post about it. But I realised what I really want to talk about is fear.

This week, my mum and I went to see Catherine Newman at Borzoi Bookshop. She was fabulous - warm and funny and just wonderful. She spoke about how people referred to her breakout novel, We All Want Impossible Things, as her debut, and how funny that was to her, given she’d been writing for twenty years before that. It made me feel better - and hopeful - about my own writing career, which is something I’ve needed a lot lately. A little bit of hope.

When I first got serious about writing a book, I was already nearly finished with my MA in Creative Writing. Yes, it took me almost two years of my two-year MA to admit I actually wanted to get my book published. I was working full-time and travelling back and forth to Oxford and it was a lot (I was also getting married and my weekends consisted of seemingly endless hen dos and other people’s weddings - so I was busy all round).

I did something which I now think was very brave. Knowing I was going to struggle to finish my MA final project (effectively a 20k word extract from my novel) alongside life and work, I went part-time at my job.

This might not sound like a big deal, but to me it felt huge.

Initially, I asked my boss if I could try this out for a couple of months - just until I finished my MA. Then I’d go back full-time. Amazingly, my work said yes. I was working as a Communications Manager at an agency, earning around £32,000, and dropping to 4 days a week meant my salary would be £25,600 - which, as anyone who can read numbers can see, was significantly less. I was only 28 but I had a mortgage on a three-bedroom house and a dog (and a dog walker to pay) and a cat and bills and all that stuff. I was not free and breezy. (Oh, and probably around £20k of student loan debt by then, too.)

Every Thursday (my ‘day off’) I would think you’re losing £6,400 a year to write - so you better actually write something good. And my lord, did I feel the pressure of that.

Also, I was ambitious about my career. And I believed that people who worked part-time did not get to have good careers. Plus, I come from a family that believes in good old-fashioned hard work. Working part-time was not working hard!

Basically, I was scared.

But I did it anyway, and as you may now know, it worked out pretty well. I left that job not long after and got another with a nice big salary bump that still let me work four-days a week. After that I joined Jericho, where I eventually became MD - all still while ‘part-time’. And, the book I was worrying about never finishing went on to get me my first publishing deal with some little-known up-and-comers, Simon & Schuster.

So, all in all, working less and writing more was a good move.

So why now, with a much better job and five books published behind me, am I so scared to commit to writing again?

In many ways, I’m in the same position now as I was back then. No one’s asking me to write a book. No one’s waiting on it. I have no agent, no publishing deal. All of that was true then, and it’s true now.

But it wasn’t so scary to fail back then because the idea I could succeeed was wild to me. One in a million. Whereas now, the idea I won’t succeed - that I might write a book that no one wants to publish - is terrifying. Embarassing. Mortifying.

It’s something I’m working on. Trying to be brave.

Sophie x

I got a new phone last week. More accurately, I dropped mine for its final time and it finally gave up its tenuous grip on life.

For months, it had been slowly dying. You could blame me - and you’d be right to - because when I smashed the screen in a hotel lobby on a work trip, I decided to get it fixed in a rather dodgy looking shop because they promised a fix for ‘£50 in 30 minutes’.

But alas, I smashed it again and again and so eventually gave in to a new phone. When I was setting it up, it asked me the all-important question: Do you want to import all your settings and data from your previous phone?

Now, if you’re a regular reader you will know that I have quite a lot of photos and rather an obsessive attachment to each one. But I decided something bold: no. I was not going to import. I was going to start afresh.

Cue total meltdown when I opened my library to see nothing; messages - blank. No history.

Now, I think the universe did me a favour here and overrode my decision not to import and after a few panicked words with my husband about losing ‘everything’ (“It’s in your iCloud, darling, you know you haven’t lost it”) my photos steadily began to reappear, along with my messages. Hurrah!

But my apps did not.

And so I have decided to try my best to go cold-turkey on my phone. No social media. No emails. Nothing fun. Not even my most loved and hated app: FitBit.

I’ve had my FitBit since 2017: the year I got engaged and decided I was hideously overweight and must immediately lose the excess before my wedding in 9 months. I became obsessed. I took my scales on holiday.

On holiday.

My weight chart for that year is horribly pleasing - the line going down, down, down.

Ever since, I have been obsessed with my FitBit; obsessed with counting myself. At any given time, I can go into my weight history and see it rise and fall, rise and fall. Years of counting and obsessing.

My FitBit is not nice to me. It tells me I am overtraining one day, undertraining the next. That I have walked too many steps, that I have not walked enough. It never lets me rest. I never let me rest.

I have not worn my FitBit now for almost a week. The tell-tale white skin that has been hidden from the sun all summer is beginning to tan. I am beginning to rest.

It’s not just steps I count obsessively, though. One of the reasons I can write books fairly quickly is that it involves so much counting. 80,000 words in a first draft, divided by the number of days until the deadline, divided by the amount of days I can actually write, then bam. That’s my plan. It’s really quite addictive to see those numbers steadily rise day by day as I type away.

So this year, with no book to write, perhaps I have become even more obsessive about my steps; my calories; my cardio load; my heartrate.

But these are not the things I want to count.

This is quite possibly the only year of my working-life where I will not be working. The only year I will spend solely with my daughter; getting to know her, becoming a mum.

And so, I made a list of some of the things that are worthy of counting:

• How many times my daughter says ‘BUH’ on a walk - her way of saying ‘bee’

• How often I can make her belly laugh

• How many chapters of brilliant books I can consume during nap time

• How many birds we can spot in the woods

• How much water she can spill on herself while trying to water the flowers

• How often she shouts HIYA at passers by

• How many biscuits she would eat in one go if I let her

I’m not sure I’ll be able to stop counting all together - and it’s probably only a matter of time before the FitBit gets reattached to my wrist and begins scolding me again. But for now, I am going to try to only count the things that matter.

