Welcome to the Choosing Happy Podcast. This episode features a deeply engaging conversation with Carrie McGovern, an author whose journey through mental health challenges has shaped her writing and worldview.

As she shares her story, listeners are taken on a transformative journey that began in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic when Carrie found herself overwhelmed by anxiety and the pressures of parenting. Her children’s struggles with school and mental health mirrored her own, leading to a period of introspection where she realized the necessity of prioritizing her own well-being.

This realization ignited a passion for reading, which soon blossomed into a desire to write, allowing her to channel her experiences into contemporary romance novels that resonate with themes of strength and resilience.

Carrie's insights into the therapeutic nature of writing and reading are woven throughout the episode, highlighting how narratives can serve as powerful tools for healing. She discusses the importance of acknowledging one’s struggles and the role of communication in fostering understanding among family members.

The conversation touches on the societal stigma surrounding mental health, especially for women, and emphasizes the need for supportive communities where individuals can share their experiences without fear of judgment. By the conclusion of the episode, it is evident that Carrie’s journey is a testament to the strength found in vulnerability, the importance of storytelling, and the healing power of connection, encouraging listeners to embrace their own journeys toward happiness and fulfilment.

Takeaways:

• Carrie McGovern shares her journey to writing and how it helped her overcome anxiety and mental health challenges.
• Reading played a crucial role in Carrie’s healing process, opening her up to emotions again.
• Communication is vital; Carrie emphasizes the importance of being open about struggles with loved ones.
• The small things in life, like thoughtful gestures, greatly contribute to happiness and well-being.
• Carrie highlights how society often overlooks the importance of mental health awareness and support.
• Writing strong female characters reflects Carrie’s desire to empower women and challenge societal norms.

Timestamps:

• 00:01 - Introduction to Choosing Happy Podcast
• 00:04 - Interview with Carrie McGovern: Author and Storyteller
• 00:20 - The Impact of Mental Health on Daily Life
• 04:20 - Carrie's Journey: From Anxiety to Writing
• 05:35 - The Healing Power of Reading
• 13:28 - Communication: The Key to Overcoming Struggles
• 15:55 - Building Supportive Relationships
• 30:05 - Finding Happiness in Simple Moments
• 47:58 - The Role of Community in Mental Wellbeing
• 51:50 - Conclusion and Key Takeaways

About Carrie:

Carrie is a women's fiction and contemporary romance author based in the UK. She writes relatable fiction with strong female characters. Her books have a strong emphasis on friendship and female empowerment.

Where to find her:

Carrie's Facebook page

@carriemcgovernauthor on Instagram

Carrie's Website

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carrie-mcgovern-743a6527b/

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Copyright 2024 Heather Masters

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Links referenced in this episode:

• choosinghappy.co.uk

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• Headspace

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Hello and welcome to the Choosing Happy podcast.

I'm Heather Masters, your host, and this week I had an amazing conversation with Carrie McGovern, who is an author and who spends her days writing contemporary fiction novels.

We touched on much more than this.

We touched on a lot of mindset and mental wellness issue that may have affected many people over the last few years.

It was a really powerful conversation.

And if you have suffered from mental health issues or stress over the last few years and you're interested in how writing could potentially help you, then stay tuned for this week's Choosing Happy podcast.

Hello and welcome to the Choosing Happy podcast.

Today I'm having a chat with the amazing Carrie McGovern, and she's an author who spends her days writing contemporary romance novels about strong women and men who fall first.

She has three published novels, with a fourth being released very soon.

Welcome, Carrie.

Lovely to see you.

Hi.

Thank you for having me.

Can you begin by telling us a bit about yourself and your journey, please?

Okay, so, as you said, I am a contemporary romance novelist, but I wasn't always.

It's kind of been a quite a recent thing, I would say.

My first book turned one last month, so it is pretty new.

But the whole writing thing isn't particularly new to me, the way I started.

I mean, it's funny the way that your life kind of turns out, isn't it?

So you're going away, you're trundling along this road, happy as anything, and then you come to a couple of bumps and that's kind of what happened to me.

So maybe about three years ago, you know, it was the kind of the post Covid, my kids were at that age where they were going back to school, back to primary and secondary school, and they were really struggling, especially one.

And we had a lot of kind of issues around undiagnosed autism and the struggles with being out of the school situation for so long with such a scare behind you as well, because the kids were terrified that they were going to catch something and pass it on to the grandparents or the parents or whatever.

So it was, I think we forget how hard that time was, especially for some of these kids who were coming into adolescence at the time.

So I had a lot of issues with kind of school refusal and stress and anger, and I basically shut down.

And my anxiety was just, was just too much.

I wasn't living my life.

