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Claire Ladds Readers’ Club News: July 2025

27th July 2025 by claireladds Leave a Comment

Image shows black strip on brown background and stack of books. Text says Claire Ladds Readers' Club news.

Hello, and welcome to this month’s news from my writing desk. And, I am rather stunned to say, it genuinely is from my writing desk!

If you have followed me on social media, or read previous blog posts I have written, you may have the distinct impression that I have somewhat of a loathing for my desk. You would, given everything that I’ve said about it previously, have drawn an accurate assumption that I can’t stand it. I’ve had this desk for around two decades now, and I have spent the bulk of that time avoiding sitting at it for any extended period (apart from November 2014, when I decided to challenge myself to write 50,000 words of three different novels. Short version: 115,000/150,000 words were completed, and I didn’t write a thing during December; one of the novels eventually became The Secrets That Haunt Us, several years later. The other two continue to languish in a ‘Book drafts’ folder on my computer).

Back to the desk situation: I took it upon myself to make what may turn out to be a monumentally brilliant decision (I don’t have many of those, so bear with me). I decided to tell myself that I want to write at the desk, and that anywhere else just won’t be as good, as useful, as practical, as… I’m sure I’ll keep adding to the list as time goes on. So far, it’s working, with the odd exception of the times, usually later in the afternoon, when I find myself gripping at my knees in some kind of mental rebellion. That, I’ve realised, is my indicator to tell myself, ‘You are now genuinely sick of looking at this room. Get out of here. Now. Before this brilliant decision you’ve made falls apart like one of your homemade biscuits.’ I don’t make great biscuits. At that point, I handwrite in an armchair with the TV on and calm myself down with a cup of tea. Or three.

This ludicrous but apparently workable process has enabled me to produce an almost complete structure to my new work-in-progress, and 10,000 words of the actual book, along with an array of scenes and character studies that may work themselves into the novel where appropriate. So far, so good. I’ve also completely fallen in love with my main characters and walk around, thinking what they might do, say or ponder in various given situations. I even drew up a shopping list for one of them the other day (it seemed to primarily consist of pizza, cereal bars, tea bags and a collection of cocktails in cans. Not the world’s most arduously constructed shopping list, to be fair).

This month has also kept me extremely busy with Faber Academy’s Writing a Novel (Online) course. I am utterly thrilled and delighted that I chose to apply for a highly competitive place on this course. I won’t go into details of the course itself, as that’s Faber’s and not mine. What I will say is that being on this course has reignited a blazing fire inside me for fiction that I had feared was in potential peril of snuffing itself out due to the current exhausting content of my day-to-day life. It’s fabulous being able to connect with, and support, other writers who are all working with the same end goal as me, dealing with similar emotions about their work, having moments of despair and epiphany about their writing. All of this also includes our wonderful tutor for the course, also an extremely experienced writer and teacher who is immensely helpful and astute with comments about our writing and our novels in general. The feeling of being in this together makes the process less isolating than it can be, sometimes. Writing is, by its very nature, creation performed in isolation (as a rule): just the writer and the keyboard or pen and paper, and the ideas percolating inside their brain.

Books on sale or half price – but be quick!

Until the end of July, you’ll find ALL of my e-books on sale for half price on the Smashwords store. If you get your books from Smashwords, definitely hop on over to grab any of mine – and of other authors – that you’ve been meaning to get, while they’re 50% off the usual price. You’ll find the promo here: https://www.smashwords.com/shelves/promos/

If you buy your e-books on Kobo, you can grab a copy of my psychological suspense with a gothic-inspired undertone, No Deadlier Time, for a reduced price. This offer applies to the UK and Australia and New Zealand. Again, be quick – this sale ends on 31st July.