I hope you can too.

Sophie x

I am in a coffee shop. Alone! During nap time.

The same coffee shop where huge great chunks of my last few novels have been written. The same coffee shop I brought my daughter to last week and let her cover me in jam before 8am.

Today, she is under the watchful eye of my husband who has taken a week of annual leave but really it is me who is on holiday.

It is so very exciting to be out alone. Yesterday, I started my day with a swim then lounged on some sunloungers and read a couple of chapters of my book. It was delicious.

Despite all of this, writing to you now from the side of the world I never thought I would be on - the side of the mothers - I must admit something that would have once torn me up from jealousy hearing it from someone else.

I love being a mum. Really, truly, properly love it.

Yes, some days I do cry because I simply cannot change another nappy, or spend any more time thinking about whether we have enough berries to last the day.

But, but…

I don’t know. What is there to say? To have a tiny perfect person who relies on you and loves you. I don’t think it gets better than this.

And yet…

I have found myself in the last couple of nights as I’m about to fall asleep gripped by a small, a tiny perhaps, panic. Because there will be a point in the not too distant future where my days of endless hours to fill with trips to the park and midday meet ups with friends and hanging out at my parents’ house will come to an end. I will go back to work - back to the job I love - and join normal life.

Now, I am lucky because I actually want to go back to my job. I still text my colleagues for work updates; I get excited when they tell me new things they are doing, hold my tongue when I don’t agree with every decision made in my absence. So, it’s not the day job I am worried about.

But the writing… How on earth do we manage all the writing?

The plan has always been to take a break this year. I have had five novels published in four years. That’s a lot! It has been a whirlwind of manic typing in coffee shops to meet endless wordcounts and in all honesty, it stopped being fun this past year. When I had my debut published, All My Lies, I knew it wasn’t going to ‘kickstart’ my career in any bolting-horse-out-of-the-gate way. I had a small deal with a big publisher who pretty quickly forgot about me and that was fine. I could be patient, I could write more books, build an audience. Maybe I would be someone who broke out after book two, book three…

But I haven’t, not really. I love my books. I love my readers. I love being published, and for one of these four years I started to see the kind of financial returns where it felt like the typing away was starting to pay off. And then, rather abruptly, those numbers started going down.

I know I am not the only author who is experiencing this and I know people will tell me that the future of publishing is bleak, that I should never expect to make money from it.

But people are still reading books. I have read an entire book since the day before yesterday (as I said, I am on holiday). Netflix is still turning books into TV shows. Films are still being made from words on paper. There is hope. I am sure, there is hope.

But in the meantime, how do we continue to write when life is so busy, so full of joy that I don’t want to hide away from while I make up imaginary worlds?

I don’t know the answer. And I don’t know if any of this was worth your time to read, but I recently attended the London Festival of Writing for my job and the one talk I managed to sit and listen to in its entirerety was the inspirational Aime McNee and her husband James. And Aime said something that really stuck with me.

If you want to write, you have to be okay with putting out some shitty writing*.

So, that’s what I’m going to do. No editing. No making my words wiser, more meaningful, better phrased. I have spent some time wondering what - if anything - I have to say anymore. I used to write on here about trying to have a baby. I now have a baby. I’m aware that this will mean some of you don’t want to read what I have to say anymore and I understand this, my God, I promise you - I understand.

What’s left, now that the trying is over? I’m not sure.. What is this piece about? What am I trying to say? That it’s hard to write when you have a child? That being a mum is nice? These two statements are not revolutionary - perhaps not even very interesting. But perhaps committing them to pretend-paper is all I need to do for now.

And so, here is some shitty writing brought to you from the side of the world I never thought I’d make it to. A letter from me to you, about how hard it is to write, even when you give yourself a break and a promise to myself to keep trying.

Speak soon.

Sophie x

*This is not a direct quote but rather paraphrased because even though I wanted to write down many of the golden nuggets Aime and James said, I didn’t want to break the spell by pulling out my phone

**As I finish writing this post, an email pings into my inbox. HMRC asking me if I want to file my self assessment form early (does anyone?) - reminding me that, despite how it may feel, I am a working writer and the tax man is coming for me, as he is coming for us all

***I actually had the time of my life at the London Festival of Writing, and given I have written some pretty sad posts about this in the past, I will, at some point, write an entire post about my lovely experience there this year

****God, I have actually had an entire book published since I last wrote to you and have failed to mention it at all (perhaps this is why those royalty cheques have been diminishing?) if you would like to read my latest book, which I really do rather quite like, you can get it here

Gosh. I don’t write this very often, do I?

If you don’t keep up with me on social media (where I am also a rather sporadic updater) you may not know that I recently became a mum.

I KNOW.

I thought it might never happen too.

Six years in the making and now she’s here. There’s a little girl currently asleep upstairs (please, God, let today be one of the long naps) and yet my husband and I still turn to each other every hour or so and go ‘Can you believe we’re actually parents?’.

Today is also the publication day for my fifth book, The Other Miss Jones. I must admit, I have done little-to-no promotion for this book because it turns out being a parent leaves you with pretty much no time to do anything other than keep your child alive. But I did write an Instagram post about publication day this morning, and because I have no time (baby may wake at any moment) I am going to reuse those words right here. You’ll forgive me this shortcut, I hope.

Yesterday, my husband asked how I wanted to celebrate publication day for The Other Miss Jones. “All I want is a lie-in and a coffee in bed,” I told him.

So of course, today we were up at 5am, and all of us - including Nellie the dog - were out the door by 7:30 to walk into town for breakfast.

But actually, as we sat down at my favourite table, I realised this was a much, much better way to celebrate this book than any lie-in could ever be.