I was completely and utterly focused on how my child was going to have, how his day was going to go to school, when the phone was going to ring for the school to pick him up when, you know, what kind of mood he was in when he came home, when he woke up, whether he had a good night's sleep, whether I had a good night's sleep.

So I'd completely shut down.

I couldn't work my business out.

I was the same just at the time.

I made a home decor stuff and I just couldn't focus.

My brain had completely shut down and it was taking over my life.

And it got to a point where I thought, I need to do something now because I can't go on the way I am because it's making me really, really ill.

And I don't know how to kind of change my brain so that it will kind of like.

Because, you know, I mean, how do you get away from anxiety?

It's not a question you can actually answer.

There's no way.

It's different for everybody.

And where do you start when you're in that shut down position?

So the first thing I did kind of was I started reading.

And before that, I was kind of.

I struggled a little bit with reading, to be honest.

And I think that's kind of looking back, I think it may be a bit of.

Kind of the neurodivergence kind of side of me.

I need to be captured from that very first sentence.

And you get put off by reading and books because they're big and they're scary and are you gonna like them?

Are you not gonna like them?

I struggle with unfamiliar things.

So I decided, and I was only kind of.

I was only reading kind of like, you know, when you go on holiday and you take two books.

I was reading two books on holiday at the very most and no other time because, I mean, life, I didn't have time to do stuff.

I had kids, I had a job.

I had to, you know, so all those things kind of were in the way.

And this was, at this time, this was the only thing I could do.

The only thing I could do was read a book because I had so shut down.

I didn't do the shopping, I didn't do the cooking, I didn't do the cleaning, because my brain could not cope.

So I sat down and I read books.

My husband, I read a couple of, like, paperback books.

I struggle with paperbacks, though.

And there was a couple of other.

There was books that were only available on Kindle.

So I downloaded those, started reading them off my phone.

But, you know, you're still waiting for your phone to ring, aren't you, if you're watching your phone.

So my husband bought me a Kindle, and I've really never looked back.

And in that first nine months of reading, I read 130 books.

So I was well invested in reading.

And it's, it's generally all romance because this is what, that's what I like.

And that started to open up my brain again.

So it kind of developed new pathways, I suppose.

So I started being able to communicate better.

I started to be able to feel things.

I'd not felt things for ages.

I'd not felt anger, I'd not felt sadness.

I'd nothing felt anything because I've just completely shut down.

And it kind of, it brought me back to life again.

So, you know, I'm very thankful for those authors that I read at the time.

And it was, it was one of those things, but I knew I was still in anxiety basis, so I knew there was still something there.

I couldn't just stop reading because that wasn't, you know, that wasn't going to help.

So I thought, well, what's another way to distract my brain?

And I actually used to be, I trained, well trained.

I went to university in the communication studies, which was specializing in journalism so many, many years ago.

So you finished university, and then you kind of go for a job, and then you get knocked back so many times, and then you get a job, like, down the road, and then you think, yeah, but this will just be a stopgap.

And I, that kind of thing.

And then you get married and you have a family, and it all kind of falls by the wayside.

And then I remembered at, how old was I, 45, that I actually did used to write quite a lot.

So I thought, oh, well, I'm really bad at finishing projects for myself.

Anybody else?

I'm fine, but I can't finish a project.

I've got so many projects around this house that are like half finished chairs that I've dismantled all kinds of stuff.

So I'm like, I am never gonna write a book.

I mean, who writes a book?

I mean, who.

I mean, come on.

So I decided instead of writing it, I would plan it, I think, well, you know, there's no pressure.

There's no pressure there.

I'll just plan this book.

So I started, I got, you know how you do.

You get yourself some new pens in a notebook, obviously.

And I started to plan the kind of book that I'd been reading.

So it was a younger woman, generally, slightly older man, maybe, that kind of thing.

And I was like, I can't write this.

I don't know what a 20 odd year old woman does now.

It was not the same as when I was 20.

It's a whole different world.

So I was like, no.

So I scrapped that idea and thought, what am I going to do?

And I just started.

I just started writing.

I just.

That was it.

It just kind of, like, came out, and I had lots of different kind of, like, situations.

The way I explain the way a book is, comes to me is it's different scenes played like a movie.

And then I type up the script for the movie, if you know, I mean, yeah, so all of these little scenes started coming out, and I started writing them, and then I thought, oh, hang on, I could put these together.

And then I was like, oh, put it together.

That's like a book and stuff.

So I started, and I predominantly wrote the majority of my first book not knowing what I was going to do.

And then I kind of went, oh, God, I'm going to have to do something about this.

I'm going to.

I'm actually going to maybe have to publish this book.

And it was more kind of like a.

It was.

I always say I felt like it was a bit of a vanity project at the beginning.

It was just a book I had to write.