For short story lovers: A short story to read

As well as my new novel-in-progress, I’ve written several short stories over the last few weeks, which are all destined for various places, be that collections of mine, submissions to publications, or as part of my work-in-progress. For various reasons, I can’t share these with you, however…

In case you missed it on my blog, I have recently added a short story for you to read. This first appeared in That’s Life: Fast Fiction magazine in Australia a number of years ago, and is also included in my short story collection, The Reason for Everything. The initial spark for this piece of fiction was prompted by a memory I have of being very tiny, a toddler possibly, and locking my mum out of the house by somehow sliding across a heavy bolt that went across the bottom of our door (I don’t believe that bolt remained in that position for long afterwards!). I have a snapshot, but vivid, recollection, of Mum climbing back in through the kitchen window which, luckily, she had open, since she was using the twin-tub washing machine on a hot day.

If you’d like to read the story, you’ll find it here: https://claireladds.com/2025/06/29/short-story-instinct/

Until next time, happy reading!

***

Which of my books have you read? Here’s a list:

The Reason for Everything and other short stories

The Secrets That Haunt Us

Hers or Mine

You Know You Shouldn’t

Darker Minds:

Show Me Dead

That Killer Image

No Deadlier Time

Darker Minds 3-book digital bundle

My 2025 Writing and Business Goals

1st January 2025 by claireladds Leave a Comment

Happy New Year! As the wheel turns and we encounter, once more, twelve months of potential and possibilities ahead (I’m going for the ‘positive vibe’ – can you tell?!), today I am going to dig down into what I want to achieve in my writing and my business during 2025.

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, my devotion to the writing I adore, and to the publication of my work, has been nowhere near as good as I’ve wanted it to be. I miss it; I miss writing in the way I used to, and I feel that I’ve let myself down during 2024 by my lack of productivity and, more fundamentally, in my lack of creativity. I can be very hard on myself, and I’m going to be here, for without this honesty with myself, I won’t move forward. It’s not fulfilling me to write so little and to worry endlessly about whether I’m writing the ‘right thing’, neither am I satisfied that there are many publishing options and ways of serving my readers that I haven’t explored yet. Okay, this doesn’t feel much like positivity, but bear with me.

My intention, then, is to remedy this feeling of discontentment in 2025. But how do I do that? As much as I can weave spells in words to create emotions in my readers, a magic wand is something with which I am not proficient in real life! I think, first and foremost, I have to stop allowing other people’s views over what I ‘should’ do becoming in turn my worries over whether I am doing the ‘right thing’. I have a huge tendency to overthink my choices, which can inhibit, and sometimes thwart altogether, my productivity. Received wisdom in the indie author community has, for a long time, been to stay in your lane when it comes to genre choice. And it makes sense – being known for a particular kind of book helps with ongoing sales. But, for me, it can feel confining because my brain has become a gigantic vessel for all kinds of stories – and I want to write them! I also know that I write best when I am creating dark stories. This could mean that I sidestep into an array of sub-genres in, or even genres tangential to, crime fiction sometimes, and I will welcome it, if it stops the story eating me up from the inside, out.

I have always known that I am a writer first and a publisher second; the work itself is the most important thing to me, and would remain so even if no one but my mum ever read my work, ever again. I want to tell my stories, my way. And this is what I’m going to do. As I said in yesterday’s review post, I write the books I want to read, so I really am my own ideal reader. Throughout my writing career, which spans almost 20 years, I’ve only ever published, or submitted, work that I am proud of. As long as I continue to do that, then I’m achieving everything I’ve ever wanted: to be a writer, even when people have doubted me, or told me to stop wasting my time. It’s been the writing process itself which has been my therapy and solace during some of the darkest times in my life, and I have no idea who I’d be without stories as an intrinsic part of my life.

With that said, I want to be a much better publisher of my own work, too! I have several goals I want to achieve this year, in both writing and publishing.

