Third novel · Soon finished
Molly and Will
Molly wakes up furious, milkless and running on four hours of sleep, having fallen out with her best friend. Will is the one who interrupts her newspaper. What neither of them says over that first coffee: he crawled out of a burning house five years ago and his chosen brother didn't, and she has been counting sober days for longer than she has counted anything else. A love story about being known, and about what happens when the thing you were most afraid of happens anyway.
Teaser
A bad morning, and then him
It is a Saturday that has already gone wrong: no milk, no sleep, and a best friend she is not speaking to. Molly takes her coffee and her newspaper and wants the world to leave her alone. The world sends Will instead, curly hair, a book he actually reads, and the nerve to talk to her before she has finished the first page.
Three weeks in, he has told her everything, the fire, the funerals, the father he can barely speak to. She has told him almost nothing. Because Molly's past is not a story you hand over on a third date, and because some part of her is certain that the moment he knows all of it, he leaves. Happiness, in her experience, is just the pause before the fall.
Two people who have been broken once, working out whether they are brave enough to risk it a second time. How it ends, I don't know yet either, I'm still writing it.
A note for readers: this book deals openly with addiction and relapse, self-harm, suicide and grief.
Author's note
They interrupted another book
When I started this, my third book, I was in the middle of my second novel, and these characters simply interrupted the story. Like everything else I write, they decided; I only told it. And I don't really know them. I get to know them.
I thought I might not put songs to the chapters this time. Then I found myself hearing them anyway, associating every moment with lyrics that have always followed me. Some people have music as something nice in the background; for me it takes over the body like possession, on repeat, until I'm drowning in whatever it stirs up.
So the songs stayed. Read with them or without them, in my never-quiet brain they are part of what happens, and I can't stop it.
The writing
Funnier, filthier, still unguarded
The voice here is closer to thought than to prose: interior monologue at full volume, profanity and self-mockery included, cut with dialogue that reads the way people actually talk. It keeps the emotional honesty of the earlier books but lets the comedy in the door.
Every chapter opens on a song, and the soundtrack carries the mood before a single line of the scene is read, from a hungover London morning to the quietest, hardest chapters near the end.
- Cheer up LondonSoftplay
- Coffee & TVBlur
- FireYungblud
- Start the FireJamie Campbell Bower
- Skip to the Good BitRizzle Kicks
- Raise Your GlassP!nk
- ParasiteJutes
- BreakdownYungblud
- HealTom Odell
- OptionsCameron Whitcomb
The voices
Who they are
Molly
Sharp, funny and gloriously unfiltered, an office job she survives rather than likes, a boss called James she cannot stand, and a flat the size of a wardrobe that she saved for years to buy. Underneath the noise: a Catholic childhood she never talks about, tattoos on her arms and scars she chose not to cover, and years of sobriety she counts one day at a time.
Will
Curly-haired, easy company, re-reading his old favourites, travelling through known ground with Kerouac. Behind the calm: burn scars on his left arm and chest, and a recurring nightmare of the fire he crawled out of and his chosen brother Lucien did not. He has spent five years moving from country to country so that nobody could get close enough to be lost.
Emma
Molly's chosen sister and the loudest person in any bar. An A&E doctor who swears like a docker, tells the truth without softening it, and is the one constant Molly has had for years. She will drive you to a meeting whether you want to go or not.
Themes
What it is about
- Addiction, relapse and recovery
- Grief and survivor's guilt
- Chosen family
- Being loved at your worst
- Trust after abuse
- Humour as armour
- Two voices, one story
- Music as a second narrator
- London, small hours
Publication
The details
- Status
- Soon finished, final chapters in progress
- Manuscript length
- Around 300 pages so far
- Order of publication
- Third novel
- Publisher
- Not yet decided
- Language
- English
- Genre
- Contemporary romance, dual narration
- Setting
- London, a Saturday morning onwards
- Soundtrack
- One song per chapter
Not for sale yet, when signed copies go on sale here, they will ship under the same terms as my other books. Shipping, returns & purchase terms.
Cover gallery
The editions
No jacket yet, the book is still being written. These are the working placeholders that keep the shelf honest.
- Artwork in progressMolly and Will
Working cover
A title and two voices. The artwork begins once the manuscript is finished.
- Artwork in progressMolly and Will, songs
Playlist edition
A soundtrack sleeve, one song per chapter, to follow the finished book.
Soon finished
Molly and Will are nearly at the last page
The final chapters are being written now, songs and all. Follow the other novels in the meantime.
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