Get Booked – Semi Detached

Hello everybody, I'm Hazel and this is Get Booked for Women's and Men's Radio Station. Thank you for joining me on today's show. Joining us on Get Booked today, we have the author Deborah Stone. She's going to be talking to us about her latest book, Semi-Detached, which was published on the 3rd of April of this year. It's thrilling psychological drama about when a couple move in next door to Amanda and Bill, a couple already distant and barely functioning, both riddled with their own issues of dissatisfaction with life and how they understand it. The new couple are vibrant, swanky, full of life and potential promise that could rub off on them and up, bring them out of their reverie. It even starts to work until it doesn't and actually implodes. If something is too good to be true, maybe it is all an act. Actions have consequences. Another great domestic noir from Deborah Stone that really does challenge perceptions about what we see on the surface and envy and retribution. It was such an absolute delight to read. Deborah Stone, today's author, read English literature at Durham University and lives in North London with her husband, two sons, and gorgeous golden retriever Stanley. Her previous novel before Semi-Detached, Me and My Shadow, is a thrilling psychological suspense novel. It's just been awarded a Chill with a Book Premier Award and is only awarded to those books which achieve outstanding standing ratings from all reviewers. Her first novel, What's Left Unsaid, won the Chill with a Book runner-up prize for best book of 2018 and has been highly acclaimed. Her non-fiction book, The Essential Family Guide to Caring for Older People, is an important manual for any family looking after older relatives. This book has been shortlisted as a finalist in the Wishing Shelf Book Awards of 2022, which the winners will be be announced very shortly. So, uh, definitely going to be a fabulous chat today. I've actually read all of these books, including The Essential Family Guide to Caring for Older People, and, um, I must say I'm an absolutely huge fan. So I really can't wait to chat to Deborah shortly on the show. Deborah Stone is actually a leading expert in the field of elder care through her website maturethinking.co.uk. She provides information and advice for families caring for older people, as well as advising companies on the effective development of products and services for older people. Deborah regularly appears on BBC, ITV, Sky, and Channel 5 as a care expert, as well as contributing to lifestyle magazines and national newspapers with advice for those making decisions about care For Relatives. Find all Deborah's books at deborahstonebooks.com. I do love doing this show, chatting to authors, talking about anything and everything books related, all the joy, enlightenment, and escape that good books can provide, and looking at the mental health and mental well-being elements of reading and writing and just understanding the world a little bit more. Sit back and let us entertain you with a different guest each week, sharing who they are, what they do, and what inspires them. A quick reminder to those of you who may be new to the show, you can pop onto womensradiostation.com/shows/getbooked and on our SoundCloud to catch up on previous shows. We have such a good show in store for you today. I hope you enjoy it. And at the end of today's interview, Deborah Stone has very kindly read an extract of Semi-Detached, so you can have a quick listen, but then please do go and buy. Please follow me on Twitter @NuttyButty or on Instagram @GetBookedWRS or NuttyButty10. See what I did there, Hazel Butterfield? And all the details of the authors that we interview and all the books that I review are up on there. Alternatively, just pop on to hazelbutterfield.com. Right, today I have the pleasure of chatting to Deborah Stone on Get Booked. Deborah Stone read English literature at Durham University and lives in North London with her husband, two sons, and most importantly, golden retriever Stanley. Uh, we're going to be talking about Semi-Detached. This is today's book, published on April 3rd. It's a thrilling psychological drama from the bestselling author of What's Left Unsaid, Me and My Shadow, which I've read both. Um, now, Semi-Detached— when a couple move in next door to a Mandarin— a couple Already distant and barely functioning, both riddled with their own issues of dissatisfaction with life and, and how they understand it. The new couple are vibrant, swanky, full of life and potential promise that could rub off on them and help and bring them out of their reverie. It even starts to work until it doesn't and actually implodes. If something is too good to be true, maybe it is all an act, and actions do have consequences. Another great domestic noir from Deborah, and I've thoroughly enjoyed reading it. Let's chat a little bit more. Welcome back to Get Booked, Deborah. It's great to have you back on the