The Grand Plan

Today I'm editing yet another book before I publish it. It's called In The Darkness Between Worlds and I'm enjoying reading through it after having written it about two years ago and not touched it since, as I've been too busy. 

Deciding to take my books back from publishers and to republish them myself has been a real roller-coaster. I've learned a lot, mostly how NOT to try to manipulate certain websites and software. But that's a different story. 

You may know that I'm compelled to write by the stories that bubble out of me, and that I write books as well as for film and TV. But what you probably don't know is my Grand Plan. 

And I have capitalised Grand Plan for a very good reason. It is the thing which has driven me since I was a child - a burning desire to help animals in need. I want to use my sales to be able to fund charities and change the world for the better. It's my deepest desire. 

I'm not interested in material possessions. I never have been. And if you've ever seen me driving around in my old battered car, you'll know the truth of that. For me, riches come in the form of a satisfied soul. So I'm using my profits to fund rescues and to alleviate pain and suffering in animals. 

So why am I making a song and dance of this? Not for adulation or any reason other than to point something out. I'm not asking anything of you. I'm not asking you to send money or take action. 

BUT if you are a reader and you were intending to buy a new book, please consider one of  mine. 

You'll get a great book and I'll be another step closer to helping another animal in need. So we'll both benefit. 

Happy reading! x

Merry Christmas!

Hello again readers!

We are fast approaching Christmas and it's going to be a very different one for us. Not only do we have a different dog in the house ( one who despite all her nervousness and strangeness, is weirdly indifferent to the Christmas tree and decorations) but I'm feeling as if we are a little thin on the ground.

As you may know from reading my blog, we have had lots of losses over the past two years, and with my eldest now away at Uni, I feel somewhat diminished, smaller in myself. Having taken my third child to some college interviews recently, and with the middle one starting to think about universities, it's clear I'll soon have to face 'empty nest syndrome'.

It doesn't seem that long ago that I was dropping my youngest at nursery, and I wonder what happened to all the intervening years. Inside my head I'm still a young woman. The exterior of me tells a different story, I'm afraid.

So I've made some major decisions. I'm the sort of person who likes to take stock of their lives and I've come to realise that I need make a move towards vegetarianism. I was veggie for two whole years about 28 years ago. I'll admit I found it hard going.

But back then there wasn't the choice of vegetarian foods there is today. Back then it was soya mince or nothing. The other problem was and still is, that I don't like potatoes and I actually don't like many vegetables, other than salad leaves and broccoli... kinda makes it difficult to have any variety.

Nevertheless I'm going to cut down on meat with a view to becoming totally vegetarian in time. So - wish me luck. I think it's the right thing to do, especially as my body gets older and needs more nutrition and less rubbish, and from a moral viewpoint.

I'll let you know how I get on.

Happy reading!

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. 

Goodbye to Tia

I have been avoiding this blog. Dreading the writing of it, for I know what it will be about.

I can only hope that it will be cathartic.

A couple of weeks ago, I had my beloved old dog put to sleep. Tia was 15 and a half, and had become increasingly frail over the preceding months, and the inevitable could no longer be delayed.

I'm writing this post with tears streaming down my face, such is the weight of my loss. And yet, the pain is almost nothing compared to how my soul would bleed on the times I saw her standing in the middle of the room, lost in some canine dementia, unaware of who I was, or how much she was loved. It broke my heart and still does.  

For more than two years, since her first stroke, I had told myself that the day of her demise was coming, that perhaps she wouldn't just pass away in her sleep, but that I'd be forced to make the terrible decision that all animal-lovers dread.


But still, every morning she would greet me with tail wagging, even though her cataracts must have made me look fuzzy to her. She had also grown progressively deaf during the last couple of years, and it pained me to think that she couldn't even take comfort in the familiarity of my voice in those last weeks and months.


And the parallels with her decline and that of my aged father have been most cruel. To see someone you love recoil from you in terror when you try to hold their hand... well the particular agony of that is almost indescribable.

So it was that I came to be saying goodbye to my faithful dog and packing up my father's house all in the space of two days. Honestly, I was broken. Utterly and completely bereft.