It was a book about a woman my age who completely lost herself and had to find herself again.

So that's how it started.

And it was quite funny, because when I actually physically wrote the first chapter, which is probably not the first bit I wrote, but when I wrote the first chapter, I wrote the scene where Emma was at work, and she was, like, going down a normal daily business, and the school rings, and it's the same conversation every single day that she has with the school.

She should be best friends with a receptionist.

They know each other by first name, that kind of thing.

And an hour later, the school rang me, and it was just like the same conversation.

I could have played out the scene in real life.

It was.

It was just.

And I suppose the rest, they say, is history, but it's kind of been an evolving thing for a long time.

I mean, I self publish my books, so I've not only had to write a book, I've had to learn how to publish a book and learn how to promote a book and those kind of things and learn how to develop my writing, because my writing is quite.

It's choppy.

It's very.

It's quite fast paced, but it's very.

It's very like my brain to the point.

And I suppose that's the way that I always go back to, like, my journalism training, because I needed to have a concise account of something in the small, shortest amount of words effectively.

So, I mean, my books aren't particularly long, but they're all, you know, full stories.

And, yeah, they're quite fast paced.

I get a lot of people saying that they don't usually read, but they were hooked on it and they could.

They read the book in two days kind of thing.

So that's nice to hear.

Yeah.

Good.

Great.

So coming back a little bit, if I can, to the.

To the shutting down, because I know from my own personal experience, kind of had a lot of losses over the years and got to a point where I felt quite detached, you know, not feeling things and just going through the motions and what I uncovered, it wasn't so much anxiety as I had anxiety, but it was really, like you said, the amount of trauma that was kind of inflicted at that time that people really don't know how to deal with or move through.

I mean, one of the things that I found was semantic healing, and that's based around the fact that animals deal with trauma in an immediate way.

They actually physically shake off the trauma.

That's how they come out of trauma and move on.

But because we're thinkers, we don't allow that to happen.

And often there aren't.

For instance, with COVID and the ongoing fear, there isn't kind of one opportunity to just let go of that trauma.

So was there anything else that you did other than.

I mean, obviously the reading helped.

And I know, you know, I became a massive reader, not like you, but I read every night before I go to bed.

And that's.

That's really helped me as well.

And we're only on 50 books a year, not 100, but.

So I can completely relate to that.

But was there anything else as well that maybe you did that could help other people?

I think it's about acknowledging it more than anything.

I think that's.

That has to be your first step.

You have to acknowledge what's happening to you.

And that's the hardest bit, I find the hardest bit, acknowledging it and then taking that first step.

And I think the other thing to do is about communication, about telling the people around you what's happening and why you think it's happening kind of thing.

I think a lot of people, when they go through this kind of, and you've got to as well think about, I started going through perimenopause at the same time, which wasn't the best thing to happen.

So it's about communication with the people around you and not keeping it to yourself, especially my children, because my children needed to know that I was struggling, because they need to know it's all right to struggle.

And the other thing I think is the issue is that the way that society looks at mental health, I mean, it is getting better.

But for my age, it was always that kind of thing that was always brushed under the carpet.

We didn't talk about it.

And I quite happily stand in the middle of a room and say, I struggle.

I am struggling right now.

I struggle.

So I think definitely the communication with my husband, because that could have gone one of two ways that could have quite easily had me going down divorce routes.

Because if I had a husband who didn't understand and didn't want to listen to what was going on, it could have been a completely different story.

But instead, what we did was we talked it through.

He then understood how it was more as well, about understanding the way that my brain works and the way that my children's brains work as well, because we're quite similar and then doing things for us.

Because I think also you get.

I was at that time in life when my kids were doing things by themselves and they didn't need mum or dad there as much.

I mean, they still do and they will do forever.

But it was that point where we said, we need to build our relationship back up from being just parents and from being a couple, you know, two people who, you know, are, like, in love with each other and will go out and do stuff together.

So we did do a lot of.

We made a point because there was so much going on in term time.

We made a point to go away every half term and just have two days away, just me and him and my parents would come and stay at our house and look after the kids.

Cause I've generally, until recently, I've not had any kind of support with, like, family because I live in the north east of England.

I don't come from the north east of England.

Neither does my husband.

And my parents were living abroad at the time.

So they came back over and they've taken on some of the kind of not looking after duties because my kids are teenagers, but that kind of.

That responsible adult being around and that I.

And that my mum will step in and she will make sure that I don't have to think about things.

And it's not the big things.

It's never the big things.

It's the little things.

It's the.

There's not enough ketchup in the house, what we're going to have for tea.

That is my biggest nightmare ever.

Just all the time.

What's for tea?

Because you have to cater for four different people.

Do you know what I mean?