show. Oh, thanks so much for having me, Hazel. It's really, really great to be here. Yeah, well, I'm super excited to chat about Semi-Detached because you do love writing books about, you know, deep lies hidden within family dynamics. I do. I'm not quite sure why, but I do find it quite fascinating. Yeah, it affects so much of how people behave when they've got something to hide or they're not quite living their true authentic self. And, um, I really love the book. I guess you've been— you're so welcome. Um, what have the responses been so far? I've had some really, really great reviews actually, so it's been very pleasing. I mean, obviously it's, it's a new book, so it takes time to kind of get out there. It's only been a couple of weeks or so, but, um, so far it's been very, very positive. So, which is amazing. It's, it's quite easy to get hold of the book on Amazon, but they can pop on to deborahstonebooks.com as well. Um, so tell us a little bit about Semi-Detached, how the idea was born. Well, I started thinking originally about a couple where one of the, um, the, the man in the relationship was kind of a little bit possessive, or, you know, exerting some kind of, you know, control over his partner, which I guess is sort of what happens with Amanda and Bill when you get to the beginning of the book. Yeah. And then wanted to kind of create an antithesis with somebody else. So this idea then came together of, you know, two couples living next door who are complete opposites of each other, but none of them at any point— they start off as one thing and then they morph into something completely different. And so hopefully the book's got lots of kind of twists and turns and things that you don't necessarily expect. And I think, you know, importantly for me, characters develop through the book. So, you know, Fiona, for example, the very glamorous neighbor next door, sort of starts off as a bit of an airhead and, you know, not, you know, just into shopping and that kind of thing. But actually, I think, turns into the person that you most trust and, you know, believe by the end of the book. So, I was trying to, you know, play around with people's perceptions, what people think of themselves. Why they've got themselves into those mindsets and relationships in the first place, what led to them, and then, you know, how they can change around and how people can, you know, think they know somebody and they don't. Well, I think this is what is good about books like this. They help the reader to challenge their perceptions of what they see on the surface, or how judgmental we can just automatically be, whether it's laziness. We don't always have time to understand what goes on underneath the surface. But I love it how you just kept on throwing these different spanners of different sizes into the works all the way through, that you kind of— up until the very end, I mean, I must say, I thought I kind of got how it was going to end, and then you just completely threw it all up in the air in pretty much the last chapter. Yeah, I did. Yeah. And it's just like sometimes We, on the surface, you kind of think, well, that person is a terrible person that's making that person's life a misery. And there's always, there's quite often, not always, quite often something going on that we just don't understand. And actually, sometimes we don't have the right to understand it either. It's not our business. Um, and we can envy people, and it's such a dangerous emotion to envy somebody else's life when again we have no idea what is going on. And it's, yeah, the more people talk about how amazing their life is, normally they're hiding something. Yeah, and the other thing I wanted to try and do with the book was to show that ordinary lives— no one has an ordinary life. You know, these two couples, in theory, you know, they just live in a, in, you know, 70 Touched Houses in North London, and, you know, nothing's terribly exciting. I mean, one couple's more exciting than the other, but, you know, neither of them are, you know, famous or doing anything particularly exciting. But, but there's always something going on behind closed doors and in people's relationships, people's childhoods that affect them, and all that kind of thing that means that it— that you can never know somebody properly, and you can never know why they behave the way they do. So, and also Everybody's different, and sometimes people want a quiet life. They, for whatever their motivations may be, sometimes people do just want to be at home. They might want to raise kids or not, or make sure that they're looking after their partner because that is what gives them joy. It's not always the case that they're being forced to do something. And I just, I love it that there were so many elements to Semi-Detached that kind of through your perceptions all over the place. That's good. That's what I was trying to do, you know, just to, just to get people to think, you know, well, you, you