It’s taken me a while to send you December’s book choice because I have been doing so many events. Since the beginning of September, I’ve had at least one event a week – plus a few family issues to sort out and I have been flat out!

Anyways, I’m hoping you’ll have a chance to read this book choicebefore our next meeting date of Tuesday 10 December, but no worries if you don’t get to it, come along anyway and we’ll chat books in general.

So, what’s the third TBR Book Club choice?

Well, I loved it, so do let me know on hello@dorothykoomson.co.uk if you’ve read the book and what you thought. And, as always, do send me other book suggestions that you think other people need to know about.

Talk to you soon.

Dorothy x

 

The Big Reveal Book Club Choice:

All That We’ve Got

TBRBC Headline: A deeply emotional and riveting tale that gives you a peek into the hidden lives of the people you see around you every day.

My thoughts: One of the best things about reading is that when you open the cover of a book or hit play on your audiobook, you get to step into other people’s lives. When you take that step, you discover so much about how other people think and feel; you learn that some people have realities that seem so far removed from yours but are actually very much like your life.

In All That We’ve Got, Jendella creates a tale so that allows you to almost experience the world of two young women in contemporary Britain and find out the things they have to do to survive and thrive in today’s world.

Mimi is a young mother who is desperate to move on from the fraught and emotional circumstances around her son’s conception and birth; Abi is a teen who gets herself into terrifying trouble trying to financially help her mother after the loss of her father. The two of them are neighbours and their paths initially cross in a takeaway one night when Mimi buys a cash-strapped Abi some food.

Their lives keep crossing and intertwining until they seem bound together by Fate itself. This book covers so many real-world subjects – from how young people get caught up in county lines to the real reasons behind the Black Lives Matter protests, from teen grooming to zero-hour contracts – giving very real and emotional context to what we see in the headlines every day.

I tell you, at some points my heart was racing and I was on edge with anxiety willing the characters to be OK, the next I was welling up at the gut-wrenching situations they were in. But I can’t lie, there were a few laughs, too.

This novel also makes the point that I’ve been harping on about for years, one that I’ve seen Jendella make too – we need to build communities to get us through the difficult times as well as to help us to celebrate the good times. Community, finding others around us to share our world with, really improves our lives and helps us to achieve so much more than we can sitting alone in our homes, resenting those around us. Community really is all that we’ve got, and this wonder of a novel shows us why and how.

All That We’ve Got is an easy read, but that does not mean lightweight or frivolous (though I am all for that in a book), it simply means don’t dismiss it by thinking it’s too high brow or trauma-laden to enjoy.

TBRBC verdict: All That We’ve Got is an achingly beautiful tale about the real people behind sensationalist headlines, and it is so perfectly crafted that it has your heart in your throat at so many points, while simultaneously pulling at your heartstrings. I enjoyed every single page.

My sewing teacher hated me.

There, I’ve said it.

I’ve started this so many times and each time I abandon writing it down because I felt bad about revealing just how awful this woman was to me. I’ve felt ashamed that it happened.

Why did she hate me, I hear you ask? Why indeed. To paraphrase Kez says in Every Smile You Fake: I’m convinced I’m a nice person so I’m always taken aback when people don’t like me. But why would a perfect stranger take against me when she’s meant to be teaching me how to take my sewing to the next level? Well, I have my suspicions.

Before I explain my suspicions, let’s be real for a moment: despite me thinking I’m a nice person, I do know I am not everyone’s glass of pomegranate cordial with fizzy water. I do accept that disliking me is everyone’s prerogative. But, usually, that dislike comes from spending a bit of time with me, you know, putting in the work to discover just how irritating I can be.

This sewing teacher hadn’t known me for more than five minutes before she took against me. And why? Because I had ambitions to make a supercool, super-cute denim jumpsuit that I saw in a sewing magazine and she decided she couldn’t possibly let me make it. It felt very much like she thought I needed to be taken down a peg or two, that she thought I was an uppity thing who had delusions of sewing skills and I needed to be put in my place. And she was very targeted in how she set about bringing me down.

First, she declared the pattern was too complicated to work out from the way it had been printed in the magazine. It was complicated, I’ll concede to that. So it was a good thing that Dorothy and Dr K had spent that afternoon working out the pattern, tracing it out and cutting it out for Dorothy to take to class then, wasn’t it?

When I produced the pattern pieces, her face fell. But don’t you worry, she rallied admirably. She examined the instructions then looked up at me with a look of delight on her face: ‘You can’t possibly make this jumpsuit,’ she says to me.