There's only four of us in the house and the cat, but there's four different meals going nearly every night.

So it's about identifying it and then not.

People say, don't sweat the small stuff, but that's not how it works.

It's all the little small things that join together and make you break.

So, you know, people say, and people say to me all the time, oh, you don't seem like you've got anxiety.

You don't seem like you're not confident.

You don't seem.

I'm like, well, yeah, because that's a mask.

And that's the whole fake it till you make it kind of thing.

Because social constructs have you doing that and you can't move.

The problem is it's a.

It's a no win situation because you can't move forward until you do that.

And you put on that brave face, you pull your big girl pants up and you step out of the door, and that's just what you need to do.

But it definitely is identifying it and communicating it with people.

I think that's a really powerful point that, as you say, people miss.

It tends to be the small stuff.

I know I was like, as you say, at work, I was doing absolutely fine, but it was at home, the small stuff that I really struggled with, especially after my partner died.

You know, the house was a complete tip and I just couldn't, because I couldn't face it.

But the big stuff I could handle.

And I found that really quite bizarre, that I could still, you know, overcome mountains, but I couldn't cope with them.

All hill type things.

I think, as well, people expect that you can't cope with the big things.

Yeah.

And I think people are more willing to not help.

I don't mean help.

I mean kind of give you that leeway to make your own way through it.

Whereas the small stuff, they don't.

Not at all.

Well, why can't you.

Why isn't your house tidy?

Why.

Why haven't you got the kids tea on the table?

Why do you.

Why are you just sitting reading a book?

Well, and they don't see the little things.

Also with.

I found that I'm probably neurodiverse in some way and I struggle with my brain that if there's too much going on, I just shut down.

So I mean, my son's the same as well.

And this was the issue.

If, you know, you look around the house and you say, I've got this, do this to do this to do this to do.

And then my brain starts going, yeah, but you need to do that before that and that before that, and you need to do that afterwards.

And then it just goes, nope, can't do it.

That's it.

Nope.

And just, like, stamps its feet and goes, nah, we don't do this anymore.

We're just gonna sit and turn the tally on.

And it looks like being lazy.

And it's not being lazy, it's just being overwhelmed.

Yeah.

Just coming back to something else you said earlier about pulling your big girl pants on and getting out of the door.

Was there something, a trigger or a catalyst that got you there?

I think as we're both in the northern last lounge, I think I refer to my, I've got a little, my little story about the group.

So I joined it.

I joined the group a while ago, like, I mean, years ago, and I was a proper lurker in the background.

Didn't get involved, didn't really need to ask a few questions.

And then when I realized that I was going to be writing this book, and I thought, oh, God, I'm going to have to make people buy it.

I'm going to, what am I going to do?

I mean, I can't just, like, publish it and then go, tada.

Kind of thing, and expect everything to happen.

So the first thing was an awards event, and it was publicized.

It was last year's awards.

And I kind of went, okay, I'm gonna go to this because I need to be mixing with people, because I found that it's really weird.

I can't even describe it.

I'm quite a solitary person.

I don't like going out that much, but I need people.

I need people in equal amounts of needing to be on my own.

But I seem to, I seem to, I don't know, my brain just seems to go, yay, people, my people, people go, yay, my people.

So, you know, that's where I get my happy dopamine fix from being with friends.

So I didn't really know anybody particularly.

And so I bought my ticket and went, right, you have to do this, because I knew if I bought my ticket, I would definitely go.

But I also knew that I would talk myself in and out of it several times because I would do the, oh, I don't feel too well.

Got nothing to wear.

Oh, I don't know anybody you know?

So I actually messaged someone I knew from before, knew her in the last lounge, and said to her, I bought my ticket.

I'm coming.

But I'm probably gonna kind of flip flop about going and not going.

So just so you know.

So I told someone, and because I told someone, that was out of my little kind of my household, then she was like, okay, then you're going, and I'm going to come and pick you up.

And it was like, oh, okay, then.

So she was like, right, okay, so you're definitely coming, because I'm gonna have you in the car, and we're gonna walk in there together.

I was like, okay.

And in the meantime, one of my other friends I'd known outside of the last lounge, she messaged me and said, oh, you're going to this thing?

And I'm like, yeah, yeah, I'm going this thing.

And she was like, can I sit with you?

And I was like, oh, my God, yes.

And it was just like, oh, yeah, yeah, gosh.

Can I sit with me?

I don't mind.

It was like, oh, my God.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So I sat with her for kind of like, because I had someone to be with, and that was the safety net that I needed, because I found that the way that my social anxiety works is I'm really good at walking into somewhere and going to have lunch or a coffee or a meal or whatever with someone I have never met before.

I am quite happy walking in there, because there's no one kind of knows, if you know what I mean, but walking into a room where you're not sure whether people know you or they don't know you, I really struggle with.