might think you know what's going on here, but actually I don't think you really do. Um, and hopefully the characters grow from that point of view as you get to know more of their backstory and why they're like they are, um, and why they make the decisions that they do. And, you know, sometimes I think they're involuntary decisions, and sometimes In some of the characters' cases, they're very much intentional. You kind of have to read it to find out. There's a few spoilers, so it's quite difficult to talk about. I know sometimes I kind of think that whenever I do these interviews and get booked, I should possibly not read the last few chapters until I've finished the interview, just in case. But it gets to that point, don't you? It's very hard if you're a book fan to suddenly get to 2 or 3 chapters towards the end and go, "Oh, do you know what? I'll just park that for a bit. I would send myself crazy. I mean, I know the, the last twist is quite surprising, but hopefully it's not completely non-understanding, you know. I think it's— it kind of links back to something else in the book, and so hopefully it is— you can kind of get how we got there kind of thing. But it, you know, it's designed to surprise. Well, loyalties, um, can stem from many places and shock many people all the time. But you know, that's what a good book is, keeping you guessing. Yeah, so I'm quite keen to chat because another one that you did, there was Me and My Shadow and What's Left Unsaid. What's Left Unsaid really struck me as well. It's been a while since I read it, but do you want to tell us a little bit about What's Left Unsaid? Because I gather that's won a runner-up prize for best book of 20. Yeah, in fact they both did actually, so that was quite nice. So What's Left Unsaid was my first novel and it was really— it's based around two main characters. So there's Annie, who is an older lady who has the beginning of dementia and is quite confused about certain things, and you, when you read her story, you're getting it very much from a kind of slightly confused— you're not sure how reliable she is as a narrator. And then you've got her daughter Sasha, who's grown up with Annie, and their relationship has been very difficult because Annie is not particularly nice to her as she grows up. And, you know, she drinks and she's a bit vicious at times. And so Sasha has always kind of grown up in a— having probably less confidence than she might have done. And then there's also the father Joe, who you also hear from, and the middle section of the book very much takes his perspective. And then you about what his backstory is and how he gets together with Annie and then the relationship with Sasha. And the whole thing kind of comes— there's a mystery in the middle of it, and it's uncovered actually by Sasha's son who wants to kind of make a film about his mother and his grandmother, and then as a result sort of starts to find out some family secrets. And then you— again, it's not dissimilar to the other two books in the sense that it, it starts to unravel why people behave like they are. You know, you may think, well, you know, she's a horrible mother and she's a— she can be a bitch and all of this kind of thing, but actually there are reasons why she's like that, you know, from her same back to her childhood and other things that have happened to her. Um, and I think for me it was quite a— it, it was a book I'd always wanted to write. It was about, you know, family relationships and how, you know, mothers, daughters, sons, fathers don't always, you know, see eye to eye. And as a child, you don't always understand why your parent is like they are. And as a parent, you don't always understand the effect that's having on your child. Well, we just try— as parents, we just try and do— we hope that we're just trying to do our best. Communication is key. But sometimes we have issues from our past that affect the way that we behave. I mean, psychodynamics, of— and I love books that kind of explore psychodynamics of relationships and understanding, and people who are trying to do the best. But, you know, even just the average Joe has issues from their past that come out in the way that they treat other people. And if you don't know what those reasons are, they come across as ill-conceived. Yes. That's right. So again, it's all about misperceptions, trying to understand people, the fact that generationally you can't always understand what your parent has gone through. And, you know, as a parent, you can't necessarily always do the right thing, and inevitably it has impacts on people. And sometimes, you know, those are things that people can't forgive, or they can forgive, or they start— you know, as they get a bit older, they start to realize. I think, you know, when you become a parent yourself, you can start to understand your own parents a bit more, and so on. I think it's much harder. So, um, yeah, I mean, I think especially with, with my children, I find