Writing

Complete the short story collection, Petal by Petal: Stories of Love, Obsession and Murder. It will, to a degree, be a book of my heart, as it fits in my ‘Hearts & Crimes’ collection of more literary, emotion-bound stories of crime and unease.
Complete a standalone psychological suspense/thriller. I already know exactly which book this will be, and have begun some tentative planning, which I need to hone in on and clarify before I can start writing.
Complete the sequel to You Know You Shouldn’t (because, yes, there’s going to be one!). It took me what feels like an eternity to decide whether there would be another book. I couldn’t decide because I didn’t know how You Know You Shouldn’t would end (a rarity for me to not be aware of the ending before writing), or whether the story of the main protagonist would continue. It held up the project immensely – but no longer. The issue now is in deciding how many books there should be!
Complete another book that I’ve already started. I don’t want to say too much about it yet because I’m not sure when I’ll release it, whether it will be a novella, or in what kind of format it will eventually find itself. What I can say is that, as I mentioned yesterday, it’s very Hitchcock-esque and would actually fit Petal by Petal beautifully – so it may weave its way into the collection!
Plan the details of a mystery-thriller series that I want to write. I already have an over-arching idea for all the books and now the series needs fleshing out, and I want to connect at a deeper level with the characters. I will not be writing this series for publication this year, though.
Explore the possibilities of a side-step into something psychological/possibly Gothic with paranormal elements of this ilk, as an additional line of writing – but definitely not instead of my suspense and psychological fiction. This is something that has been interesting me increasingly over the course of last year, from both an academic and writerly perspective. As yet, I have no idea whether I will write in this arena or not.
Plan and begin writing another standalone book in my Hearts & Crimes series. I have two novels that I want to include in this series, and I’ve been experimenting with them since 2014 (yes, for ten years!), so I’d really like to complete them. They have become, just like The Secrets That Haunt Us, very close to my heart.

Publishing

Publish Petal by Petal in e-book, paperback and hardback formats. As this book is already available to pre-order, it’s probably a good job that it’s my first major publishing goal of the year!
Be a better publisher of my paperbacks! I intend to make all my paperbacks available in many more stores than Amazon only. This will mean that you’ll be able to request them from libraries where you live.
Publish the paperback and hardback of You Know You Shouldn’t, and also the sequel (working title: Eva Book 2!) in e-book, paperback and hardback formats.
Publish the standalone psychological thriller that I intend to write this year, in e-book, paperback and hardback.

A final word …

Writing is my obsession; books are my big passion; certain stories and characters are ingrained in my soul. I want to express this in 2025 by showing it, not just talking about it. As I said at the beginning, we all have twelve months of potential and possibilities ahead of us. I intend to make mine count for me. And my enduring hope is that you will come to love my writing and the stories that I weave as much as I do.

Have a wonderful 2025, whatever you choose to do with it. And happy reading!

~ Claire ~

Which of my psychological suspense/thriller books have you read? You’ll find them all, and more, here.

Review of my Writing and Business Goals 2024

31st December 2024 by claireladds Leave a Comment

I hope you’ve had a lovely Christmastime. As we reach the very end of the year and brace ourselves to head into the next, it’s time for me to reflect on my writing, my author business, and also my overall happiness with the way I have been working in 2024. It’s been a strange couple of years; I didn’t manage to write a review of my 2023 goals, nor did I set any heavy targets for 2024. Both of these meant I didn’t make myself accountable here, on my blog. There was a massive reason for this: during the end of 2022 and the bulk of 2023, I was suffering personally from illness, which very much scuppered any plans I had for that year, with the exception of releasing my psychological suspense thriller, Hers or Mine. My recovery was slow, but nevertheless steady, and I wanted no setbacks. This meant that, for 2024, I kept my aims private, and decided that my main goal was to write. Anything. As long as my work progressed in some way, then I would be relatively happy. But I did not want to put any kind of pressure on myself beyond ensuring I continued to recover, and certainly didn’t expect to publish anything.

I did write. I started several projects and, in particular, I progressed pretty well with a noir novella which may turn into a novel; I’m not sure yet. I was aiming for a Hitchcock-esque/Patricia Highsmith claustrophobic vibe because I find that particularly exciting. I also wanted to integrate something experimentally a little bit spicier than my dark suspense books, but nevertheless with my usual darkness of character and twists and turns. This has all led to an extra layer of tension that I’ve been thoroughly enjoying writing, and it has prompted plans for a themed series of standalones in the same vein.