I struggle with the fact that I might say to someone, oh, who are you?

And they go, well, you know who I am, because I was speaking to you, like, like, 20 minutes ago online, and I'm like, do you know what I mean?

So I struggle with that side.

So it was nice having someone there that I did know.

Then people then came up to me, and I was able to kind of.

And because I'd had help with the book as well, from people in lounge, I was able to identify people who I'd never met before, but I'd worked with.

So people who had done my printing for different things.

I had Lauren, who was the illustrator for my book covers and that kind of thing.

So it kind of.

And it kind of escalated from there.

I kind of.

I had the confidence, even the littlest tiny bit of confidence, to go to another event.

And then I started.

I started.

It's all about conversation and communication.

I started talking to people.

I started getting involved.

And that way I knew that I'd feel better and it would help my book as well, because the more people knew me, the more people knew I had a book, the more people would tell someone that I had a book.

And then it kind of worked onto the fact that I then, in fact, joined the northern Las lamb team.

And I'm now admin for them.

So I do a lot of things for them now as well.

So that's just been.

It's been a funny year, let's put it that way.

I didn't think, maybe not this time.

18 months ago, I was in a completely different place.

Completely different place.

And I think it's the support from other people.

And I don't just mean support.

I mean, I don't even know how to put it.

It's that unconditional love.

That's all the way I can kind of describe it, where someone wants to know you and will, like, big you up to someone, and they've hardly ever met you.

They just kind of know you, if you know what I mean.

It's a funny sensation, and I've never known it in a group of women before that are so behind each other that it's crazy.

And I've made so many new friends, and there's so many, you know, people, and everybody kind of, like, knows me.

I'm still, like, kind of.

I don't know half these people, but people always know me because of being kind of, like, posting constantly.

So.

So, yeah, that was the.

That was definitely the marker catalyst of me being the old me and the new me at the same time.

The not anxious Harry, the kind of the filth peddler, as the girls call me.

So that's my nickname in the lounge.

So, yeah, so that kind of came right the way around, like, a 180, and I don't even recognize the person I was three years ago.

Totally different person, I mean, from the lounge.

I love that your playful side and your sense of humor always comes out, and obviously that comes out in your books as well.

And I think that's really attractive as well.

And your willingness to be vulnerable, I think that's such courage and strength to do that as well.

I think everybody helps each other out as well, and I've never known group, so, as well.

I think as well, it helps that there's a lot of neurodiverse women in there as well, because they kind of understand I was in a situation recently.

And I laughed it.

You know, it could have gone one or two ways, but I did really laugh at it.

I was going to an event, actually.

What happened?

It was.

It was more like my anxiety was, like, full blown and I didn't know why.

I think a lot of it was my HRT was failing, right.

So that was one of the things.

But there was lots of little things that were happening, like back to school and I had an event to go to that was a complicated event.

You know, it was like different floors, different times, different people.

So I was really struggling.

And I said to someone, you know, oh, my anxiety is like, proper high level at the minute.

And she went, why?

And I was like, what do you mean, why?

I'm like.

She was like, but why?

Why do you get anxious about it?

Why don't you just not be anxious?

And I was like, I wouldn't have thought that.

I said, the reason that I'm anxious is because I'm so good at it.

I'm really good at it.

I excel at it, so therefore I'm going to roll with it.

And she was like, oh.

And it was just.

It was.

Made me laugh because I'd not come across anybody like that, like, in the last two years or so, because the girls are so.

They so understand when you say something like, you know, I'm really anxious.

They don't say, well, why?

What's going on?

They go, what we gonna do about it?

And, you know, what?

What would help you not, well, why?

Surely you should just stop being anxious.

And I forgot those people like that in the world, you know, I mean, that didn't come from that kind of background and didn't kind of understand the stresses of, like.

Like my brain.

Yeah.

Just coming back to, you're saying where you are now is completely different from even 18 months ago.

Are you a lot happier?

Are you kind of.

I know this is a strange question sometimes.

This is just a personal belief.

I find that the things that we go through shape us for a reason and, you know, we become stronger and sometimes we get happier.

But I think it depends on how we manage to deal with it.

Where are you on that?

I think if you ask anybody if they're happy, it's a.

It's a hard question, isn't it?

And I think looking back at where I was.

Yeah, absolutely, I am happy.

And I think I'm more happy because I'm just.

I like the simple things as well.

You know, I'm not.

I'm not someone who's caught up with stuff.

So my, like, you know, my happy is sitting in front of the telly with my husband.

That's my happy.

Someone making me tea.

That's my happy.

So, yeah, I'm happy.

I'm a lot happier.

You know, would I like things to be a little bit better, differently?