‘Why?’ says I.

‘Because it doesn’t go up to your size,’ she replies.

Reader, dear reader, is this not the point of making your own clothes? So you can make things go up to your size? So you don’t have to be bound by what the clothes’ manufacturers decide your size is?

When I said something to that effect, her answer was basically: ‘Yes, but not in this case. Because in this case, the pattern is trash (she implied but didn’t say that) and your body shape – slender frame with a large bust – is all wrong for this pattern.’ She did say that part. And you know what, I probably wouldn’t have minded so much if she hadn’t looked so damn triumphant while saying that this pattern wouldn’t work for my curves.

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Suitably chastised for how I look, and thinking I could sew something a little challenging, I slunk away to sit in the corner feeling terrible about myself. I left the class wondering how I managed to pay someone to make me feel bad when there are places all over Brighton, nay, all over the country where I can get that type of treatment for free.

But, you know, I’m nothing if not a trier, so I ordered myself another slightly similar jumpsuit pattern in time for the next class. This one went all the way up to well past my dress size and this was going to be all good, yes?

No.

Still too small, still wouldn’t make enough jumpsuit for these curves. So, under great sufferance and with much sighing, she decided she was going to get some extra paper and help me reshape the pattern. And thus I entered a new level of hell – standing in a room full of strangers, being fitted with a paper pattern and having my chest periodically hoisted up to show where it should be and how we were going to have to alter the pattern to make accommodations for the lack of hoistedness.

Yeah, at this point, I’m feeling royally body shamed. I’m battling hard not to, but it’s difficult. The thing is, I love my body. It does a lot for me, even when I don’t feed it the best food, I don’t give it its vitamins, I don’t sleep or exercise enough, my body keeps showing up for me. And I love it for that.

I’ve spent *cough, cough* years trying to resist and unlearn the message that my body has to look a certain way to be ‘normal’; that it has to fit a certain size of clothes or there’s something ‘wrong’ with it. It’s a message we’re constantly fed, and we’re constantly supposed to internalise while we do everything we can to meet impossible body goals. I’ve fought and fought it, I’ve spent years on an even keel – so I didn’t expect a new villain to enter this battlefield in the guise of a woman who was meant to be helping me with something I found fun.

Back on t’webs I go, seeking out a pattern that will contain my apparently overgenerous proportions. Quick aside here, body sizing on patterns, particularly older patterns are seriously messed up. You need to measure and measure and measure again to get the proportions right – and size 16 you may be in the real world but size 24 you could well be on a sewing pattern.

I go back to class with a third pattern and that is big enough (!). Hurrah? Erm, no. The sewing teacher is annoyed I’ve got a third pattern (not as annoyed I, believe me) and manages to get a few swipes in about the size of my chest and how we’ll still have to work hard to make it fit around there.

Keep in mind, please, this is week three in our sewing course journey and everyone else is cutting out fabric, constructing garments and using the machines and I am still without a viable pattern. And then she starts to tell me that I need to get some toile to make a practice garment first. She hasn’t told that to anyone else. And a couple of people do have garments that are as complicated as mine. At this point, I’m already on the edge when she pipes up with, ‘Are you sure about this pattern when it has those pockets on the chest area – and will be, you know, quite large?’

And I was done.

Someone needed to stick a fork in me because I was done. D.O.N.E. I couldn’t take any more and decided to quit. While she was a bit rude to others, she was going above and beyond with me. Not only had she effectively stopped me from sewing while everyone else is well away, she had made me feel awful about myself. And I didn’t want to be feeling terrible about myself and my body at this age. Not at any age, really, but at this one? Really?

She was making it very plain that she hated me.

It wasn’t just me who saw this – a couple of the other students saw it as well. And when I made it clear I was probably not going to come back, they told me not to leave because they liked me, liked my energy. Which was a nice reminder that I can get on with people, I am nice and likeable (mostly).

Despite them saying I should stay, I was very close to rock bottom. I decided I should probably throw the towel in and get rid of my sewing stuff while I was at it. After all, I wasn’t going to be doing this large chest refitting and redrafting every time I wanted to construct something. Even if I wanted to do all that, how would I be able to attempt it without being reminded of how this lady made me feel, how she made me start to doubt the beauty of my body? As Maya Angelou said, ‘I’ve learnt that people will forget what you say, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.’

