A nice surprise!

 It's always so lovely to find a new review on Amazon. 

Most of my books only have a few reviews but every single one of them is genuine and not a paid-for service. 

So check out Invisible now. 

Come talk to me about my latest book releases.

Tickets can be purchased here or via Facebook.

 

New book release.

Well I promised you big things this year, and I like to keep my word. 

Girl Displaced is a book I thought I might never actually finish. I started it several years ago and I think I only got as far as the first few paragraphs before I had to put it aside to write a film for a client. When I managed to get back to it I completed the first few pages before I had to put it aside again. 

It was years before I returned, just last year. I was determined to sit down and write it. So I cleared my schedule for a few weeks and wrote hard and fast. The result is the book you see today. 

Girl Displaced marries two worlds I know so well - Birmingham and the Ayrshire coast - and tells a tale of a girl who no longer rightfully belongs in either. I hope you enjoy it. x

New year, old me...

Well 2025 has started with a roar and I'm working as hard as I ever do. But more news on that later. 

 Here's the first new book for this year. I hope you enjoy it. You can find it on Amazon here. 

AWARD NOMINATION

I'm delighted to announce that this sweet little short has been nominated for an award by Midlands Movies. I loved creating and writing the story. 

Just James

James, somewhere on the autistic spectrum, is heartbroken when the object of his admiration doesn't reciprocate his feelings. 

Want a free read of a chapter?

 Have a free read on me. Click here.

CURSED - out now!

 I'm delighted to tell you that Cursed is now available to buy. You can find it on Amazon or contact me to request a signed copy. 

SALE! SALE! Grab a bargain...

Sale Sale Sale... 

Jigsaw Girl is currently 99p, for a limited time only. 

Get your copy now!

About the release of The Boy Who Rescues Pigeons

 A lot of people have asked me why it's taken me so long to release The Boy Who Rescues Pigeons. The answer is simple and yet exceptionally emotionally complex. 

I wrote the book back in 2009 or thereabouts and edited it ready for publication. But I didn't publish it. I couldn't. I wasn't emotionally ready. But I am now. 

The story centres around Lucas Reverential Pertwee - an unusual boy in an unusual situation. Lucas finds and takes in an injured pigeon and in caring for and helping to heal the bird, he manages to emotionally heal himself. The character of Lucas is based upon me and my eldest child, Ryan. We are both raw, bleeding hearts when it comes to animals. 

But the core of the story is actually about my dad. Or rather my step-dad, Gerald McCammick. He took me in as his daughter when I was six and strove to provide a physically safe environment for me. I make the distinction here because ours was not always an easy relationship. Both of us were emotionally scarred by life and there are things that regardless of how hard you try, you never fully recover from. So we trundled along with the occasional drunken rage on his part and teenage truculent slamming of doors on mine. 

I'm not seeking to trivialise these moments. They were part of our lives. A big part. But they also never really shook the bedrock that our made-family was founded upon. We both knew we loved each other. 

Of course there is much more to this story than I've put down upon this page. But that is for another time. Or perhaps never. 

When I wrote the book I told my dad that I was dedicating it to him. He just smiled and said, "Oh aye, very good Carmen." But I know how much it meant to him. It didn't matter that I couldn't bring myself to publish it for so long. We both knew the dedication was forged in each line of text I'd written. Publishing the book wouldn't give it any more validation than it existing in the first place. And when my dad died a few years ago, it didn't matter that I still hadn't brought out the book. The time wasn't yet right. 

So what made the time right now? I don't honestly know, except that deep inside I recognised the change. I'm 56... and six. I'm still that little girl. I still rescue pigeons. 

The Boy Who Rescues Pigeons is available from June 1st, in time for ordering for Father's Day. Take a look at all my books here.

x

A time to heal...

I haven't blogged for a few months. To be honest I've been  too raw. 

The last time I posted on here, things were looking great. One of my latest films had garnered BFI Network support, and we were just about to go on holiday to Crete for a family wedding. The future seemed rosy...

But like all things in life, there were events lurking around the corner - things I wasn't yet aware of. One of them was that my beloved Rottweiler had terminal cancer. 

She'd had a limp for a few weeks before I had it investigated. Earlier in the year she'd tripped over her own paws when chasing a squirrel, and had limped for a week or so. Second time around, I assumed the previous injury had flared up, even though I hadn't witnessed her doing anything to cause it. 

But the x-ray told a different story. There was a huge tumour on her left shoulder and shadows in her lungs, indicating that the cancer had already metastasised. My shock and horror on hearing this was profound. I couldn't believe that my sweet dog was so bravely and uncomplainingly suffering through this horrific disease. 

The vet was right when she said the particular type of cancer she had was aggressive - within the week we were making another visit to the vet's to give Roxie a dignified end to her life. I held her and comforted her,  and knew that she had loved me just as enormously as I had loved her.  

We entered a period of grieving. I couldn't look at her beds, her toys and bowls... but I couldn't get rid of them either. To have lost my dad and both dogs within just less than 18 months, seemed too cruel. 

I came through the front door and there was no lolling tongue, no wagging tail to greet me. Just silence and too-clean floors. 