Last year, I spent hours at that very table, laptop open, coffee in hand, desperately trying to get the words down on the page. It was harder than usual, writing this book. My brain was all over the place, and I had less time than ever because on my “day off” to write, I was also volunteering at a local nursery to get childcare experience, in the hope of one day being chosen to be someone’s mum.

I’d wake up early on Mondays, walk the dog, then walk into town and try desperately to get 3,500 words done by 11am, before heading to the nursery and getting covered in other people’s children’s food. Then the next day it was back to my ‘proper’ job. And repeat, repeat, repeat.

There were so many times I questioned what the hell I was doing. Whether I could write anything coherent at all and if I did, whether I could actually finish it with the limited brain space I had left over.

But today, I sat at that same table with my published book in my hand and my daughter on my lap and thought: Oh my god. I actually did it.

So, if you fancy reading a book written between nursery shifts, dog walks, and a head full of hope, The Other Miss Jones is out now. And if you’ve already read it, I’d be very grateful if you left a review on Amazon. I’d love to see this one do well - it was fuelled by coffee, toddler food, and a fair few tears . . .

I want to finish this by saying that in nap time, I am going to keep up with my Substack and keep writing. But honestly, I have no ability to make any plans beyond each wake period right now - so who knows.

For now, thanks for reading.

Sophie x

p.s baby is now awake so have not proofread this, forgive me this too

How many photos do you have on your phone? As of today, I have 28,871. Tomorrow, it’ll likely be more. I know this is too many. My husband tells me this regularly. But instead of deleting them, or taking them off my phone to store somewhere else, I just pay for more storage every month. It’s not a problem; it’s fine.

My photos go back to 2015 - the year we bought our first home, the year we got Primrose (our strange little cat). I’m a big photo-taker, though not a big sharer, anymore. Sometimes I get the urge to prove to my distant Facebook friends that I am in fact still alive and post a few, but mostly, they stay on my phone - or lately, printed in photobooks that sit on my living room window.

The main reason I refuse to take a single photo off my phone is that it would stop me from taking part in my favourite game: what was I doing on this day last year, the year before, or even in 2015? It’s a question I cannot give up answering, even if I wanted to.

There are some dates where this is less of a game and more like picking at a scab. And there are some dates in real life that, even without my phone, I can tell you exactly where I was the year before.

One of those dates has just taken place. Since 2022, each year I’ve worked the Festival of Writing at Jericho Writers. It’s the best part of my working year; hundreds of writers gathering in one place for the weekend - the only time I’m not stuck behind a screen.

But on the run up to my first Festival in 2022, I thought I wouldn’t be able to make it. I was going to be too heavily pregnant to work. I remember that exact thought when those two pink lines appeared on the pregnancy test - amogst many other, less hopeful, thoughts. I quickly counted ahead; I would be due that weekend, or maybe the weekend after. Either way, a Festival was not where I would be.

The anticipation, after three and a half years of being very much not pregnant - despite all best efforts of not just my husband and I but a team of doctors, nurses and specialists - was delicious, and terrifying.

Then I miscarried.

Because that pregnancy, and the pregnancy after, happened naturally by some sort of miracle, every medical professional around us assured it would happen again. And I believed them - wholeheartedly. So much so that I was absolutely convinced by the time the Festival arrived, I would be pregnant again. I had to be.

And yet, that first weekend September 2022 came around - the date I would have, might have, should have, become a mother - and I was firmly not pregnant.

I tried not to think about it too much - the other life I could have been living - that weekend as we unpacked name tags and got the registration desk ready. But then my phone rang with the name of my old best friend who was due to have her second baby any day now - at least, I guessed it was any day. I didn’t know her due date; we didn’t talk anymore. When you lose a baby - and another - as your friends have theirs, it can be hard to think of anything to say.

Still, when I saw her name, I rushed out into a quiet room to answer.

Hello?

Oh, hi, sorry. I didn’t mean to call, I must have pressed it by accident…You’re still in my favourites.

I was once her favourite.

I was going to text you though, she said and I thought about how once our messages had flowed back and forth with the regularity of my breath. I was thinking about you this weekend… I know it must be hard… the date.

She had remembered. But I had not wanted to. I babbled about being so busy working it kept my mind off it. We hung up; and we never really spoke again. Not as friends, not as anything.

Later that day, over 300 writers flocked through the doors and I tried to not think about any of it.

But then, the first of a kind woman who had read about my miscarraiges in my latest book stopped me at the registration desk, a line of impatient people behind her. She told me how she had many miscarraiges before her daughters were born. I’m sorry that happened to you, I said, not wanting to acknowledge - here, in my work clothes, when I was supposed to be in charge - my own pain. Later, this would happen again. And again.

These women were being kind, they were saying Me too but I had not been prepared for the acute pain I would feel at doing this in person; of people literally witnessing my hurt in real life. I was comfortable on the page; I’m comfortable writing this. So of course people thought I would be comfortable talking to them. I was not.

I stayed sober the whole weekend, the red sticker on my t-shirt warning I was not happy with hugging or touching - a covid precaution because I had more IVF coming up, and I was convinced that a bout of covid, or a drop of alcohol, would ruin it all.

Not that it would matter, in the end, because we went on have two more goes at IVF - covid and alcohol free - and they both failed.

Roll onto Festival of Writing 2023, this time in London. A new date. The end of October - more than a year on from 2022 and yet, and yet. Still no pregnancy. It had been seven months since our last IVF attempt. We had since sold our house with plans to move to Cornwall and uproot our entire lives, only to change our minds and stay put at the last minute. The year had taken its toll and as I checked people into the Festival, I thought of the baby that should be a year-old by now; the baby who still did not exist.

Later, another kind woman, another question.

Can I ask, how is the IVF going?

I just shook my head, tightly. Not good, I said, not good.

I was more prepared this time, I knew to smile but keep my answers short so that people would move on quickly. I knew I was not able to talk about this in real life, not unless I wanted to descend into the what if, what if, what ifs.