that, you know, communication is best. And if you make a mistake, I try my best to kind of own up to a lot of my mistakes, because if my kids know that I make mistakes, they'll be more keen to own up to their own mistakes. I agree. And yeah, it's a tough thing. I put it all down to the fact that I read lots of books where it all completely implodes if you don't be honest. No, exactly. I also think that Generationally, um, I mean, I'm older than you are, but I think even so, it's now we, we have a much more open relationship with our children, um, and we do talk to them. I've always tried with my kids to make sure that there's always open lines of communication, and, um, you know, and we still talk all the time. And, you know, I know if they've got a problem, they'll, they'll always call me and have a chat. And that's, that's all you can really hope for, is that, you know, they've got that line of communication open. Whereas I think certainly with my parents, we were very close, but you— there were certain things you just didn't talk about and that, you know, they didn't address. And it was, it was much more a kind of emotionally closed, um, relationship than it is with children these days, I think. Well, yes, but I think the more the world progresses, secrets are a lot harder to keep. I mean, you could tell your kids anything 20, 30, 40 years ago and they have no way of figuring out. But now— I don't tell anyone. Yeah, now if you want to find something out, you pretty much just need to Google it and you can— it's a lot easier to find out all these deep, dark secrets. That's right. Yeah. Now I did want to mention a little bit about me and my shadow, but I know what I'm like and I just think that if I talk about this, I'm going to give the game away. That always ruins it. So I'll give you a quick précis of that and try not to give it away myself. So Me and My Shadow is very much, um, a book about two sisters, um, and, um, the older sister has her nose very much put out of joint when the younger one arrives, um, but the younger one is also quite precocious and therefore, you know, is always, um, sticking her nose in, and they just don't— they basically don't get on. And the whole story is about the— and mostly— sorry, there's some heavy breathing now on the line. I'm sorry about this, but Stanley has just entered the room. Stanley is, um, 15 months old because I lost my other lovely retriever George just under 2 years ago now, so we started all over again. So sorry, I will— the heavy breathing is not me. Um, no, that's fine. I think dogs should always be allowed. I mean, I take my dog into the studio very regularly. I think, I think they, um, they bring something extra to an interview. Oh yeah, that's perfect, thank you. So hopefully it'll be good for you. So yeah, so, and there again, it's similar to Annie in a way, in that Rachel is a very, very unreliable narrator. And without giving anything away, you're not sure whether she's got the right perspective throughout the book or not. And when you get to the end, you find that her perspective is indeed slightly different than you might have expected. And so it's this relationship and with her sister, but also how her own life spirals out of control. And then she tries to reinvent herself and, you know, become almost a different person, but that her past catches up with her in the end. And the two sisters end up, you know, in a bad place as a result of the relationship. They never— but hopefully by the end of the day, end of the book, they sort of resolve their relationship. But it— I do think, you know, Me and My Shadow kind of explores the concept of subjectivity and objectivity and what is real to us. Because if somebody made us feel a certain way, or we perceived something that went on in our past and it's made us a particular way, that's our reality. That is the truth to us. That's right. And it's such a tough situation. And I think there's a lot of people— I've got friends who both sisters have completely different recollections of their childhoods, and they had the same childhood. So yeah, it's a toughie. Again, fiction, but a great way of kind of putting across the concept of family dynamics and just how interesting it can make us feel. Yeah, I mean, they're all about, you know, tricky family situations, all the books that you do. And Somebody Touched, I think Somebody Touched is slightly different. Yeah. And did you enjoy going down a slightly different style, slightly different route? Yeah, I want— I kind of, you know, I wanted to make it more of a kind of, not necessarily more commercial, but, you know, something that would kind of, you know, just open it out a little bit more and be a little bit more, um, a bit more obviously shocking, I suppose, in certain places. Yeah, it was. It was inspired by the fact that so many people are struggling with seeing things on social media about how they go, oh, that, that person's life is perfect, and it makes them feel quite