I wrote a tentative plan for a Gothic mystery-thriller series, which has started developing into what I’m going to currently call ‘Gothic with grief and guts’. I have so many ideas for books which have never figured out their place in my writing, but each of them will fit beautifully here. What happened then was a proliferation of ideas – and all for two other series which have been lurking in my head for quite some time. They’re biding their time, and deciding whether or not they will wrangle themselves to fit my current genres of work, or whether they will be something a little…different.

Over the course of the year, I also went right back to my writing roots and started various pieces of short fiction, completing several of them. I was thrilled to find that three of my dark short stories gained places in the Bolts of Fiction charity anthology, published by the very lovely horror author, Daniel Willcocks, of Devils Rock Publishing.

But I wasn’t completely happy. I wasn’t publishing anything myself. I hadn’t, as I mentioned, made firm plans to even try to do so. And, despite being acutely aware that I ought not to push myself too hard, too fast, I couldn’t continue in this vein; it was enough to drive me crazy. I’m a writer, yes, but I’m also a publisher, and I was letting myself down.

So, In early summer, I got back to writing the first draft of You Know You Shouldn’t, the psychological thriller which had been giving me immense trouble the year previously because I hadn’t been quite sure exactly what to do with the narrative, and whether to continue the story of Eva Sewell, my main character, beyond this book. However, I decided that, no matter what, and regardless of whether I’d solved the standalone versus series issue, that You Know You Shouldn’t was coming out by Christmas. So I set a release date for the e-book of Christmas Day, however crazy that sounds. Guess what? The book came out on 25th December, as planned, which made for a great Christmas! I had written, and I had published. AND I’ve solved the narrative issue – there will definitely be more Eva novels to come. Her story is not yet over…

At a similar time that I re-started work on this book, I was also asked to speak on a panel at the Crime Book Festival in Boston, Lincolnshire, here in the UK. I thoroughly enjoyed talking about my writing, and offering advice to audience members who wanted to publish their work. The day ended on a high, as I had the privilege of talking at length with members of the audience and signing copies of my books. It was such a lovely experience, that I also agreed to become an attending author at their main book festival in September. Building up in-person connections over the course of the year has also meant that I have increased sales in signed, personalised copies of my paperbacks, which is something I intend to explore more in the coming months.

But, as I am wont to do, all too often, I have spent portions of the year second-guessing whether I am writing the ‘right thing’, both in terms of what makes me happy and in a business sense, together with agonising over the dilemma of whether my e-books should be available everywhere, or exclusive to Kindle Unlimited. There are pros and cons to both, depending on the genre, the author, as well as business style and objectives. After beating myself up about this for far too long, and making an attempt to remove my e-books from all the stores except Amazon in order to experiment with Kindle Unlimited after a number of years away, I found that I could not be absolutely certain that my books were not still lurking on some stores. I did not want to fall foul of Amazon’s exclusivity terms and conditions, and simultaneously I had a nagging feeling deep inside that, for me, this would actually be the wrong move. So, for all the books I ever write under the ‘Claire Ladds’ brand, I have decided that making my books available in as many places as possible is what I’m doing.

Am I worrying over whether I’m writing what makes me happy? Yes. Am I worrying that I should be writing books that are more in-line with the mainstream, or a long-running series? Yes. Or… oh, pick a thing and I’m probably worrying about it! These questions are a perennial concern for me. What I do know is that, if I’m writing a story that keeps me thinking about it all day, and dreaming about it at night, if it thrills me to plan it, and I have a real connection with my characters, then I’m writing the story I should be writing. I write what I want to read, first and foremost. And then I always hope that there are readers who want to read the same books as me. I’m not the kind of writer who can jump onto current trends, I know that about myself. I, finally, am at peace with the fact that I can only write the books that interest me. Without that, there is no authenticity in my writing and, in turn, no joy. This was something I was troubled by so much when I was in my heyday of writing short fiction for certain types of publications that I actually stopped writing fiction altogether for a while. I never want that to happen again. What I have noticed within myself over the course of this year, and something that has surprised me somewhat, is that I now feel ready to write the story of a character which spans a series of books, a task that I have resisted vehemently for years because I convinced myself that I was unable to do it.