This brings us to Festival of Writing 2024. Almost two whole years since I thought I’d be too heavily pregnant - or indeed, in labour - to make the trip. I should have a two-year old by now. There is always that thought, walking alongside me. My ghost child; my ghost life. The one where my childhood friends are still my friends instead of people with toddlers that I no longer know. Where my parents are the knackered grandparents they deserve to be. Where my husband is still a teacher, probably, and my last few books have not been written. Where I am not the MD of the company I love.

My ghost life is not always better, not in every way.

This time, no-one asks me the question. I’m glad. The flat stomach and glass of wine in hand might have been an indicator enough. Or perhaps by now, they realise, like I do, that it may never happen.

Sometimes, I think that’s okay.

Before I finish writing this, I take a look at my phone, type in today’s date and add the years past.

2023 me is lying in the park on a sunny day with my husband. 2022 me is absent except for a screenshot of a poem; it must have been a griefy day. 2021 me is out having dinner with her friends; fresh from surgery, the first time leaving the house in weeks. 2020 me is smiling in a selfie for my mum, make-up free in a field after work lit by the sunset; before anything bad had happened. 2019 me is screenshotting an abusive message from an old boss. 2018 me is with my old best friend. 2017 is at a fancy hotel, working at an event with people who have too much money. 2016 is holding a puppy that 2024 me does not recognise. 2015 me is taking pictures of Primrose, happy in the sunlight.

2025 me? Who knows. Who knows.

But I do know that whatever that picture looks like, I’ll be okay.

Sophie x

When my first book (All My Lies) came out, I went all out on self-promo. I had signed a (less-than-ideal) deal with one of the biggest publishers out there; I was elated. And realistic. I knew I was a very small fish in a very big pond and that meant that in all likelihood, there was every chance even my own editor would forget my publication day (in the end, she did not). So I planned ahead. I did everything I could to razzle-dazzle the world into believing mine was a book worth reading.

If you’re not in the publishing world, you may not understand this. But for those of us inside the industry, you learn very quickly to recognise who publishing has deemed ‘worth reading’.

These books get:

• Sprayed edges (a term four years ago I lived in blissful ignorance of)

• A book tour (a real life one, not a blog tour)

• A bookish celebrity raving about their book (see: Marian Keyes, Elizabeth Day, etc)

• A publication gift from their publisher (often large bunch of flowers, personalised biscuits, champagne etc)

• Lots and lots of hype - the author will be on every podcast, every festival panel, every radio show

• Most of all, the author will exude a joyful sense of wonder about seeing their book out there in the world, all time, everywhere and will thank people profusely for this…

Eventually, hype leads to readers. Your average reader won’t necessarily know the book they’re seeing is part of a big campaign - this is where people think things are ‘word of mouth best-sellers’ when actually, a spot has been bought and paid for by the publishers in WH Smiths across the country, tube ads are running, fancy proof packages have been sent to every media outlet out there - and so eventually, the book becomes ‘known’ even if people don’t recall where they know it from. And that hype is built from the moment the book is sold to the publisher - you see your big Bookseller announcement, you see your fancy proofs, and you know - this is the one we’re all betting on. It builds and builds and builds. If all of this happens for your book, this is the dream.

But anyway, I didn’t have any of it for my debut.

But what I did have was an unrelenting sense of optimism and never-ending energy.

So, I embarked on my ‘razzle-dazzle ‘em’ campaign. I created my own snazzy proof boxes with personalised wine bottles, chocolates, and a hand-written note to bloggers. I said yes to every and all interview, podcast, and opportunity to talk about my book. I worked with bloggers to organise a cover reveal. I arranged an online book launch (lockdown!) and invited my publisher and agent along, then hosted it at Jericho Writers - knowing that hopeful authors-to-be would show up if they thought they’d have chance to ask publishing questions to the gatekeepers. I flyered my neighbours (literally). Anything I could do to push the book, I did.

I created the illusion of being a book that the publishing industry deemed ‘worth reading’ and I honestly had a lovely time doing it.

Did it work?

Yes, I think it did. My sales, in the grand scheme of publishing, were not what you’d call great (or possibly even ‘good’). But to me, they were fantastic. More than that though, people seemed to recognise the book and me as an author and I genuinely felt like I’d had the experience I’d dreamed of as a debut author.

Now, bear in mind that I was not a lead title, or even a mid-list title. I was barely a title, really, on their list. I think if I’d not done all of the above, there’s every chance my book would have sold a couple of hundred copies and been deemed a total failure.

And here’s the secret about All My Lies that at the time spurred me onto razzle-dazzle…

(whispers)

The book never even came out in any physical format.

When I signed the publishing deal, I knew this was a possibility. But it sounded like a slim one; they wanted to publish the book in all formats (eBook, paperback, and audio) but didn’t promise it. And when things aren’t promised in publishing, I’ve learned they never happen (sometimes, even when they are).

But anyway, 99% of people do not realise All My Lies was a digital-only release.

Was this because I was so disgustingly happy with the book that it felt ‘more’ than a digital-only release? Was it because all of pictures show me lying on piles of my own book cover which are actually postcards, not books at all? Razzle-dazzle, baby.

When to stop the razzle-dazzle

It’s been three years since my debut was published and today my fourth book is out.

I don’t think I want to keep razzle-dazzling you. I just want to tell you a little bit about it, have you to read some, and maybe that will be enough to get you to buy it. So, here we go.

What Stays Unsaid is about two best friends who are whisked away to the remote Dartmoor moors for their surprise joint hen-do. The only problem is the friends haven’t spoken for months and if they admit this to their other friends, they’ll have to explain why. And that is going to be a big, big problem.

Over the weekend, the brides-to-be realise the secrets they’re keeping are going to come out. And they’re not the only guests with things to hide. As a dark storm brews across the moors and tensions heighten, will they all survive the fall out?