Would I like my books to sell better?

Yeah, absolutely.

Would I be happier?

I'm not sure.

I think I'd be probably a little bit happier for that moment in time, but generally, and I mean, as well, you know, my kids are happy for the first.

Not for the first time, but it feels like for the first time in a long time, my children are actually happy.

And we're actually kind of.

We're letting things flow.

We're not forcing things.

And it just.

Everything's just a bit chill.

So, yeah, I'm definitely happy.

Good.

Good.

You just said you're letting things flow.

Because my next question was, do you have a place that you want to go with your books?

And with the promotion and if they took off and perhaps the way you want it to, would that change anything?

Hmm.

Would it change?

I don't think it would change much.

Really?

Yeah.

I do want to be successful.

I want to be at the stage where I don't have to worry about money.

I don't really worry about money, but you know what I mean?

You want to be comfortable about it.

And, I mean, if anybody's wanting to write a book because they think they're going to make money, I mean, don't bother.

That's not how it is.

I always publish these books because I had a story inside that I needed to get out.

And the thing that makes me the happiest about doing what I do is when people read my books and people get in touch with me, I mean, I get messages from people saying, oh, my God, I've just read your book.

And I could not believe, or even part of the way through the books and go, I can't believe he just did that.

I can't believe she's.

I hate this person.

I love this person.

And that is what makes it.

That's what makes it.

And do I wish.

I mean, I'm not really one for the limelight, really, but would I like to be like El James and have three houses?

Yeah, I probably would.

But would I change my life?

Not.

Not really, no, I don't think I would.

I mean, I'm currently.

Well, I'm currently going to publish fourth book, but it's an.

It's a novella.

It's in the same series that I'm writing, and then I'm going to take maybe a year is my thoughts, and I'm going to, instead of writing and publishing, which is what I do, I write a book, then I publish it.

Then I write the next book and then publish it.

I'm going to try.

I always say this with a laughter because my husband always laughs at me when I say it, and my author friends laugh as well because they go, haha.

Yes.

If I'm going to try and write the majority of three books in a series and have nearly the whole series finished before I publish the first one.

But whether that happens, you know, I'm very much a kind of like, I don't know, see if your pants kind of write.

I just, I don't spend a lot of time writing or perfecting.

It just comes out like word vomit.

So it just, and it's there.

So I don't know whether I can, and I can't keep a secret as well.

I can't keep my own secret.

I keep anybody else's.

I can't keep my own.

So whether I can keep three books under wraps, I don't know.

I don't know whether that's possible for me.

Now you say it comes out like word vomit and it's something that you're kind of compelled to write.

So there are a lot of you in, in those books.

Is there?

A lot of what?

Sorry, you yourself, your personality, your story.

Oh, yeah.

Like a hundred percent.

And people seem.

The question I always get asked is, who are the characters based on?

Anybody?

And I always say, well, the series is a group of friends, effectively, and the friends kind of, the friendship group changes and morphs throughout the series.

But the first book, who were the books based on?

They were all different parts of me, really.

So the, when you first read hello, happiness, the bit about Emma, if any of my friends, whenever any of my friends read the first chapter, they went, that's you.

But they also went, and that's me as well.

So a lot of my friends go, you've written about me kind of thing.

So my best friend, who is called Emma, funnily, I didn't set that up.

And she's also my better reader.

So the first person ever gets to read the book, she, she thinks that that book is entirely about her.

Apart from the nice man at the end, it isn't.

And I think people, people, I think it's not based on anybody, but people see bits of themselves in characters.

And when I had my book launch for the third book, hello, handsome.

We did a little game where you kind of chose who you were.

Which one of the friends were you, which one of the friends were, because we've got, you know, different, all different characters, you know, the downtrodden mum was Emma, the kind of.

Lizzie was the one who kind of.

No nonsense, if you want to be told directly what they thought, you went straight to Lizzie.

And then there was, like.

There was Megan, who was a bit ditzy, and she was the younger one, and she was kind of, you know, she wasn't quite in control of life.

And then there was Beth.

And Beth was the one who had little kids and she was kind of this feisty little thing as the series went on.

As the series went on.

And I've said this to a few people, the things in the book that are from personal experience always happen to one character, and I always put these things that have happened in my life as her, and that's Beth, and she doesn't have her own book, she's happily married.

But Beth and Steve, if there's anything that my husband has annoyed me about, it happens to Beth and Steve, and Beth always rants about Steve to the girls and you.

I would say probably nine times out of ten, when Beth's had a rant, it's actually happened to me.

Yes, there's definitely bits of me there.

And also, I have to.

In social situations, I have to remind my friends that anything they do say may be taken down and put in a novel.

Very good.

So has doing that been really cathartic as well, that really helped you move forward?

