Today is 'If Only You Knew' Day

Out from now, in all good bookstores and on Amazon and from Poolbeg.
Read, enjoy, be nice.

Let's go round again

Well that time of year has come again when, despite my best efforts, I have to put my hands up and admit I need a little help. So I'm back on anti-depressants.
It wasn't an easy decision... well, I say that, in the end it was an easy decision. I had started to feel so low, and so anxious and the scary thoughts were starting to nudge their way back in. But I had resisted it for a while, thinking if I can get through this week, I'll be fine. Or just this month, I'll be grand. Or if I can get this book launch out of the way, things are bound to calm down. But the truth was, I was reaching the stage where I was looking "forward" to the book launch with more fear than excitement. The thought of going to Dublin, speaking to people, being out of my comfort zone was just too much.
I wanted to run away.
And then I got sick - all achey and fluey and I'm pretty sure it was a result of the stress I was putting myself under. So I slept, for about 40 straight hours and still felt anxious and horrible and I knew it was time.
Having been on antidepressants for the lion share of the last 9 years, I had thought I had gotten over the feeling of being somewhat broken or wrong by admitting a need for help. But I'll admit in the last six months, when I wasn't on antidepressants, I had felt a sense of relief or pride to be able to say "nope, not taking them at the moment".
I was a pretty fecking miserable cow though, with an exceptionally short temper and an increased propensity for panic attacks.

I feel I've made the right decision now. Only talking it through with my lovely doctor did I realise just how depressed I have become again - how how I'm feeling is not right. I have realised I have pushed so many people away over the last year because depression has made me feel not worthy. (Not to be said in Wayne's World type voice). I fear some friendships are unrepairable and that is something I will have to come to terms with.

I went to bed last night and my mind slipped back to a passage I had written in Rainy Days and Tuesdays, when Grace writes about how she has pushed people away when all she has really wanted to do is pull them close, and hold onto them and tell them how much she loves them. It is ironic, five years after I wrote that book, I'm feeling kind of the same.

But like Grace, I've got help. I'll get better. Please God, I'll start to enjoy life a bit more. And as for today, I'm going to take the girl to Jo Jingles and revel in her loveliness and then I'm going to sing my heart out with Encore Contemporary Choir and when I get home later, I'll pop my little white tablet and hopefully the darkness will lift a little.

A few weeks ago I had my tarot cards and angel cards read by a very lovely woman. She looked at me and said immediately "You don't need to go into the darkness". No, I don't. And I won't.
She added "When the sun shines in your world, wow, it shines bright!".

And she is right. So I'm letting the sun in a little. And I'm going to enjoy life, because there is so much to enjoy.

Random conversations with the girl

C: Can we go to granny's? My want to see granny.
Me: No, honey, granny is sick today.
C: Ach, why? (standard response to most things these days... complete with Ach first).
Me: She has a wee bug in her tummy.
C: Ach why she have a wee bug in her tummy?
Me: She just does. But she's getting better.
C: Why she have a wee bug? Where did she get a wee bug?"
M: She just did pet.

C wanders off a little confused and comes back later.
"Mammy, why does granny have a wee caterpillar in her tummy?"

Growing up too fast

So, the deed is done. My son was deposited back to school, shoes polished and hair cut into a neat and respectable style. His new, slightly too big, uniform was pressed to perfection and his schoolbag was stocked with new HB pencils, a collection of sharpeners and rubbers and some brand new colouring pencils.


He was excited to go back. He jumped awake at some time around 6.30am and declared, with a punch of his hand in the air, that “Yes! It’s a school day”. I spent the following two hours trying to convince him that we had plenty of time and no, there was no need to leave just yet.

He did hold my hand a little tighter as we walked through the school gates but he had no sooner set sights on his group of friends than I was dropped like a cold snotter and left to walk back through the gates to the car alone.

I’ll admit it. I felt a little emotionl. Actually I felt a lot emotional. Even though this was the fifth time I had left him at the school gates, surviving the emotional upheaval of nursery school and everything after there was still a part of me which realised we had reached another milestone.

He’s in P4 - officially out of the infants section of the school and officially one step closer to being one of the proper big boys. He’s put aside a lot of his childhood things already. His toys, the bits of plastic he couldn’t live without for years, are lying in their drawers replaced by a Nintendo DS and a football in the garden.