If you like the sound of that, you can read the prologue for What Stays Unsaid below. And of course, if you like the prologue, you can buy the book (in paperback! and audio! and ebook!) here.

WHAT STAYS UNSAID

PROLOGUE

There is a moment where she almost saves her friend. Her feet inch forward, slipping in the mud, rain cascading down her face so heavily she could almost claim she was blinded by the downpour, that she couldn’t have known what was happening, couldn’t have done anything. But she can see, she does know, and she could have done everything. Instead, she watches as the inky black water engulfs her friend, her long hair tangling behind her. She rubs at the scratches on her wrist.

‘Help me!’ the final waterlogged words ring out across the night, and that’s the second moment where she could have done something, where the shock of the fall – the push – could have been broken, and she could have chosen to step forward on the bank, lean down against the cold, slippery mud and reach out to her friend. She could have pulled her out of the water, she could have done something, done anything to help, to stop her from drowning.

But she doesn’t. She watches, she steps back, she lets the dark cloak of the night hide her face so that she doesn’t have to look her friend in the eye as she lets her die.

When the screaming stops, when the water has won, she steps into the moonlight.

She has never noticed before how loud the night is in the wild but now she hears it all. Owls hooting, foxes screeching, rodents scratching at the undergrowth. She should be scared; she’s out here completely alone, vulnerable and defenceless. She waits for the fear to come, but she feels nothing. She’s soaked through and shivering, but her mind is still.

She takes out her phone and calls the only person she can think of who will understand what she’s done.

‘Luke,’ she whispers into the darkness. ‘I need your help.’

Thanks, as always, for reading.

Sophie x

Order your copy of What Stays Unsaid

Turns out, I’m not very good at keeping up a regular Substack. To be honest, I’m not very good at keeping a regular anything lately.

In my last post, I wrote about the things I was trying to do this year. One of them was go running every week. Have I? Nope1. Partly, this has been down to experiencing a period of about five weeks where I had a recurring and incredibly annoying cold and it felt rather stupid to be outside running in the rain when I was waking up wheezing every day. But partly it was because once I stopped, it was very hard to get started again.

I’ve found it’s the same with writing…

I’m currently trying to write my fifth book. It’s one I’ve been really excited to start for over a year - since I sold the idea to my publisher hoping they’d want that book to be the first in my new two-book deal. They didn’t. They wanted the other idea first. (Which is out in just over six weeks’ time, you can pre-order it here). This, of course, made me only love the other idea more. You always want what you can’t have, right?

And yet, now it’s time to write it, I’m finding it near impossible to get going.

I can be a very fast writer. In 2022, I had two books published within a few months of each other. That same year, my husband was diagnosed with a serious illness and was in and out of hospital, we had one failed round of IVF, two surprise pregnancies, and two devastating miscarriages. And yet, I never missed a deadline. I was editing one book (Keep Them Close), writing another (If They Knew) and working my (at the time, distinctly chaotic) day job at Jericho Writers.

Not long after If They Knew was published, I went on a podcast. The host asked how I’d managed to juggle two books in one go and I realised I actually had no idea. To be honest, I don’t remember a lot about that time at all. But I think, looking back, the books became a way of coping. They were the controllable thing in my otherwise totally out of control life.

When I used to be a singer many moons ago, I made friends with this quite whacky producer in Cornwall. I’d go to his house and we’d record bits and bobs, then he’d smoke a lot of weed until the early hours of the morning and tell me stories about all the musicians who ended up as cheese farmers (honestly, it’s a surprising amount). Once, he also told me he didn’t see how I’d ever make truly good music because I “wasn’t mad enough”.

I’ve thought about this a lot since he said it – mostly to tell myself what nonsense it is, I hate the idea of the tortured artist. Tet I have to admit that in 2022 – my most prolific writing year - I really did feel quite “mad2” and I think possibly, there was some truth in what he said. Maybe it is easier to be more creatively productive when your life, and brain, feels somewhat out of control.

I’ve not had a book out since 2022 and I’ve definitely not been able to get back into that intense writing and editing rhythm. Do I want to? Not really, no. I’m not an obsessive writer; I don’t get tetchy if I haven’t written for a few days. I love writing and I love having books published, but I love lots of things in my life and sometimes they feel more important to me. Right now, I don’t need to block everything out except me and an empty page and I think I prefer it this way.

I went on a weekend away with some writing friends recently (who also happen to be some of my favourite people in the world) with grand plans to get a chunk of my book written. But what actually happened was that I didn’t write a word until the day they all went home; I found a cafe, ordered some lunch and bashed out 1,500 words in an hour just before my parking ran out. If I’d done that every day we’d been away, I’d have gone home with six thousands words done. But I didn’t. Instead, I spent the weekend drinking too much wine, talking about everything from Caroline Calloway to Casualty, belting out Celine Dion in the kitchen and generally just feeling pretty great.

Would I feel better having spent the time writing? No, I don’t think so. I think sometimes what we need is a break3. I suppose my problem right now is knowing how to come back from that break and get started again.

But for now, I’ll keep trying to find my new rhythm. I know it’s not producing two books a year. Some days I think maybe it’s not producing anything at all4.

Sophie x

Every now and again I’ll have some book news to share and today is one of those days. I’ve been working on my fourth book for around a year and today my publisher has put it up for pre-order, which is very exciting, so I wanted to tell you a bit about it.

But first, here is the cover and the blurb…

You are invited to a surprise joint hen-do to celebrate our two brides, Alex and Millie

Location: Remote Dartmoor Farmhouse

Don't forget to RSVP and remember, watch what you say...

As friends gather for a hen weekend, they are all smiles, but cannot hide the web of tension that bubbles beneath the surface.