So, what have I managed to achieve in 2024? Well, a bit more than I expected, to be honest:

~ I published my psychological thriller, You Know You Shouldn’t

~ I attended two authors events and met some of my readers

~ I wrote other work that will form the basis of a future publication, and short stories which were published (and for a good cause, which was a bonus)

~ I found new readers who became part of my community in my Readers’ Club, and people who are interested in my work via TikTok, which has resulted in an uptick of sales

~ I made direct, in-person sales bases on word of mouth and personal connection

~ In conjunction with my Readers’ Club, and with a great deal of soul-searching, I developed more clarity over where I want my writing to go, what makes me happy, and what I’d like to write and publish in future months and years.

For an author who set no solid goals for this year in order to ensure I stayed well, I don’t think that’s bad going. But spending some time sitting back and thinking about what I really enjoy, what I want to focus on, and what will also make decent business sense, now means that I have plenty of ideas for how I would like next year’s projects to go. I don’t plan on sitting back and letting the world go by, because that really isn’t like me at all. Writing is my life, and I intend to live it, even if it is only vicariously through my characters (and, considering what some of them get up to, then ‘vicariously’ is probably not a bad thing!).

I’ll be back tomorrow, when I will discuss my writing and business goals for the coming year, together with more details of what this ‘soul-searching’ of mine has revealed, in relation to what you can expect of me in 2025.

See you next year!

You Know You Shouldn’t is available right now from many e-book stores, as well as from libraries (just request the book). Click the button or the image below to discover more and buy this psychological thriller (with a hint of spice).

BUY YOU KNOW YOU SHOULDN’T

Happy “Release Day” Christmas!

25th December 2024 by claireladds Leave a Comment

First and foremost, a very Merry Christmas! It’s a very special one for me this year because it’s also RELEASE DAY for my new psychological thriller, You Know You Shouldn’t. The e-book of this dark and emotionally-intense novel is currently 99p/99c for a few days, so grab your copy now!

If you’ve not come across the book before, here’s the book description, to put you in the picture:

~~~

TEMPTATION CAN BE IRRESISTIBLE. BUT IT CAN ALSO BE DEADLY…
A twisty, dark psychological thriller.

“Let me ask you: if you received a message, and you had no clue who sent it, would you reply? What if you got more and more of them, and not just messages, either, would you reply then? But what if you knew exactly who it was – and you and he had unfinished business – what then? Would you be tempted? I was.”

Eva Sewell is struggling to manage her life: a troubled, on-off relationship with her ex-husband, an intolerable work situation, and a tempestuous relationship with her sister. And all of it is made worse by the knowledge that her beloved dad is dying. When she gets a message from an unknown number, she’s almost tempted to answer it, just for someone to vent to. But she’s not stupid. She doesn’t reply to random strangers.

But the messages don’t stop. Who is it? Why do they seem to know so much about her? Are they watching her? As everything in her life begins to fall apart, she’s determined to have nothing to do with whoever it is. But anyone can slip up, can’t they? Especially if replying is secret, exciting. If it feels like you’re in a clandestine relationship. And Eva needs something in her life that she feels in control of. Maybe this is it.

Then, in one unexpected moment, she discovers who the mysterious messager is. And, once she knows this, resisting him is impossible. Because they have history – of the darkest kind.

This revelation sets off a chain reaction that takes her down a dangerous path of temptation, resurfacing guilty pleasures and dreadful memories that she thought she’d left behind. But, now he’s back in her life, guilt is the least of her problems. Submitting to everything he asks of her will mean she’s faced with dangerous tasks and choices no one should ever have to make.

How much danger can she handle, how much of her life is she prepared to destroy, to finally get what she’s always wanted – the man at the end of the phone? Or will he get her first?

A twisty, dark and emotionally intense psychological thriller, full of suspense.