It has as well, and it's kind of like, I'm really lucky.

I have a really supportive partner and husband and a supportive family, really.

But I know people don't, and I think I'm one of these people who feels for everybody else.

So I see my friends going through things and I always say, why are you accepting this behaviour from this person?

I don't understand it because I've not lived it, but I've seen it through other people.

So it was quite nice writing about that kind of thing for me to just kind of say to people, it's not acceptable, this is not the way that we should be treated.

And I think that was the cathartic bit of it.

I mean, it's nice to have a rant about your husband and ingest and talk about how you want to build another patio, which we often do in the books when the men annoy us, but I think it was more cathartic.

For my feelings towards my friends who have experienced, like, domestic abuse, you know, kind of, you know, coercive control and behavior and the people in my periphery that I see who get talked down to constantly.

And the way that as women, we are seen as, I don't know, we're still seen.

We're still talked down to, and it really irritates us.

And that's why, I mean, I know on the outside, people who are not in the romance genre kind of do the whole, oh, well, it's romance.

She falls in love with a bloke and, you know, he.

It's not like that.

The romance genre is not like that at all.

It deals with some real issues.

Strong women and men always fall first, and a man never, ever saves a woman, ever.

And that's.

That was my main kind of aim.

I will never be putting that kind, you know, the opposite of that in a book.

It's always going to be strong women.

It's always going to be strong women who don't even realize they're strong until they have to be, that kind of thing.

So it wasn't cathartic so much for myself, but for what I was seeing around me.

And it really.

It winds us up.

It winds us up the way women are made to expect certain behaviors.

And no, we're not gonna.

Yeah, it's weird because what's.

What pops into my head, which I'd forgotten about.

And this is actually a man thing.

I don't know if you've heard of Jeff Thomas.

He wrote, he's a martial artist filmmaker, but he also wrote a few books, and one of them really had an impact on me way back when called Shapeshifter.

And it just.

Yeah, I mean, that was, like, really quite amazing for me on his determination to write that book as well.

So, yeah, it just came up when you were seeing that sort of relationship and not having to put up with it and how.

How restrictive it can be, but how we can overcome it by recognizing it as well, I think.

As well.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I think as well, the things that I like to put, especially in the books and in real life, is it's not the big things.

It's not the big things that make the difference.

It's the little things.

And my friends, one of the things that kind of was a catalyst for one of the stories, I think probably.

Hello Mister Beckett.

Some of hello Mister Beckett was the fact that she said she'd been married for so long and her husband still didn't know how she took her to coffee.

And that makes me so sad.

But it's, it's the small things, do you know what I mean?

It's the little things, it's, it's the, you know, buying your favorite drink and bringing it home because, just because, do you know what I mean?

It's that kind of thing.

It's about doing things that don't matter, but really, actually massively do.

It's been thought about.

That's, you know, that that's what love is, that's what love is.

And that's what happiness is in effect.

It's knowing that people think about you when they do things, do you know what I mean?

And that you are, you are something.

And especially in book one, because I mean, I've seen so many of my friends have relationships with men who just didn't care.

They didn't.

It was obvious that they lived their life the same as they had always lived their life.

And that sometimes that is the way sometimes the male brain is set up, but it's exaggerated in some men, and they will go to work, they will not think about what happens at home, or their children, or their wife or whatever.

They'll come home, they'll expect everything to be done.

And it's still like that now?

It's still like that.

And they expect everything to be done.

Being involved with school is not their job.

Babysitting the kids.

Why would I babysit the kids?

Not babysitting it, you're just parenting.

So that kind of thing, really kind of, that's what sparked the kind of the feelings that I got for Emma, where she just.

When someone doesn't care about you, you don't care about yourself anymore.

And that's, that's just awful, you know, and that's something I like to put out in these books, is that, you know, we're worth more.

We're worth more.

We're not just mum.

And it's not just, it's not just men, it's society, it's everything.

I mean, when my kids were growing up, still growing up, obviously, but when you went to the doctors, when you went to school, when you went to see any professional, you were mum.

You never ever had a name, you were just Mumdha.

And you know, we've got.

Yeah, that's part of our job, but it's only part of our job.

It's not who we are.

I don't feel like being a parent is who I am as a person, you know, it's part of my job and my lifestyle and whatever, but it's not all that I am, you know, I've got other traits as well.

I am seen outside of having children as well, so that's a big thing for me as well.

Being seen, yes.

Yeah and I think that's such a big thing.

I was actually just putting together a coaching program and one of the things that I was looking at is how a lot of people have kind of been forced to go remote, if you like, and be on their own.

There are a lot of people on their own, I think, more so now than ever before and not having that contact and that support and that friendship anymore.