His spaceship themed bedroom - which we considered to be his big boy room - has been repainted in red and white, in honour of both his beloved Liverpool and his beloved Derry City.

He rolls his eyes when his baby sister wants to watch CBeebies, changing the channel to Sky Sports News at every opportunity. He no longer needs mammy to read him a bedtime story and wriggles about in an embarrassed fashion when I remind him of all the nights sat on the rocking chair reading ‘Bunny My Honey’ or ‘Guess How Much I Love You?’.

He turns scarlet with embarrassment when I remind him of the songs I sang to him as a young child and when his sister and I launch into a chorus of ‘Ba Ba Black Sheep’ he declares it dumb.

He’s most certainly not my baby boy any more. When he looks at me I see a young man stare back at me. His baby features are all gone. His face is thinner, his features growing more manly day by day.

His gapped tooth smile - a mix of tiny baby teeth and adult teeth which seem too big for his head, smile back at me. There’s not a hope of getting him to wear any clothes which are not football related and when he goes for a haircut he demands wax and wants to style it like a footballers.

I still remember when his hairstyle could only be described as “ frizzy curls” and when his baby face would grin up and me and no matter what I did, or said, or sang I was always the coolest mammy in the world.

Time, I feel, is just passing too fast. So when I dropped him off and school, and skulked back to the car - my hand still warm from where he had held on - I felt myself choke up with emotion and had to fight the urge to ugly cry right there and then amid the hoardes of other parents dropping their wee ones back off for the first day of term.

Of course I know that he will always be my baby - and that is especially true of a Derry son and a Derry mammy. We’ll always have that link - but there are times when I wish I could press the pause button for just a bit. Or even the rewind button to relive those moments I wished away when he was smaller.

I’m tending to take things at a slower pace with his sister. I’m tending to savour the moments more and not crave the milestones. She still, much to the horror of my health visitor and many right thinking yummy mummies has a dummy when she is tired or unwell. She still drinks her bottle of milk at bedtime. The potty training is coming along well, but part of me looks at the nappies with a certain (sick) affection and feels not ready to let go of that particular vestige of parenthood.

I’m already mentally counting down in my head to next September when I’ll hold her hand and walk her through the gates to nursery school. There is a fair chance they will need to sedate me on that day.

A friend very wisely said to me last week that while childbirth is agonising, it’s nothing compared to the pain of letting your children grow up and do their own thing independent of you. It’s a curious feeling - pride at how far they’ve come, overwhelming love, of course, and an almost uncontrollable urge to pull them back to you and hold their hands for ever.

Aged about 2

First day at Primary One, aged 4

Summer 2011, Aged 7 and a half.

Did you miss me?

It's been manic - like never before manic. The rewrites are done - the book is being typeset as we speak. Only one further step - proofreading - stands between me and publication in just over three weeks time.
It is all go.
So I'm sorry if I have not been around - but seriously, I've not even been there for my own children and blogging is not quite as top of the list of priorties as that.

Well, what can I say about the last few months... to sum them up in short phrases...


writing
crying
sleeping
panicking
writing
laughing
potty training
singing
editing
more editing
a bit more editing
celebrating
realising there was more to be done
stopping the celebrating
more editing
working
cleaning
shopping ( a little)
reading (not as much as I would like)
redecorating
eating (have put on lbs in editing weight).
writing
breathing

But I'm back... and ready to launch myself on the world again.
Did you miss me?

My lovely family...

 My niece Abby, my daddy, my sister Emma, my mum, my brother Peter , my crazy son, me and, on top my big sister Lisa

Sometimes this is all that matters. Crazy and all as they are.

Feels Like Maybe, in Norwegian

If Only You Knew

The Blurb! At last! And lo there was great joy across the land. (Or at least in my house).


Cousins Ava Campbell (married, sensible, feeling old before her time) and Hope Scott (single, debt ridden, in love with a man who will never love her back) have nothing in common. But fate is about to throw them together.



When their beloved aunt Betty, the free spirited black sheep of the Scott family, dies in France the girls find themselves flying to the picturesque village of Saint Jeannet, tasked with sorting through her belongings and fulfilling her last wishes.


