Tag Archives: Ethersay

Pitch/Blurb for Ethersay Revealed

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I’m pleased to reveal my pitch/blurb for my forthcoming novel, Ethersay. Currently pitching my novel to literary agents, fingers crossed!

The day after the referendum, my life fell apart…

The day after the Scottish independence referendum in 2014, Glaswegian Yes activist Rebecca Owen decides to run away. After being involved in a car accident she is knocked unconscious and when she wakes, she finds herself inexplicably marooned on an isolated Scottish island, Ethersay.

Suffering from memory loss, Rebecca finds herself drawn into the island’s mysteries, particularly those surrounding the strange disappearance of a young woman, Delilah Berry, whose fate seems to be inextricably intertwined with her own. As Rebecca draws closer to the truth about Delilah, she is forced to confront what happened to her in Glasgow, and everything she lost, with devastating consequences.

Woven across two timelines which draw together one woman’s experiences of remote island life and the climax of the Scottish referendum in Glasgow, Ethersay is a contemporary, literary novel about the search for truth, but also the pain of remembering.

Readers, reviews and a short update

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I was really pleased to learn that the Historical Novel Society has reviewed my first novel, The Gisburn Witch. If you’d like to read their review, please follow the link:

The Gisburn Witch

It’s been an encouraging couple of months, with the readership of both The Gisburn Witch and its successor, A Woman Named Sellers, growing steadily. It’s been lovely to get feedback and reviews from readers concerning both novels. I love how so many people can read the same story but take so many different things from it. And of course, getting a review from the Historical Novel Society is the icing on the cake!

I’m conscious that since I released A Woman Named Sellers at the end of May, I have been pretty quiet. It has, of course, been the holiday time of year and I have been spending some time with my family. I’ve also been working hard on a couple of new writing projects, mainly focusing on a contemporary novel which I have called Ethersay, set in 2014 in the aftermath of the Scottish independence referendum.

Ethersay is a real challenge for me, a complete departure from anything I have done previously, both in terms of style and subject matter. It has been quite liberating to get to work on something which doesn’t require an incredible amount of academic research, but at the same time, it has been quite a daunting experience to write something conjured completely in my own imagination, characters who are entirely fictional, and an ending which is not at all guided by the constraints of historical fact. I’ve still a long way to go, but I am really enjoying writing this and excited to see the end result – when I get there!

For those who enjoy my historical writing – fear not, there will be more! I spent my holidays this year in the Cotswolds in England and passed the time doing one of my absolute favourite activities – visiting castles and stately homes. As it turns out, it wasn’t all just for good fun – some of these visits have lit a few sparks in my mind in terms of story ideas for historical novels to come, so watch this space!