~~~

So there you go! I can promise you that a text message is only the very beginning of a very deadly game of temptation, and there’s plenty more to come for Eva…

If you’d like to give yourself (or even someone else) a Christmas present of You Know You Shouldn’t, you can buy it from your favourite e-book store. Or use the button below to take you to all the available stores.

In the meantime, enjoy the rest of your Christmas, and happy reading!

BUY THE BOOK

Have You Read No Deadlier Time Yet?

23rd November 2024 by claireladds Leave a Comment

The nights are dark… The cold envelops you like an embrace from Death himself, and the wind whispers its secrets through the cracks and crevices of your mind… What better time to read a dark, Gothic-inspired crime and suspense book like No Deadlier Time? The best part? No Deadlier Time is available as an e-book for 99p/99c/your country’s equivalent for the rest of November (and I might even extend that into December – call it an early Christmas present!).

BUY NO DEADLIER TIME

In case you’ve never encountered the novel before, here’s the book description:

~~~

A family with dark secrets. Will someone kill to keep them?

Neve Eldritch is pregnant, happy, and has one wish – to get her husband, Harry, to reconnect with his family. Neve has never met them – and with good reason. Now there’s a chance to move into the family home and heal a long-standing rift. Going home can’t be that bad. Can it? But something feels wrong from the moment they arrive.

When you’ve avoided the problem for so long, it’s bound to rear its ugly head. All Harry ever wanted was to be worthy in his dad’s eyes. There’s a secret to success, one his dad has taunted him with as a boy, but now he’s gone to drastic lengths to stop Harry getting hold of it. Desperate to prove himself, Harry takes matters into his own hands – with deadly results.

But Harry isn’t prepared for what the horrifying key to his family’s success really is, and it’s spiralling out of control. When murder follows murder, he’s sure he’s committed them. How can he stop himself and keep his family safe when the secret he now holds won’t let him – and he can’t remember any of it?

Suspicions run rife in Neve. Her husband is lying to her. Is he crazy? Or is he a killer? Or maybe – just maybe – someone, somewhere, wants rid of him, and they’ll do anything to get what they want. And she’s sure they’re here, at the isolated family home. Do they want to kill her, too?

Terrible choices lay ahead if anyone is to get out alive. One person can save them all. But time is ticking away… and it’s proving to be deadly.

Be careful what you wish for… you just might get it.

This book is part of the Darker Minds crime and suspense thriller series: Dark minds are at work. Sometimes it takes a darker one to stop them.

~~~

There are other books in the Darker Minds series. All these books are standalone novels and can be read in any order:

Show Me Dead

That Killer Image

You can also get a FREE copy of Beneath the Flesh as a welcome gift when you join my Readers’ Club.

So… if you want the darkness to envelop you, and hold you close as you read a devastatingly dark tale of family secrets, impetuous murder, and deadly dreams, grab your copy of No Deadlier Time for 0.99, curl up by candlelight… and be careful what you wish for!

FIND YOUR PREFERRED STORE AND BUY HERE

Books Make Perfect Christmas Presents

25th November 2023 by claireladds Leave a Comment

I love Christmas shopping. Not the actual shopping – the food, and trying to figure out which socks are the right size, and did Great Aunty Helen actually already have a sandwich toaster? – because, to me, that’s an absolute nightmare. No, what I love is the atmosphere – the lights, the beautiful displays, the sound of carols and Christmas songs filterign through the air, the myriad smells of food cooking on the street stalls, the quirky gifts that you can find, especially those ones that have been lovingly created by a real human being, where you can tell that time and energy has been poured into them.