To guide them on their way, Betty has left them a series of letters detailing her own life, the heartbreak that lead her to move to France and the peace she found there with her beloved Claude


As the women find each letter, Betty's secrets are uncovered one by one with lifechanging results. Can Ava find her self confidence again? Can Hope let go of the love of her life? Can either of them ever be the same again?


If Only You Knew is a heartwarming story of secrets, love, loss, longing and purple shoes

Normal service should resume soon

I'm almost there with yet another edit.
Almost... almost.... almost.

And then, like Arnie, I will be back - until that is I realise the deadline for the next book now looms.

Random conversations with the girl

We're in the car... she's singing having only recently found her voice and enjoying experimenting with sounds and lyrics...

"Baa Baa black sheep... have you any wool? Yes Yes (she leaves out the sir... that's just how she rolls...)
three bags full.
One for the monster
One for the monster dame (I do not understand it either..)
One for the little girl who lives down the lane.

Rainy days and Mondays...

Isn't it funny, how things happen?
Just last week I started brainstorming about new ways to try and promote myself and my books and came up with a marketing idea (which will all come to light in due course). So I asked around on Facebook and Twitter for people to give me memories of their favourite Claire Allan book.
Now usually when I pose this question I get a mixed bag. There is a lot of love out there for Feels Like Maybe, It's Got to Be Perfect tends to fall second in line and Jumping in Puddles follows suit.
People don't tend to mention Rainy Days and Tuesdays and, as an author, I tend to be okay with that - thinking it was my first book. A book written before I really knew what I was doing. A book that I tend to feel a little exposed talking about because some aspects of it are based (loosely) on my own life.
But having put that little call out there the response has been almost unanimous in favour of RD&T. And it's not just "I liked this book, it was good" kind of stuff. I've had women telling me it changed their lives, it was the best book they ever read, it made them put things in perspective.

All this... from a book I wrote?
It's madness. And then I realised what RD&T lacked in artistic flair it made up for in honesty - true to life, heartfelt, emotional and messy honesty. And I should be be proud of it. The first of my "babies" to be out there in the world.
That's humbling and wonderful.

Random conversation with the girl

So tonight I'm being good and eating a low fat (chocolate muffin) dessert from M&S.
Very cute two year old sidles up to me.
"What's that?" she asks curiously.
"Mammy's chocolate mousse," I answer.
 She eyes it suspiciously. "My try some?" she asks, eyes wide and, well, who can say no. So I put some on my spoon and feed it to her. She tastes it like she is a head chef in a posh hotel checking one of her minions' offerings before looking at me and saying "Hmmmm. My like that."
"That's good, baby," I reply.
She cuddles into me, eyes on the mousse, then eyes on me. "You are my favourite, mummy."

The girl has learned the art of emotional blackmail.
I fear for the future.

Big changes are afoot

Things may have been quiet in blogland but they have certainly not be quiet in the real world. Writing has been continuing apace and, dear reader, I see light from the corners of the bunker for the first time in 10 weeks.
The book has been redrafted - and actually turned into a completely differentl kind of a book. Of the 107,000 words I wrote for the 30 Something Crisis Club, only 10,000 survived the massacre that followed. The setting remains the same. The main characters are largely the same but I added in so many layers that I made myself dizzy.
The book, as it now stands, is ready for launch in just over 10 weeks.
How's that for a turnaround? Eh?
But with the new feel, we decided on a new title and I'm now, excitedly, waiting on a new cover.
The 30 Something Crisis Club has now become If Only You Knew and I'm planning some competitions and interesting marketing ploys to mark it's release.
I feel nervous, fired up, scared, exhilerated, exhausted and relieved.
And the journey is only beginning....

A letter to my 16 year old self

As my 35th birthday last week, and I noticed a few more crow’s feet around my eyes and how certain body parts are definitely on a downward trajectory I have decided to take the lead from a recent trend online for people to write letters to their 16 -year-old selves, imparting the wisdom and advice that only comes with age.


Dear Me,

I’m sorry about the perm. I thought it was a good look at the time but clearly, looking back I realise I have made you look like an eejit. I won’t do it again. Honest. Over the years we’ll try various hair dyes and hair styles and there will be a really rather bad bleaching incident in your early 30s but I’ll never make you endure a perm again.
Now that we have that out of the way, let’s get on with the more important stuff.