The group was forever broken by the devastating loss of their childhood friend, Becca. The prettiest and most powerful of them all, her absence lies at the heart of this fractured friendship.

Now, decades later, someone wants to expose the truth about what happened, and will stop at nothing to reveal the secrets long since buried.

As a dark storm gathers out on the moors, dangerous secrets and accusations threaten to explode between the group.

Will they all survive the fall-out?

OUT MAY 2024.

Pre-order now

I’ve been on a lot of hen-dos (ten in total!) over the last few years and always said I’d have to write a book about them one day, and so here it is. I’ve also learned an awful lot about what it takes to maintain tricky friendships in my 30s, and when to let things go. All of that is in this book and I really hope you enjoy it.

If you’ve never pre-ordered a book before, let me explain a little about how it helps authors. The goal for most authors is to be stocked widely in bookshops and, surprisingly, this is actually very difficult to make happen. Bookshops order in stock they think they can sell, and one way of them gauging this is how popular the book appears to be. If a book has a lot of pre-orders, they have confidence that the book will be widely sold and therefore order more copies.

So, if you’ve ever wondered about pre-ordering a book, please do! It helps us as authors massively and gives you a fun little postal surprise on release day (I regularly forget I’ve pre-ordered a book until it lands on my doormat and it’s always a very welcome surprise).

If you aren’t in a position to buy the book but would like to help me spread the word, please do share the cover reveal on social media which is also a huge help! You can download the image from this post or share my post from Instagram or Twitter.

That’s enough from me for now.

Ta’ta.

Sophie x

It’s been a while since I wrote and I found the longer I was away, the harder it became to imagine I had anything to say. But I do, I love to talk and I love to write even more. So here I am, back in your inbox. Hello!

I read something brilliant about self-confidence once. Don’t ask me who said it or where it was because I don’t know, but I shall paraphrase. It said the best way to gain confidence in yourself was to do the things you said you’d do. It was that simple. And I thought, of course it is. We all have that friend who we love but know we can’t really rely on to show up when they say they will, or perhaps show up at all. And most of us also have someone in our lives who we can count on no matter what; if they say they’ll do something or be somewhere, they will - no doubt about it. You know who you trust and value more from those two friendships.

So it makes sense that we should also feel this way about ourselves, too.

How often do you break your own promises? It’s something I’ve been actively working on for a while - saying to myself I’m going to do something, and simply doing it.

Here are the promises I’ll be trying to keep to myself for now:

1. No more black eyes

I have a black eye right now. It’s my first, and hopefully my only, black eye; I’ve had it for a week and it remains fairly black. I had no idea they lasted so long! I got it from dropping my phone onto my face at 7am in bed. Like most people, my days mostly begin with an unwanted alarm followed by a sleepy scroll through various social media. My black eye has convinced me this is no way to start my day and so from now on, no phone in bed (well, let’s be realistic. No phone immediately upon waking, I’m not Gwyneth Paltrow).

2. Keep running

I love running. Or jogging, really. I’m pretty slow and I don’t really like doing more than 5k in a go, but I’ve learned if I accept these facts then actually, I just love it. I’ve run on and off for years but always with the idea that I should be building up to getting faster and running for longer - at a minimum three times a week. Then, I’d push and push until I would hate it again. Interval running? Yuck. No thanks. Running every other day? Sigh. Do I have to?

In the last year, I’ve run pretty consistently twice a week, every week and haven’t gone over 5k once. I even did my first Parkrun (I was, quite furiously, beaten by an 11-year-old but I’ll get him next time).

So I’m still slow, still struggle to do more than twice a week but who cares. I’m happy. Less pressure = better me.

2. Stop following advice that doesn’t apply

I read a great resolution post by an author I like, Julie Owen Moylan, the other day. One of the resolutions was to only ever do one thing, with an example of she’s on on a dog walk, she wants to be on a dog walk, not also listening to a podcast.

Now, I walk my dog twice a day and I also use this time to listen to voicenotes from my friends and reply to them too. I don’t think I ever do a dog walk without a breathy, windy voicenote that my friends will reply back to like ‘where the hell are you walking it sounds like you’re in a storm’ (sorry about that). When I’m done with my voicenotes, I listen to podcasts or music.

I love all three of these activities - I love combining walking and talking, or walking and listening. Yet when I read this resolution from Julie, I thought ‘I must stop this immediately!’. I’ll do this often, hear someone is ‘giving up’ something and immediately think I need to as well, even if the thing they’re giving up brings me total joy and no issues.

Less of that this year, please.

3. No weird vibes

I’m not usually a sucker for an Instagram quote but I saw one the other day I loved here (and below).

It fed into another social media therapy-esque thing I saw on TikTok, the ‘let them’ theory which is basically saying, if someone is doing something you don’t like, let them. Stop trying to control others’ behaviour because you can’t.

I’ve spent a fair amount of energy and time on relationships that I wish now I’d simply applied the ‘let them’ theory to and will try my hardest to let it all go in 2024.

4. Write your line

My friend bought me a brilliant diary for Christmas where you write a line a day for five years. I love it. I love keeping diaries but have never managed a paper one before as the pressure to fill it is too much. So far, I’ve not missed a day and I’m going to try my best to keep going.

Look, I know it’s late to be talking about resolutions and you’re probably all new year’sd out but if you’d like to tell me your hopes for this year, I’d love to hear them.

I’ve got quite a lot of book things coming up soon so my next post will probably be about that - so if you’re here for the author things, worry not! It’s coming.

Till then.

Sophie x

What a long month November was. Alongside editing my fourth book, I’ve been kept very busy at my other job working for Jericho Writers.

Earlier this year, I was promoted to Managing Director. Ooooh, fancy and grown up. I was, and am, super duper proud to become Jericho’s MD because – for the first time in life – I can honestly say I love my job. I’ve worked some really shitty jobs – well, in truth, I’ve worked some otherwise fine jobs for some really shitty bosses1. Now, I am the really shitty boss!