So it's kind of something that I'm really looking at are people who have cut themselves off and not necessarily cut themselves off, but found themselves in a situation where they really don't have that level of support anymore.

And I think it's quite sad that have gone that way.

It is and I think as a society as well, I think we've been so busy with having work as the only thing you do where you make friends and you converse with people.

So in Covid, when that was taken away from everybody, people really struggled.

Now I work from home already so I didn't struggle.

But the problem is, because we've been in this situation where it has been work based and we've seen that by like government policy, you know, get everybody back to the office.

Why?

Why do we need to go back to the office?

We don't need to go back to work to socialise.

We need some kind of structure in our lives.

The community that we've lost, we need that back in place.

We don't need everybody to go out to work.

We need people to get together and communicate with each other and help each other and have that mental stimulation from having a conversation with someone else.

And it doesn't matter if you don't agree with them.

I love having conversations with people I don't agree with because I mean I'm one of these people who can see kind of like both sides of the, the coin kind of.

So having discussions with people I think is fascinating because I don't suggest that they're wrong, but they have a different point of view to me and that's healthy.

Really healthy.

Absolutely.

So I think also the problem we've got at the minute with society is that people aren't mixing the way that they used to mix before.

So people with different opinions aren't mixing with each other, so people with the same opinions are mixing with each other and fueling each other.

And I think that's what.

Where we get into the point of kind of like, not quite extremism, but like, people are, like, single visioned on certain things.

And I think if we had more of the kind of, I don't know, more kind of cohesion between different groups of people in social situations, in community situations, I don't think that would be as much of a problem.

But we've had that taken away from us, we've had funding taken away, and that's the real shame, I think, definitely with the way things are going.

But it will all be pointed back to the fact that we work from home, and that's not the issue.

The issue is not working from home.

It's about not having anything outside of work for people.

No, there's a definite move towards separation rather than collaboration in a lot of places, which is a bit of a shame.

So, yeah, I mean, I'm kind of focusing on collaboration, communication and companionship.

I think that's really kind of the three c's, if you like.

So, yeah.

And I mean, having a.

Having a group of.

I mean, this comes back to the books as well.

Having a group of friends and going out with a group of friends is like a therapy session.

Yeah.

Because you're able to talk through things and you'll either have people who will.

I mean, we were laughing.

I was laughing with some of my friends the other day because I'm one of these people who say, look, I'm annoyed with something, just let me feel the feels and let me get it out.

Because if I get it out now, it'll be over with and I'll have got past it.

If you kind of, like, dull it down and make me fester on it, it'll be two and three weeks and I'll still be ranting on about it.

Just let me have my feels.

You don't need to fix me.

And I think that's it as well.

You'll have people in your group who will be the people who, if you need fit, if you need help fixing, they'll fix it.

If you just need someone to rant to and go, yeah, that was really bad situation.

I feel for you.

That's what you need.

You need that.

Group therapy is what I call it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Sometimes you just need to be told that it's all going to work out one way or the other.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, on the other hand, you also need to be told it's okay to feel like that.

Yeah.

It's okay to feel all the feels.

Feel all the feels and get it all out and, you know, would then we move on.

Just don't fester in it.

Yep.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

So it's been lovely talking to you.

If there was one thing that you wanted to share that maybe you haven't shared yet, what would that be?

I think going back to the reading thing, I'm quite an advocate on reading for mental health as adults.

I mean, all the way through school, children are encouraged, forced sometimes, but encouraged to read.

And they're encouraged to read until they get to, like, 18, and then no one encourages them anymore.

And I think it's a real shame.

And I think there's a lot of barriers to reading.

Like I said before, I mean, the.

But one thing I.

If you don't have time to read or to do something that will make your life better and your mental health better, what's the point?

Make time.

Make time to do it.

I still.

I mean, I don't read as much as I do because sometimes I can't read while writing because it pollutes the brain.

Yeah.

But generally, I usually try and find something a bit different to what I'm writing.

But, you know, it doesn't matter what you read because reading is so, so good for your mental health.

There's been studies done about dementia and that reading helps, just doesn't stop dementia, but it slows the.

Slows dementia down.

So it doesn't, you know, so it's not formed as highly because of the way that your brain is reacting to what you're reading.

And it's that time, whether it's a magazine, whether it's a comic, whether it's a.

Whether you're in your sixties and seventies and you're reading a young adult novel.

It doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter what it is.

The only thing that matters is that you are enjoying it and you are being taken away on that journey in that book and you are in that story.

And that's it.

Brilliant.

Brilliant.

Well, thank you.

It's been a fabulous conversation and, yeah, let's maybe do it again sometime soon.

Thank you.

Yeah, definitely.

Thanks for having me.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for taking the time to listen to this week's episode.

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