1) Don’t study too hard. I know that may go against the grain, but it really is true. All work and no play will make you relatively dull. Go out more. Live a little. Enjoy yourself because the time will come when you will actually be too old to get away with walking into a nightclub without looking like a very sad cougar.

2) On the occasions you do party like it’s 1999, remember to take it easy and drink a lot of water at some stage in the evening. Never think that fifth Drambuie is a good idea. Your carpet won’t thank you for it.

3) Don’t stop dancing. I don’t mean ever, but I mean when you take those dance lessons in your mid 20s, keep at it. You were quite good at it. And you enjoyed it. It also allowed you to have a waist. You will miss you waist.
4) You know that boy you spend your entire university career pining over? He’s not worth it. In fact he turns out to be a bit of a *insert appropriate swear word which can’t be used in a family newspaper here*. And when he asks you to help him with his coursework, say no.
He isn’t actually doing it because he secretly loves you back. He’s doing it because he is too lazy to do it himself.
5) Smile more. You really do have a lovely smile.

6) See that Celine Dion phase you go through when you are 18 - don’t worry. It’s not fatal and it will pass.

7) Lycra isn’t and never will be your friend. Accept it and move on.

8) Spend more time with your grandad. He won’t always be around - I know he seems invincible but he’s not. He’ll always be a presence in your life though - so try not to worry too much. It will be tough but you’ll get through it.

9) You know that Teri Hatcher/ Lois Lane obsession you have? You’ll make it as a journalist but Dean Cain/ Clark Kent will never work in your office.
10) Stop stressing about leaving school and all your friends. You’ll stay in touch with them and you’ll be there at their weddings and to cuddle their babies and share a (legal) drink with them from time to time. If time passes where you don’t see them don’t panic. When you get together again you’ll be able to drop into easy conversation as if no time at all has passed.

11) You know that sister who gets right on your nerves? Yes. Her! The popular one? There will come a time when you stopping battering seven shades of the proverbial out of each other and become best friends. She will even be chief bridesmaid at your wedding. I know! Mad, isn’t it?

12) You know that other sister? The one that REALLY annoys you? You’ll find you have more in common with her than you think and you will share many strange and emotional moments together as you venture into motherhood. (I’m telling you now, just so you can look forward to it, there will be a day when your newborn son both pees and poops all over her. It’s okay to laugh - it’s one of the funniest things you will ever see).

13) Your parents will become your heroes again. Fact. You’ll realise how cool they are.

14) Look where you are going when you step out of cars/walk down stairs/climb over small walls. You are accident prone. Pay more attention!
15) Travel more. There’s a world outside of BT48 and you will have time enough for weekends in Donegal and breaks close to home.

16) It’s okay to want to wear comfortable shoes and a raincoat with a hood. This does not make you uncool - this makes you sensible.

17) You will get a tattoo. Yes. Really.

18) Becoming a mammy will be the most terrifying experience of your life but it will also be amazing.

19) Don’t worry when you don’t fall instantly in love with the wee creature when they lie on your tummy. It will happen and boy, when it happens, it is something else. Wow! That’s all I’m saying.

20) Yes. You’ll have a daughter some day too. And she will complete you.

21) Trust your instincts. Not with the man from university, obviously, but you know that bloke you meet at Mandi’s 21st birthday party? Give him a chance. It might just be worth it.

22) Believe in yourself. I do.
Much love, Me x

Feels like home to me

Last week the family and I went away to the Downings in north Donegal for a few days to celebrate the husband's 40th birthday. We hired a delightful house on the Atlantic coast and had three blissful days of fresh air, nice wine (three for a tenner from Asda...), good food and great company in the form of my inlaws and associated children.

I can't express how I felt in the house we stayed in. It was a gorgeous house. The kind of house I want my house to be when it grows up. It was the house of open plan living dreams  but it was the setting which took my breath away.

I've been under a lot of pressure recently, with rewrites, work, family and I suppose a kind of breakdown of sorts, but standing in Donegal, looking out of a living room window at the most spectacular yet peaceful views helped and healed.

I sound like an old hippy - but I felt I was home. Where I was meant to be. I felt this is what life is about - not the stress and the worry and the rush, but in simply looking out to see and feeling connected with everything and everything one around you. I was even moved to tears on more than one occasion as if being there had given me permission to breathe out.

When I win the Lotto (the Euromillions is a big one tonight!) I'm buying this house .... and I'm never leaving it.