bad about themselves because they're possibly not doing as well as Joe Bloggs next door, or that they're not getting to do as much, they're not getting as much love and affection. But who puts love and affection up on social media where it's genuine? Because it's still being recorded. Well, it's, it's just not, is it? And I think, I think, I think it was inspired to a degree about the kind of fake realities that are out there, and, you know, on a lot of where people put across a, a fantasy life, um, and it's not actually who they are at all. And I think obviously with, you know, Terry and Fiona, they have this wonderful, glamorous exterior. With Bill and Amanda, they don't really have that at all. And they're kind of just rubbing along in a rather kind of depressed and, you know, bored way, really. I mean, they're just, you know, that is their life. But when the other couple come into their lives, it does shake it up in a number of ways. You know, it makes them both think about, who they are, what they're trying to achieve, um, you know, what they should be. Um, and, uh, it doesn't always work out for them in the way that you would— you might hope it would. So as you said in the introduction, it kind of— for a while you think actually it's doing them good and they're all kind of, you know, rubbing along quite nicely and they're all better for it. Um, but actually because of one of the characters, you know, it means that actually he ruins it for everybody. You've just made it a 50/50 chance of who it is that ruins it. Sorry, sorry. Well, it could be another he, of course. But yes, you know, so it's— but you know, that there are— the point is that I think these days a lot of people are not what they seem, and you know, it's all very well saying, oh, you know, I think this person's marvelous and I must look like them and I must have plastic surgery to look like them or dress like them. Yeah, but actually trying to be your authentic self, um, which I think, um, you know, Fiona in particular turns out to be an authentic self, is much more important than— yeah, there's a question as well that, you know, those that kind of show it off so much I think some people admire those that don't feel as if they need to. Yes, yes, that's right. Yeah, well, considering, you know, the, the themes of, of your books, we're going to talk about the field of elder care in a bit as well, but I'm, I'm quite keen to find out because this book was published on April 3rd, which means you probably finished this at least a good year ago. Is that about right? Yeah, well, I was probably still fiddling around with it for the last few months, but yes, it's been quite a long time in the making. Yeah. Okay. And so do we have a new idea already? I've got one brewing, but I've nothing concrete. So I kind of had a funny dream the other night and I woke up and thought, that would make a good book. I haven't done anything with it yet. I can imagine. My dad came to me in a strange dream, but I was in the middle of lockdown, so I think it was all a bit weird. Do you think people, when they're struggling to figure out what they should write, they just eat a lot of cheese before they go to bed and have some crazy dreams and see if when they wake up that could actually materialize into a good— I have crazy dreams. I mean, most of my dreams would not make a book because they're just mad. But, you know, it's, uh, so, so, so, so not yet. I, I kind of— the way I tend to work is that I get to launching a book and trying to concentrate on that for a bit and then start to write another one. I find it difficult to kind of, you know, be writing one and trying to push a new one out, if you see what I mean. Particularly as an independent author, having to do all the marketing yourself and all the kind of, you know, promotional stuff, it's quite difficult to— then you have to be in a slightly different mode for writing. So you self-publish, do you? Yeah, yeah, I did for the fiction, not for the non-fiction, that was through Bloomsbury. Right, okay. So do you do the kind of traditional self-publishing, or do you do it just through Amazon? Well, the first one I did it through traditional self-publishing. The second two I did through Amazon. Now I'm quite intrigued about that process because there's a lot of people I speak to on GetBooked, and there's so many benefits to all the different ways that you can publish. Obviously, if you get— if you go through a publisher, they end up doing all the work, but they kind of take a little bit more of the money, and it takes so much longer. If you do self-publishing, you are in a bit more control, um, on, and you take the majority of the money. Amazon is quite quick, isn't it, if you publish through Amazon? It's very quick. I mean, once you decide to, you know, get the book in shape and put it on there, it's published within a day. And you can also make changes as you go. So if, you know, if somebody's reading it and they spot an error, then