I came to hate the way the floors stayed clean when I vacuumed; to be repelled by the echoing silence in the kitchen when I entered first thing in the morning; to be heartbroken that I no longer got to kiss her goodnight before I headed up to bed. My heart was broken. 

And then something happened. 

I decided to foster. Not to adopt, but to take on and try to heal a dog that was as broken as me, one whose spirit had been crushed by the sheer force of its former bad luck. 

So I contacted a rescue centre. After the home check, I explained that I would take the dog that cowered in the corner of its kennel, the dog that would greet no-one, the one that no-one wanted because it was just too broken...

They gave me Beauty. A street dog from Bosnia that's terrified of people and who refused to come anywhere near me or anyone else. 

With only one eye and a large scar on her side that looks like a burn mark, it's easy to imagine that she lost her eye through some deliberate act of cruelty. But she can't say and I'll never know. 

What I do know is that she has a lot of love to give, now that she's becoming so used to us. And I think that as much as I'm helping her, she's helping me too. 

Who knows, maybe we'll both emerge stronger from this experience. Whether we do or not, I know one thing. There's a happy face and a wagging tail in the house again, and my heart is filled with hope. 

LYV - a short film, coming soon

Goodness me, we're halfway through the year - how did that happen? 

I'm aware that I haven't posted in absolutely ages... but there is good reason for that. I have been working on several very different film and TV scripts, so much so, that I haven't had a moment to myself. 

So, here's how you can help me get back on track. On Twitter, search for @Lyv_shortfilm. If you follow it you'll be able to see how things are progressing on this short, written by yours truly. 

I'll be filling you in on all the details as soon as I can. 

Happy reading! 

Happy New You.

How has 2016 been treating you so far? Hmm, I thought so!

We expect so much of a new year, a sweeping away of old anxieties and problems, a laying-out of destiny's store, allowing us to cherry-pick the brightest moments to hook our hope onto, as if with the coming of a new calendar, we can instantly become different people living different lives. Or is that just me?

I love New Year and really do see it as a chance for change. I admit that this is lunacy. After all if I haven't managed a change for a duration of the entire previous year, how do I expect to do it in the course of one evening, from one split-second to another, as the clock strikes midnight? And yet I do.

So this year I did something completely different to what I would normally do at midnight. Did it affect a change - well it's a little early to tell, but the initial signs aren't bad, although they are somewhat far from actually being good... Suffice it to say that I'm still working on that!

If you are a reader of this blog, you will know that I purposely moved house just before Christmas so that I could be here for New Year. I also bought myself a new bed and new things to go with it. Psychologically it was a great thing to do as well as being so much better than the old bed.

I am still clearing things out of my old house and into my new one but soon even that too will be ended and a new era will have fully begun. Change happens whether we want it to or not in life and for so long I have been desperate for change, even whilst I was the very one preventing it. So some deep self-analysis has been required. If this sounds maudlin, be reassured, it is the very opposite!

Tomorrow I will pick up with my latest book which is only about eight chapters from completion. I can't wait to get stuck back into my writing.

So in the meantime, whilst you are waiting for news of the latest book,  you can always check out my Owners series or Split Decision by clicking on the links to the right of here.

Happy Reading! x

Saving Grace

There's a soundtrack that's running through my head. It goes a little like this...

"Where do I begin
To tell the story of how great a love can be?
The true love story
That is true of you and me?...

Where do I start?"

Do you recognise it? It is the theme from the film Love Story. Perhaps the words are a little wrong but the sentiment isn't.

And yet the story I'm working on isn't a love story - it's the exact opposite in fact. It's a story about how one little girl is striving to cope with the breakdown of her parents' marriage. But the sentiment of that song is what is bursting forth from her heart and it has impaled me, as her creator, with its hurt.

Poor Grace is utterly, emotionally lost. I only hope she can find her way out of the wilderness and into the light...

Hello!


I am now on Chapter 3 of my newest novel. Its working title is The Plan but that will no doubt change as the story progresses.


It is a little more introspective than I thought it would be but I 'get' the character now and I see where she is coming from. Some of you may identify with her...she is all of us and each and every woman that we pass in the street without really noticing. That woman who once was a person before life and circumstances sucked the joie de vivre from her existence...Let's just say she is about to get it back in a major way.


Anyway, for your delectation here is a little bit from Chapter 3. No doubt by the end it will be elaborated on and changed beyond recognition but here it is in the raw:-

She refilled the dogs’ water bowls and gave them both a treat but when her hands reached automatically for the biscuit barrel she pulled them back as if stung. She had seen him not so long ago. He hadn’t seen her though, he was too wrapped up in the woman by his side. And of course the new woman was everything she was not…slim, youthful, vibrant, childfree and without a care in the world. If Suzie could have placed a bet on it, she would have bet that her knickers were hot bubblegum pink and that her bikini line had follicles which had been beaten into submission.

She had frozen when she had seen them, arm in arm wandering around the shops as if the reality of them had turned her to stone. That thought had brought another, unkinder, one as companion. In Arabic countries they stone women like her, she had thought.