I’m actually trying really hard not to be the stereotypical shitty ‘boss’ and in lots of ways, this is easy because there are so many aspects of my life and personality which don’t fit the MD mould. And yet, these very same things make me question whether I’m actually cut out to be a boss at all when I let the doubts creep in.

Here are some of the reasons that on my worst days I tell myself I’m not fit for the job:

1. I drive an old banger

We had a meeting at Soho Farmhouse the other day2. As one of my team arrived in her very grown up car, I cringed. To get out of my own car, I was going to have to roll down the window, reach my hand out and open the door from the outside. Oh yes, my car door does not currently open from the inside. Very, Soho Farmhouse, right?

Now, I am not a car person. I live in the land of the Landrover (and Rangies for the really silly) and the only time I ever consider this to be something I should desire is when I’m bouncing down the potholed lanes of the Cotswolds as my little Corsa’s suspension groans in agony. But generally, I don’t care about cars.

And yet, as I rocked up to this meeting at this silly private members’ club in my battered Corsa with its non-opening door, there was a loud voice in my head screaming, ‘DO NOT LET YOUR TEAM SEE THAT YOU STILL DRIVE A BANGER; YOU ARE THE MD FOR GOD SAKE’.

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2. I am overly expressive

One of my earliest managers was highly impressive and highly impassive. I dreamed of growing up to be just like her. I never saw her angry or unsure and she definitely did not cry. She was a woman operating a high level job in the police with two young children so I am 100% certain she felt the pressure, but you’d never know it as one of her staff (coincidentally, her staff could be regularly found crying in the kitchen).

I did grow up but did not become like her. I was once told by a previous CEO that I had a highly expressive face (this was not said kindly, it was in the same breath as telling me I was not ‘the right spirit-guide’ for their company as I could not stop my ‘highly expressive face’ from showing them exactly how I felt about their batshit suggestions).

Now, I finish my days at work and tell myself to show less emotion the next day (and to swear just a touch less) but alas, the next day comes and that tired expressive face comes with me.

3. I don’t ski

I have skied, once. I was 14, I had just joined a new high school which – despite not being private – felt about 100 times posher than I actually was. So when I signed up to the year 10 ski-trip, I begged my mum to buy me a Quicksilver ski-suit (is that what you call them? Ski-suits? Ski wear? Not posh, so don’t know) despite it being about £180. I promised I would wear it ‘all the time’ as if I was going to go onto become a person who skis.

How fitting because now, as an MD, surely I ski? It is a very MD-like activity! The other MDs and I chortle about whether the ‘ski’ is better in Zermatt or Aspen3 while throwing sideways glances at the peasants among us who ask ‘Where's Verbier?’, the fools.

Except, I definitely don’t ski, and I probably never will.

4. I don’t ‘look’ like an MD

We did our Festival of Writing in London recently. It is my favourite thing we do; hundreds of writers gathering in one place for the weekend to attend workshops with our favourite authors, editors and agents.

I perform the job of general lacky and welcomer at these events. You’ll see me getting coffees, chatting with delegates, chasing the catering staff shouting ‘THESE PEOPLE NEED THEIR VEGAN OPTION!’ and generally doing whatever needs to be done.

This year, I was aware I was attending as ‘the MD’ a fact which seemed to surprise many of the people I spoke to while there. Was it because I was wearing a baggy white t-shirt, jeans and a pair of well-worn trainers and generally looked more like a plumber?

I’ve been told I give big ‘tall people’ energy through Zoom calls, so perhaps it’s just that when I show up in all my 5’’3 glory in real life, it is somewhat perplexing.

Maybe next year, I need to wear a suit, severe glasses and some platforms so that people don’t look quite so shocked when I tell them I’m the MD.

5. I don’t have a kitchen diner (or, a kitchen island)

I live in the Cotswolds. Ooooh, fancy again! Now, I like my house – but we bought it almost 9 years ago and definitely thought we’d have moved by now because when you’re young you always imagine a proper grown up version of you with a kitchen diner.

But, I don’t have that. My dining room table is in my living room because my kitchen is definitely too small for a table and we don’t even have a dining room.

A kitchen diner with a big kitchen island and bi-fold doors 100% feels like the sort of house you think of an MD living in.

6. My personal life isn’t a big mysterious secret

You know those people you work with who show up every day for 10 years and then leave with you knowing not a single thing about them? I am not one of those. If you work with me, you’ll know my pets’ names, my husband’s name, and how much I love Taylor Swift within your first hour.

I tried to be the mysterious work colleague and for a little while I succeeded, until I couldn’t anymore.

When I started fertility investigations and realised I would need surgery a few years ago, I didn’t tell anyone at Jericho. I had to take a couple of weeks off for surgery and attend multiple hospital appointments over six months. I was deeply secretive about the reasons behind this and am quite sure my boss at the time thought I was dying.

I didn’t tell them when I started IVF and the hormones sent me a little crazy. I didn’t tell them when I was in so much pain after egg retrieval that I couldn’t actually move. And I definitely didn’t tell them when the first IVF failed the same weekend I had to dial into Saturday and Sunday morning meetings to monitor Black Friday sales targets, all while totally heartbroken.

It felt important to me to keep this personal failure away from the image I’d built as a competent, confident person at my job.

Then, I had my first miscarriage. This time, I did tell them. I couldn’t not; I felt like every façade I’d built up over the last few years had crumbled and there was no more pretending to be had.

I took a little bit of time off and came back with my whole team knowing what had happened; I felt totally exposed. How could I manage people who knew I was so totally broken?

But I did. Being open and vulnerable didn’t harm my career at all. I wish I’d known from the start that it was okay to bring your whole self to work. Maybe if I’d seen it before from my own previous big bosses then it wouldn’t have felt so scary.