Victoria Beckham - I never said she was a bad mother...

or that she didn't have her own worries.
Nor did I say my life was worse than anyone else's in the world ever. I'm pretty lucky as it happens.

ALL I said was that she is living in cloud cuckoo land if she thinks the majority of working mothers can relate to her.

It's as simple, or as complicated, as that.

Thank you.

An open letter to Victoria Beckham

Dear Victoria,


How are you? Can we have a little chat? Girl to girl? Mammy to mammy? Career woman to... erm, career woman?

First I’ll start with the nice bits. You’re looking well these days with a little bit of meat on your bones. Pregnancy agrees with you. I’ll admit I’m jealous that you seem to manage to look so glamorous with it. I never managed that - not at all. For most of my pregnancies - especially the last one I stuck with the “just getting by” look. I lived in the same three maternity outfits, swapped my heels for flats as soon as I could and used make up not to accentuate a healthy glow but more to hide a deathly palour.

You looked well at the royal wedding. I wasn’t sure about the hat, and those heels would have killed me stone dead but overall you had a nice glow about a you. A smile wouldn’t have hurt. For some reason you don’t seem to like smiling much, which is a shame. You do actually have a nice smile. And if I had David Beckham waiting for me at home I’d smile a bit more, it has to be said.

Now that we’ve covered that ground, Victoria - or can I call you Posh? - can we get down to the nitty gritty? Now much as I hate to say anything which may annoy or upset a pregnant and highly hormonal woman, Victoria last week you said something which gave me the rage. You may not know me but believe me when I have the rage, it is not a pretty sight. Not. At. All.

So there was I reading an article about you thinking “Jeezo, she looks well when she’s not all gaunt and pointy” when you made some remark about maternity leave. “Maternity leave? What’s that?” you said in a jaunty fashion adding; “Being a working mum is hard - I think women can relate to me when I say it’s like juggling glass balls.”

Being a working mum is hard work. It is really, really hard work. And yes, it is like juggling glass balls - trying to keep everything moving fluidly because if one of the balls drops there is potential for disaster.

And by disaster, Victoria, I don’t mean a run in your designer tights or a broken acrylic nail. These days, the balls most of us working parents in general have in the air include mortgage payments, guilt about ‘quality time’ with the brood, finding affordable childcare, putting petrol in the car and food on the table. It’s about trying to keep hold of a job in recessionary times while trying not to neglect your children to such an extent that they grow up to be social miscreants.

It’s about trying to find time to cram in the housework before Kim and Aggie come battering on your door and putting yourself at the bottom of the queue.

I imagine your life is different Victoria. I imagine work for you does not come with dropping the children off at school/ creche while battling through rush hour traffic and praying no one notices that you are five minutes late (again). I imagine that you can set your own hours and you have a team of nannies to help out with those essentials like feeding, clothing and entertaining your children.

I can’t imagine, pet, that any time recently you have found yourself in the unenviable position of having too much month left at the end of your money or have had sleepless nights about the crashing property market and the value of your little piece of England.

As for maternity leave - can you imagine the average working mother-to-be? She may be working in excess of 40 hours a week. She may spend a lot her time on her feet, scanning shopping through the tills at Tesco, or nursing on an NHS wage in a busy hospital. Chances are she will work as close to her due date as possible to maximise her maternity pay and the time she can spend with her baby after it is born.

Chances are she has little choice about whether or not she returns to work. Chances are she will return a little earlier than she would really like because the bills need paid and statutory maternity pay of £128.73 doesn’t go very far these days.

Chances are by the time her baby comes along she is exhausted and needing some time to rest. Chances are she won’t have a team of night nurses to help her through the early months and wouldn’t be fit to try and combine caring for an infant with a full time job.

When you say that the modern working mother can relate to you, I have to ask - how exactly? Last time I looked I didn’t have fancy homes in foreign countries. I didn’t get an invite to the royal wedding. Justine Beiber does not send my children gifts of signed guitars (for this alone, I am entirely grateful). I don’t have a wardrobe of designer clothes or a host of A list friends.

I know you were coming from a “let’s all be friends” and “aren’t we all in this together” perspective but Victoria, pet, please accept that we so never going to be all in this together. Please stop trying to make out you are a mere pleb like the rest of us and give us working mammies, who really do have all those glass balls in the air, a bit of credit.