How this woman made me feel was awful. Absolutely awful. But I had paid my money upfront and I knew I would encounter a whole world of gaslighting about my experience before I got a refund because this woman tried to diminish me. I had to find a way to not lose my money by getting what I actually came for – to learn sewing techniques such as how to do zips and plackets and elastic waistbands and buttonholes.

So, week five I returned with zips, buttons, scrap material and a determination to get what I actually wanted from those lessons. By hook or by crook I was going to learn those sewing techniques.

She was not happy, of course. She asked why I didn’t want to carry on with the jumpsuit. Short, internal answer, ‘I’ve had enough of your brand of body shaming’, answer I said out loud: ‘I need to know all these techniques so I can finish off the jumpsuit at home.’

She couldn’t say anything to argue with that so, triumph for Dorothy, yes?

Kinda.

That week, she (begrudgingly) showed me invisible zips (evil things), normal zips, French seams and top stitch seams. This is cool, I thought. This is what I thought I’d be doing. Real-life guidance that I couldn’t quite replicate in the online lessons I took. This is what I need.

So imagine my face when the next week she gave me a book and told me to look in there for any info I needed – including how to shape clothes to the larger bust. 🤪😭 Everyone else was adding lining to their stuff, flirting with top stitch and using the overlocker to finish off, I am reading a book to work out how to do fell seams.

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The week after that, I sort of gave in, I decided to make something. I thought I’d test out how to add elastic into a garment by making pj bottoms from leftover cat print material. She happily helped with that, with nary a word of body shaming.

We parted on fairly amicable terms – I finished the pj bottoms and said goodbye knowing I would never see her again. For her part, she didn’t break me, but I think she had a bit of fun trying.

Thankfully, my love of sewing is stronger than her attempts to immolate my confidence and I’ve carried on laying down those stitches whenever I get the chance. I even managed to crowbar a sewing joke into Give Him To Me and thought about applying for Sewing Bee.

But, you know, it was a close thing. I nearly went down. The thoughts that woman put in my head about the shape of my body were no joke and if I weren’t an innately stubborn being with a sense of self, who knows what could have happened? Where I’d be? I truly dread to think.

You know the biggest casualty in all of this? My bank balance that has borne the brunt of trying to find a jumpsuit pattern that would satisfy that woman. I currently have eleventy billion jumpsuit patterns in my house, and I can’t even begin to look at any of them.

I guess you’re wondering why I’m telling you all this? To be honest, I don’t know. I opened up a document to type a very different weekly update, and this came out. Obviously, it was time. Obviously, my subconscious wanted to feel unburdened about this after all this time. Actually, I’m not only feeling relieved, I’m feeling pleased and proud that I am who I am, annoying and irritating bits and all. I hope you feel that way about yourself, no matter how tries to bring you down.

And if you’re in need of a jumpsuit pattern, I know a lady who can sort you out.

 

COME AND SEE ME!

 

I’ve got a few events coming up, have a look at the poster above and click this link to my website events where you’ll find links to buy tickets.

I cannot tell you enough how I hope I get to see you. And if none of these are near you, don’t worry, there are a few more coming up come Autumn.

Hope all is good with you lovelies.

Talk to you soon.

Dorothy x

 

‘They’re over-represented in politics for sure.’ That’s what the clinical psychologist I spoke to when I was researching Give Him To Me told me when we discussed psychopaths. ‘You definitely meet more in every-day life than you do in say prisons, but they do seem to be over-represented in politics and political life.’

According to VeryWell Health: ‘Researchers use the term “psychopath” to describe a person who exhibits consistently callous and unemotional behaviour. A person displaying psychopathy lacks empathy, shame, and remorse, which leads them to consistently violate the rights and well-being of others. They may lie, cheat, or steal to get their way.’

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I mean, this isn’t something I didn’t know, but it was properly clarified when I wrote Every Smile You Fake. The profiler and therapist I spoke to then explained that people who show signs of psychopathy are very often specifically recruited to high level positions in companies and government. Why?

Well, as my main character, Kez, in Every Smile You Fake explains: ‘Psychopathy is a trait that I’ve seen displayed by so many people in the upper echelons of the businesses I consult for. They are there because they have no conscience about doing whatever is necessary to get a company what it wants. They are recruited for this reason. They will do the things other humans – normal humans who know what it is to feel empathy and worry and love – will not do. They have no conscience and will readily twist a narrative to make themselves the victim, to make you the enemy for questioning them.’

Substitute ‘business’/ ‘company’ with ‘political party’ and look where we are. At the moment, it feels like a lot of politicians are going out of their way to prove both psychologists’ points, because what the hell? What the actual hell is going on?