I shunned my friends - they didn't and still don't know what to say to me, how to help me. And in truth I'm not that sure I want to be helped.

Mine is a particularly strange scenario. Always more in tune with animals than with people, I have a natural affinity with them that isn't matched in my interactions with humans. Not that I don't like people, but to say they worry me, is probably the best description I could give to explain how I feel.

Animals don't worry me. They approach me with unsubtle abandon. Unknown cats in the street will sidle up to me, allow themselves to be picked up and petted and once put back down, will often walk some way with me on my path, before we part company. I have been called a witch in the past for this affinity, and maybe the name-callers weren't far wrong, for there is a certain other-worldliness to this easy familiarity. I'm aware that I give myself to animals, and that they reciprocate this affection in a way most people cannot comprehend.

And bizarre as this may sound to you, this is similar to the bond I share with my father. For he is not my natural father, but rather the man who chose to take me on as his own when he married my mother. Now, alone and divorced from her, he has continued to be my dad these long years. So the dementia which is slowly robbing him of the essence of who he is, is an exceptionally cruel cut. Sometimes he doesn't know that we chose each other to be family, just like me and Tia did.

If you are one of those people who will recoil at my putting my love for my dog and my love for my dad together in one sentence, as if the love for one should be so much greater than the love for the other, feel free to discontinue reading. There is space in my heart for both...

But there were feelings other than my own to consider too. My children had grown up with Tia in their lives and my other dog, Roxie had been adopted when Tia was already firmly established in the household. But they coped. Better than I did, actually.

I don't think I will ever forget the lightness of her in my arms in those final moments; of the limpness of her body as I carried her from the vets and back to the car, the poor, tired, emaciated feel of her...

But I will hold forever in my heart the joy of watching her as a young dog running across lush fields, of patting her and kissing her little velvety head;  the unique comfort she provided

me on those nights I had to bury my face in her fur and cry - for there have been many; of how she would lick my tears and somehow make me hold on until the morning.

For all those times and more - Tia Capuano, I salute you.  RIP until we meet again. xxx

A dog called Shadow

Here's an excerpt from the chapter I'm currently writing. The dog has been named Shadow in memory of a real dog I once had and in respect to all the dogs I have loved over the years.

PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS EXCERPT MAY BE UPSETTING

There’s only silence from behind the door and I wonder if she’s gone.

“They said at the hospital we could go for family counselling. Do you think that might help, Scarlett?” she asks quietly from the other side of the door.

“Yes, why not?” Even though she can’t see me, I shrug. “Why don’t we all go and sit in some psychiatrist’s office and tell him about how we heard our dog howling in agony as his fur was scorched from his skin. Why don’t we tell the nice doctors how Shadow howled until his throat was burned, how we could hear him, but we couldn’t get to him, couldn’t save him…  about how loyal he was. He wouldn’t have left us to burn like we left him.”

I can hear my mother openly crying now but still I lash at her with my words. Because just like the wounds I made last night, these cuts help my pain too.

READ ALL ABOUT IT!

For my latest interview scroll down to where it says PAGES on the right hand column and click on Interviews with authors and other interesting people.


My most recent interview is with the founders of Willows Rescue Centre, focusing not just on the great work these people do but on their motivations and personal lives too...


It is so easy to get caught up in the hustle and bustle of our lives that we rarely take time out to appreciate the natural world around us, the world that will continue to revolve long after we have turned to dust and the work on which we pride ourselves is shown to have had no more lasting value than a dollar bill in a rainstorm.


That's what makes me so glad that people like this exist in the world; people who protect the creatures that most of us overlook even when we are feeling our most benevolent. Because - and I am asking you to be truthful here - what animal came to mind when you read the word 'rescue'? Was is a cat or a dog? Or even a horse or donkey? Well in this instance you would be wrong because Willows is a hedgehog rescue centre...


But before you prejudge these little critters, do me the honour of reading the interview...then make up your mind.


I think [and believe it or not, I know a little about my readers] you will be pleasantly surprised.


Happy Reading!