I have decided to serialise my novel, Washing Over Me which I wrote and self-published in 2016, through a series of blogs on this website. Writing this book gave me a huge amount of pleasure and helped me through a tricky stage of my life when I was doing some soul searching, wanting to create something that would define me (as opposed to how I was defined through my family role or through work).

Although it is available on Amazon, where you can purchase a version for Kindle or a print version as well as read through KindleUnlimited, I never shifted the sorts of volumes that meant the algorithm brought this one to the top. Nevertheless, I think it is a story worth telling and sharing more widely.

And so, starting with the synopsis below to whet appetites, I will be creating a new post each week to get my work out there for anyone to read, should they so wish. Enjoy!

Synopsis

In the height of the Tokyo summer, Shoichi sits at his wife’s bedside hoping that today will be the day when she wakes from her coma. Without Kimiko he finds himself lost in the modern world. Frequently daydreaming, his mind wanders back through the past to key moments in their life together: breaded pork cutlets, unusually coloured tomatoes and the most beautiful sunrise he has ever seen. Shoichi also lives in fear. How will he cope with the loss of yet another person whom he loves so dearly?

In the depths of her mind, it is early spring and Kimiko is in Ofunato, a small coastal town in the northeast of Japan. As ten-year-old Kimiko wakes up that morning all she can think about is the cold and how much longer she can stay in bed before succumbing to the aroma from breakfast that is drifting up the stairs. Right up to the point when the earthquake strikes, she has no idea that this is the day when her world will be turned upside down. There is only one person who understands what she went through and she needs to get back to Shoichi again, wherever and whenever he may be.