We have the billionaire Prime Minister trying to convince us that the last 14 years, which have seen their policies cause poverty and suffering to reach epidemic levels, haven’t actually been that bad, so we should vote for him. And then we have the leader of the ‘opposition’ walking, talking and acting like a dictator, deciding his way is the only way, and not listening to what voters are saying they actually want from a change of resident at number 10. Remind you of anyone who was resident at Downing Street circa 2019-2022?

All of this is against a global backdrop of political leaders who are actively ignoring their populations’ pleas and calls for an end to genocide, massacres, fighting, famine and slavery. It’s truly horrifying.

Although I’m politically vocal and active in real life, I don’t usually talk politics online because it often leads to arguing with people I don’t need to engage with, but these past few months, weeks and days have been so distressing I’m having to express myself here.

And this time period have brought home in the strongest terms the psychology behind the thirst for political power. How that thirst can act as a trigger for expressing psychopathic behaviours in the characters in the stories I tell and, it seems, in the people who run the world.

You know, when someone in public life or in politics displays again what I’ve come to see as psychopathic traits, I have to remind myself: You can’t shame these people/politicians/High-Functioning Psychopaths (HFP) into doing the right thing. They do not feel shame, they will not be upset when you show them the consequences of their actions. The only way to get through to them is to make them see that it’s in THEIR best interest to do what you are asking them to do

And that gives us substantial power and is how you deal with these ‘friendly’ neighbourhood psychopaths. A note to your MP threatening to withdraw your support and vote is going to have much more impact than asking them to think about whose life is going to be effected when they privatise the NHS. (Make no mistake, both of the ‘main’ parties are openly promising to do this right now – they’ve been grooming us for years to accept that the huge amounts of money we already pay isn’t enough and we need to give more to the private sector to sort out our health service’s problems.)

But on the point that we have power over our MPs, we’ve seen it in action time and again – kicking up enough of a fuss on and off social media, almost always causes whichever HFP we’re dealing with to back down, change tact or resign. If enough people oppose them, they’ll either pretend they were never going to do that thing, that you never saw or heard them try to do that thing, or they’ll try to change the policy/law to allow them to do that thing (anti-protest laws anyone?).

High functioning psychopaths (HFP) as I think they are, care more about how something effects them and their public standing than how it can potentially upend or even end ordinary people’s lives. So this is the time for us to step up and flex our power.

It might seem inevitable that we’re going to be trading one set of high-functioning psychopaths for another, but I truly believe that it’s important to try to mitigate the coming storm even if we can’t prevent it by making our voices heard before it happens. Write to the leader of the opposition, to your MP or the person standing in your area and make your concerns clear, remind them that YOU can stop them getting that spot in power they’re chasing. Remind them that they work for you, not the other way around.

Babes, I’m not going to tell you who to vote for – that’s between you and your ballot paper, but even if I was that way minded, I’d have no clue who to suggest.

I know that in the past I’ve held my nose and voted because one group of HFP was absolutely and objectively worse than the other. But now, in this here 2024, with the real-life big reveals about previous candidates of choice, I just don’t think I can hold my nose again. And that’s got me feeling a lot like Kez at a certain point in Every Smile You Fake – each choice I have comes with huge downsides and I’m not sure which downside I can live with more than the others.

At this point, I am keeping my fingers crossed that I’ll get a last-minute plot twist that will see a common-or-garden politician who comes with a normal amount of sleaze and dodginess swooping in to offer a viable option.

Yes, I know hoping for a ‘normal’ dodgy politician isn’t ideal thinking, but at the moment, I’d take one of those old-school politicians who’d resign for fiddling their expenses over the truly terrifying psychopathic levels currently being displayed by leaders and politicians across the world and in this country right now. Wish me – and you – luck, I think we’re all going to need it.

That’s all for now, lovelies. Hope you’re as OK and sheltered from this storm as you can be.

Dorothy x

You can pre-order Every Smile You Fake paperback (on sale 29 August) here: Pre-order Every Smile You Fake paperback and Give Him To Me hardback (on sale 15 February) here: Pre-order Give Him To Me

4-minute read

My husband asked me the other day why I seemed so miserable recently. ‘You’ve finished the book, the sun’s (mostly) out and Sewing Bee is back on, what’s the matter?’

I had to finally admit to him and myself that mixed in with the sheer euphoria of finishing book 21, Give Him To Me, was another feeling: heartbreak.