Much love,

Claire

A Note from the Bunker

Dear Writer

Never lose the fire in your belly. Dampen it down a wee bit for a while, if you need to, so you can get some sleep. But never lose it.

Write every book as if it were your first. Ignore whether or not you have an agent, a publisher or an established readership. Write as if you trying to make people sit up and take notice for the first time.

Forget your past books, the published ones, the unpublished ones. You, right now, in this moment are only as good as the book are you are currently writing.

Enjoy it. Please. If you are not enjoying it, the reader won't either. If you are not enjoying it, then really, what's the point? Writing should always be about the passion for creating a whole new world (yes... I'm singing the song from Aladdin now) and not just about getting words on a page.

Of course you do have to get the words on a page. So just do it. Don't procrastinate. Don't allow the negative voice on your shoulder to drown out the lovely voices of your characters.

FORGET SALES. They do not matter. Do you want a book which sells millions or do you want a book which you can put your hand on your heart and say you LOVE and are proud of? Yes... I know what your gut reaction is but think about that. Really. (Of course, never shun a blissful combination of the two, or believe it will never happen to you).

Don't diss your genre. Even to your self, on a bad day when you have written a line about a heroine drinking of a glass of wine and admiring shoes. The shoes and the wine are not what your books are about. Look deeper. You are not writing "only chick lit". You are touching lives.

If you have them, read the letters/ emails you have readers/ agents/ publishers/ your mammy which say nice things about your work. Especially remember that conversation you had with the woman in WeightWatchers who told you that your books got her through a particularly bleak period in her life (that one may be solely directed at me).

Limit your use of the bad F word. Feck is, of course, entirely acceptable. But don't go overboard with that either. Unless you are writing an episode of Father Ted.

Give yourself the time to write. Accept that books can not be written in five minute snippets while trying to entertain the children/ do the washing/ clean the house. Lock yourself away for a bit each evening - even half an hour - and write without distraction. Your writing is GOOD. It deserves your attention. YOU deserve the time to explore your own talent.

DON'T let outside forces drag you down. Don't think about the bigger picture. The bigger picture, like your addiction to chocolate, is beyond your control. Feck it. Focus on the picture in front of you - the one you are drawing right now.

Believe in yourself. Allow yourself to feel your words. Cry when your characters cry. Laugh when they laugh. Bonk when they bonk. (Then accept that bonk is a very silly word and vow never to use it again).

Accept that writing is a gift - a talent, an escape. Allow it be just that. Don't let it bog you down. There is enough in this world to bog you down as it is.

Smile. Read those emails again. Switch your laptop off when your toddler looks for a cuddle. Remember that creating lives for other people is great fun altogether but living your own life is more important.

Be proud of all you do - on the page and off.

Still in the bunker

Still writing... it's like NANO times 2. Forget 50,000 in a month, I've a target of 110,00 in two months.
The more I write, the more the book is morphing into something different. The large swathes of text I hoped I would be able to use from the first draft are staring at me, redundant and fed up.
I am starting to see words swimming in front of each other - and I can think of little else. My mind is constantly in France. It is constantly plotting and worrying about pacing and twists and turns and hoping for the best.
This is a LONG, HARD ROAD.

So last week I wrote...

And I decorated - kind of in an avoidance of the writing kind of a way.
We redid the baby's room (I say baby, I know she is two and three months. I know I am in denial of that fact. The dummy/ nappy police will be battering at my door soon enough over the head of it) - which especially now that it is freshly painted is my favourite room in the house.
How I love the vintage Cath Kidston-esque inspired patterns on the curtains and the wall hangings and the bunting. I could go into raptures about the bunting because, yes, I am that sad.

Her room is small, but perfectly formed and I have indulged every girly fantasy I've ever had with pink throws and spotty lamps and a wee doll's cot to match her own cot.
A white table lamp which I bought for about £15 years ago is one of my favourite pieces and I re-glossed it to give it a bit of a shimmer and now I could happily sit in the room for hours.
The girl took umbrage at her room being out of bounds for two days while we painted and tidied. "My bedroom is all broken," she would tell anyone who would listen in her lisping tones. "But my daddy is fixing it all up".
Mammy helped too. Honest.  Even though she should have been writing.