This is the cover for my new book, due to be published in May. As usual, BWL has come up with a great cover. The four leaf clover features throughout the story in one way or another, so it really is a case of 'it does what it says on the tin.' The cover is the easy bit though. Editing it has been an altogether different matter.
The first half of the book is set in 1979. The second half, six years later. Also, to confuse matters further, I wrote it some time in the 1980s, which was, as the introduction says; 'a time before ready meals, before takeaway coffees. A time when a microwave oven was considered the latest in technology. A time when we used maps to navigate, reference books for research, and learned phone numbers off by heart.'
I discovered the manuscript, which I had never tried to have published, when I was clearing our loft space. I immediately sat down to read it, ignoring all the dust and spider webs as it took me back in time to when I was a young mother, at home all day, looking after small children. The further I read, the more I identified with Joanne, the heroine, even though her life was very different from mine. She, too, dialled numbers on a phone that was attached by cable to a land line. She travelled by bus. If she was late home then the meal her mother had cooked her was dried out in the oven. Teashops were more usual than coffee shops. Sunday lunch was sacrosanct, and holidays were never in hotels but in guest houses in seaside towns. I remembered, too, what it was like to meet someone more sophisticated and not want to lose face, which is something that happens to Joanne.
Her life and relationships are certainly not mine, but it was clear that in those far off days my observations and early memories had shaped the story.
Trying to re-write it for the present day would not have worked. Life and how people handled relationships were so different then. With no cell phones or Internet, people had to meet up to talk. And they had to rely on physical clues...will she let me kiss her....does that mean she wants me to leave...why is he looking at me like that? No dating apps. No texting. No sexting. And interestingly, far more freedom to risk a kiss than is possible in today's 'me too' world.
So instead of attempting a re-write, I began to edit and polish what would be a retro book. By the time I sent it off to the editor I was feeling quite pleased with myself. It was a good story wrapped up in an unintended history lesson. Then it came back and the editor's criticisms and suggestions made me look at it anew with a much more critical eye. She was right. I did need to change the tense in quite a few places. I did need to tighten up the dialogue. And where she got it wrong I needed to revisit to see why, and then rephrase.
It's been an interesting exercise. I have not only learned to read an older manuscript much more critically, especially one that I had forgotten about, but I have also realised how much better a writer I have become over the years. My later books get few editorial comments. My writing is tighter, and my characters leap straight from my imagination onto the page instead of me having to work at developing them.
So now all I have to do is decide whether to write a new story, or whether to defy the spiders and go hunting in that loft space again.