I’m truly heartbroken that Kez and all the other characters don’t need me to create their story any more so they have, essentially, dumped me. It hurts in a weird way because on the one hand it’s like: ‘Yay, I finished another book’ and on the other hand, it’s also like: ‘Oh, I won’t be spending every waking moment with the characters in this story any more’.

True, I haven’t been properly dumped in many, many years, but those feelings are still familiar – can’t stop thinking about them; constantly replaying conversations; going to call them but realising you can’t; knowing that if Give Him To Me had Instagram, I’d be over there all the time, lurking, crying as I watched them get on with their lives without me.

I’ve had these ‘dumped by my book’ sorrows with every novel I’ve written, and, yet, with each new book it feels like I’ve never felt it quite this strong. I know that’s not true, but that’s how it seems.

What would 13-year-old Dorothy who was passing her stories around her convent school friends all those years ago make of ahem!-year-old Dorothy breaking her heart over characters who don’t exist but seem so very real to her?

To be fair, 13-year-old Dorothy would probably be proud and impressed that she’s kept her weirdness and her peculiar way of being in the world throughout her life. 🤣

So, how do I plan to soothe my heart? Well, there’s that old adage – the best way to get over someone is to get under someone else, yes? 😉 Which means, helloooo Book Number 22, you’re looking very fine today. Very fine, indeed . . . 🤩

Tell me I’m not the only one who feels like this? Please? Have you felt a conflicting sense of loss when you’ve achieved or received something fantastic? I would love to hear your stories.

All By Myself . . .

I’m not sure if you know this or not, but I recently ventured into the world of self-publishing. I’ve had this desire to write a book as someone else for a while, but when I created Cleo and her Baking Detective series for my novel My Other Husband, that desire became overwhelming. Coupled with so many people telling me they would read the hell out of cosy mystery series about a crime-solving baker, I decided to put my fingers where my mouth is, and write a book as Cleo about her character, Mira Woode.

And so . . . Tah-dah! Book One in The Baking Detective series – Slice, Slice, Baby – was born. It’s currently an eBook exclusive, but I’ll soon be recording the audiobook.

I know you may be used to only getting paper ‘Dorothy’ books and/or you may not have an eReader, but you can read it on your smart phone or iPad/tablet via the Kindle app and can I encourage you to give it a try? It was so much fun to write and several people have told me they think it’s so much fun to read, so would love for you to avoid missing out by joining the party.

You can download it for only £1.99 to enjoy on your Kindle, ipad/tablet or smart phone, by clicking here: BUY THE BAKING DETECTIVE

Let me know what you think, yes?

 

 

And Finally. . .

Can I ask you a favour? If you think at some point you might buy the paperback of Every Smile You Fake, could you please do it now by pre-ordering?

I know the price of hardback books can seem a little out of reach, especially in these here cossie lives, but the paperback is on sale on 29^th August at a much lower price. My publishers and the bookshops that may carry it, need to see evidence that people want to read my books, and that evidence comes in the form of pre-orders. So if you pre-order today and get your book-loving friends to pre-order, you’ll be helping to make sure as many copies as possible are printed and as many booksellers as possible put it on their shelves.

It doesn’t matter where you pre-order it, so just click on any of these links to buy from your preferred bookseller or email the independent bookseller listed below and your book will be sent to you on or around publication day. Or you can visit your local independent bookshop in person and ask them to pre-order.

Thanks so much for reading this and even bigger thanks for pre-ordering. 😊

Click the link to pre-oder from:

Amazon: Pre-order Every Smile You Fake from Amazon

Bookshop.org: Choose your fave independent bookshop to pre-order Every Smile You Fake at Bookshop.org

Hive: Pre-order Every Smile You Fake from Hive

Waterstones: Pre-order Every Smile You Fake from Waterstones

WHSmith: Pre-order Every Smile You Fake From WHSmith

Email to pre-order from:

Afrori Books (Brighton) – customercare@afroribooks.com

Berts Books – bert@bertsbooks.co.uk

Feminist bookshop – orders@thefeministbookshop.com

That’s all for now folks. Will catch you next time. Don’t forget to drop me a line to say hi or to tell me what you’ve been up to. I may not get a chance to reply every time, but I do read your messages and I appreciate every one them.

Big hugs

Dorothy x

Happy 1st Birthday My Other Husband paperback!! Remember when we had a flashmob down at the UpsideDown House on Brighton seafront to celebrate? Loved it so much.