This latter is how I see books: one of the quirky gifts. The story itself has been created in the author’s head, then formed, layers added to build it into a narrative, its separate parts dovetailed then worked on until it has perfectly working joins, sanded into seamless storytelling, varnished and finally displayed in its own individual, beautiful form. How exciting is that – to be able to read the ideas that have been created in a writer’s imagination, and encapsulated in such a tangible form?! As you read this post, you’ll notice how much I value the opportunity of being able to give books at Christmas, as much as being a recipient of them.

My absolute favourite place to be at Christmastime is a bookshop. In truth, you’d be hard pushed to keep me out of them all year round, but there’s something extra cosy, extra exciting, about being there knowing I’m choosing something for a loved one to read. To me, giving a book is a more modern development of the tradition of oral storytelling. We all absorb story in many ways every day, from novels to conversations to adverts on the TV, and in many more ways, too. Instead of passing a story on to others around a fire, it’s become a physical (or digital, or audio) form that enables the recipient of the story to engage with their imagination on a deep level, and at their own pace. The book itself acts as a conduit between the author’s imagination and the reader’s innate desire for story. We need them to act as an overarching metaphor, a point of identity with a character or a situation, or with choices and consequences, to help make sense of our own lives.

As a voracious reader, I consume story in as many ways as possible. But I have to say that there is something special about holding a book in my hands, smelling the pages (yes, I do that!), leafing through the sheets and sheets that contain insights that I wouldn’t ever have been able to experience in the way that I do, had the invention of the printing press never come into existence. But, for me, the experience is magnified during the cold UK winter weather, as the rain batters on the bookshop windows and dusk becomes darkness outside. The bookshop becomes a haven, a cosy-lit home-from-home for book lovers. The place is wallpapered with bookshelves, carpeted with tables of new, bestselling and on-offer novels, and you can often sit and read the books you buy or – in some bookshops – before you do so. What I especially love is that the people around me are all there doing exactly the same as me, and chances are they’re as much of a bibliophile as I am!

I remember going into bookshops as a child, determined that I was going to:

a) buy everyone in my entire family a book to read for Christmas because I loved choosing the books, loved the secret shenanigans I got up to beforehand as I tried to discover which books in a series they’d already got and which they still needed, and because they were easy to wrap nicely(!), and

b) point out to the adult(s) with me which books I really thought were amazing, and stand looking longingly at them – surely someone would take the hint… (you can’t blame a book-obsessed girl for trying!).

What I have never forgotten, however, is the sheer wonder I experienced while taking the time to choose presents for my loved ones. My perusals which led to learning about so many more genres than I read myself at the time, elation at being surrounded by so many books in general and the shelves and shelves of Agatha Christie books in particular (my local branch of WH Smith at the time had an entire wall devoted to Christie novels), and the ultimate book-buying that connected us through a love of reading, even if that’s not what I realised I was doing at the time. A gift from one reader to another, for me, is something very special and personal. Nowadays, of course, we can choose to buy paperbacks and hardbacks, or gift e-books instead. We can even give people the opportunity of reading with their ears through audiobooks – something I wish I’d been able to offer up as presents for certain members of my family when I was a child. There really is something for everyone nowadays. And I truly think that’s wonderful.

If you are planning on buying books as Christmas presents this year, I hope you have as much fun doing it as I do. And if you open up your presents on Christmas Day and find that someone has taken the time to try and connect with your imagination through a story they think you’ll love, then you have, in my opinion, been given a gift that will keep on giving. It will give love to you every time you read it, or think about it, or when it inspires your own imagination or wish to devour more stories.

Our real lives revolve around the story we live every day. Not all of us are fortunate enough to be able to choose how that story plays out, either some or all of that time. So, at Christmastime, why not let someone you know have the enjoyment of living in their imaginations with the characters that authors have created for those who love the kinds of stories they offer up as gifts, so that we can lose ourselves in them? It might turn out to be the best gift you could ever give.

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(It would be remiss of me – as an author – to not throw in a cheeky quick mention my own books here. If you’d like to see the ones I have on offer, you can find all my books here. Maybe you could stuff a loved one’s new reading device with e-books, or grab a paperback stocking filler for the suspense reader in your life.)

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