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Now, some of the things on this list are slightly silly. I know in reality not all MDs have fancy cars and live in fancy houses and go skiing, but a lot of them do. Does not having all of that make me a worse MD? Does my team knowing I am very much human make me less of a leader?

I don’t think so, not really. Yes, sometimes it would be easier to retain a veil of detachment with my staff but I think – I hope – that being someone who doesn’t have their shit totally together and isn’t afraid for people to see the cracks means that I am a more empathetic and more human manager. It probably also helps that I’m not rocking up to meetings in my Rangie, freshly suntanned from my quarterly skiing trip, too because honestly, no-one likes that guy.

So, I’ll keep trying to be a good boss and in the meantime, maybe also try fixing my poor old banger.

Sophie x

I’m trying to finish the structural edits for my fourth book at the moment and I’m being absolutely plagued by the ending. So it’s not surprise really, that I’ve been thinking an awful lot about when and where a story should end.

Last night in a break from editing-hell, I watched the Gilmore Girls episode that ends with Lane finally returning from South Korea excited about the new music she’s found there and Rory returning from her first visit to Harvard excited about her future. (From September onwards, I am always watching Gilmore Girls.)

It’s a totally joyous scene filled with youthful excitement and promise, but my broken little heart panged as I thought, ‘They have no idea how their lives will end up; Laine does not end up as a musician and Rory does not end up as Christiane Amanpour’.

It's really hard for me not think like this - and not just about the Gilmore Girls (I’m not that obsessed). Whenever I look our wedding photos, my mind can’t help skipping forward. There we are, smiling away, surrounded by people who love us but the voice in my head goes ‘If only they knew how things would end up…’.

That happy smiling couple did not know then that five years down the line they’d be regulars at the local hospital courtesy of various fertility woes and other unexpected and unpleasant health issues, or that they’d be one of the unlucky 1 in 5 couples that suffers baby loss, or that some of the friends stood by their side as they said their vows would no longer be in their lives.

But who is to say that is how things have ‘ended up’ for us? Or for anyone?

When we meet Lane and Rory again in the series finale, Lane is a tired mother-of-two whose dreams of a being a rockstar are long dead. But what if when her kids fly the nest she picks up those drumsticks again and becomes the world’s most famous 50-year-old drummer? Rory, meanwhile, is pregnant by her worst ex-boyfriend yet with no career to be heard of, but who says she won’t still go onto be Christiane Amanpour**? Sadly, we will never know because that’s where the series ends.

The good thing about being a real life humans and not fictional characters like Rory and Lane, is that our endings are not decided by overworked, underpaid, chain-smoking writers. We get to write our own stories and that means we get to say what our endings are and when they happen.

In any good story, before the ending comes the ‘All is lost’ moment where your main character has tried and tried and tried but ultimately failed and lost everything.

I’ve realised that often, in thinking about my own life story, I confuse my ‘All is lost’ moment with my ending.

Right now, you might say we are in our ‘All is lost’ moment. We are the couple that people talk about as ‘so unlucky’ (often with a little tut, so you must imagine the phrase with a tut before, tut, so unlucky for true effect).

But this isn’t our ending.

So, I’m going to try and not to look at our wedding photos with sadness and see only the friendships that didn’t last forever, the hopeful smiles that feel like a joke waiting to happen and the loss in our futures.

I’m not going to confuse my ‘All is lost’ moment with my finale, I’m going to wait in hope for a better ending.

And if you too are currently in your ‘All is lost’ moment, I hope you can do the same.

It’s taken me a while to write anything here because once a few of you signed up I thought ‘Hmm I really have to actually do a newsletter now’, and at that same point everything in my life seemed to double in intensity (see earlier reference to hellish edits).

But I hope you enjoyed my delayed efforts today – please do leave me a comment if so. I’d love to know if you too suffer from worrying about how you’ve ‘ended up’ when life hasn’t ended at all.

And if you haven’t watched Gilmore Girls and don’t get any of my references, my LORD I am jealous of you. You have it all ahead of you! Go and watch it immediately, please.

Sophie

x

*Eagle-eyed Gilmore Girls fan will notice that this image is not, in fact, from the scene I am describing but there really was no good shot of it, so I took some artistic license.

** Don’t come at me with Rory hate, I’ll hear none of it. I fully believe she will still go on to live a very happy and fulfilled life.

I’ve been a published author for almost two years now and since well before that I’ve told myself ‘You really should start an email newsletter’. But I never did, obviously. What if I started one and no-one read it? I thought it would be so utterly embarrassing to try to do something and publicly fail.

Which is funny really, because the common theme of my life for the last four years has been trying desperately hard and failing.

If you’ve read my books or follow me on social media you’ll know I have been trying awfully hard to have a baby. I’ve tried pretty much everything and got so close to succeeding only to then fall at the last hurdle.

Until I turned 30, I will admit that everything I tried to do, worked. I tried to buy a house, I bought one. I tried to get an MA, I got one. I tried to find a job I love, I found it. I tried to write a book, I wrote one (then, many more). I tried to get my books published, and they all have been.

I’ve always tried really hard when I wanted something but here’s the thing - trying hard and being rewarded for it is really, really easy in comparison. I’ve discovered that trying and trying and trying with no reward is pretty awful, actually.

But still, we try.

This Substack is going to be all about trying. Because I’m trying to do things all the time. Some of them, I will succeed at (I finally started a Substack - see I can do it!) and some of them I won’t. But I’m going to write about them all anyway. Because if the last few years have taught me anything it is how to keep trying even when it feels like the most difficult thing in the world. And I’d be honoured if you would like to read my trying as I go.

I won’t bombard you with emails and I shall try to be regular with my writing (trust me, I’ll try).

See you soon.

Sophie x