you can actually change the manuscript and reload it. So it's very, very good from that point of view. I think the only downside of being self-published is you don't get the backing of the publisher, but then quite often you don't get the backing of the publisher anyway, even if you go that route, because there's only a few books that they actually put money behind. So it's a very difficult industry. I mean, it's not an industry you kind of enjoy from that point of view because it's, it's just so hard to get your voice heard because you've got so many books out there. And a lot of great books as well. But, you know, it's some books I think that get a lot of publicity because they're, you know, by somebody famous or whatever else. They're not necessarily— I mean, this— I don't mean my books are better, but I mean, you know, they don't always merit the attention that they get. Or to be honest, you know, all it takes is a good PR company sometimes to get— that's right, yeah— the word out there. Do you not use PR companies? I do. Well, I don't— I, it, they're very expensive. Um, I've got a marketing background, so I can do most of the marketing myself, but you know, the PR side is difficult. But again, you've got to weigh up the cost-benefit. So, you know, if you can end up spending a fortune and getting very little back in sales, so it's, it's very hard. It's very hard when I still haven't found exactly the right mix. I mean, it's worked okay. I've sold, you know, many thousands of the previous two, so it's you know, for a self-published book, it's done— they've done very well. But it's, um, it's hard work. So you kind of got to be an author on one hand and a, you know, marketer on the other. So it's not, it's not so easy. But I interviewed somebody recently who, um, actually not for Get Booked, for a different show that I do, and she ended up doing a crash course in Instagram Reels and TikTok to do all her own marketing. Marketing. And there's, there's some fantastic ideas out there that actually are quite easy to achieve if you put in the time and effort to figure out. I mean, I couldn't, I struggle. I mean, I've got many shows going out on a weekly basis. I do presenting here, there, and everywhere, and I still can't be bothered doing my own social media, let alone for a book that has to be so incredibly specific. So it takes a lot of effort. But she's killing it. I mean, she— and she— I think she's in her late 40s or early 50s, and she's smashing it out the park. That's brilliant. That's brilliant. So, I mean, you can do it, and there's lots of tools out there where you can make Instagram posts that look great in seconds, and, you know, and you put them across all your social media. So that's relatively straightforward to do, you know, once you've done them and you've you've learned how to do them. It's just you've got to keep it going and keep it going. And that's, that's the thing, you know, one post isn't going to do it. You've got to— and then you think, well, people get bored if they keep seeing the same things and all this other thing. So, you know, I tend to, you know, whenever I get a good review, I'll put that out on a post and I'll do that kind of thing. And eventually you just have to kind of wear people down by seeing your book enough that they think, oh, but maybe I'll give this a go. Wear them down. Let me just write that down for when I release my book. Wear people down. You should write a book on marketing. So you've also got, um, you're a leading expert in the field of elder care as well, um, at maturethinking.co.uk. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? Yeah, so, um, I started, um, look, my background originally was strategic consulting and marketing across lots of different, mostly retail, and then, um, my father had dementia for a very long time, sort of 8 years, and it was really bad and At the time, we couldn't find, you know, any relevant information or any particular help. It was a very, very difficult period of time. My kids were very small. So once he passed away, I wanted to kind of, you know, try and help other people in the same situation. So I originally launched a website, which was a portal for everything you needed to know about elder care as a family. So whether that was legal or finance or how to find care, or keeping fit and well, and it covered literally everything. Um, and I ran that for a few years, um, but it was very, very difficult to keep it going just because from a financial point of view, because whilst it's desperately needed commercially, you know, it's not something people are prepared to invest in because they can't see how to make money from it particularly, which is a shame. Um, so on the back of that, um, I started to consult with companies, any, anyone from, you know, care companies to legal firms to banks to going in to talk to their staff about care, because most companies lose more time off to care for older people than they do to childcare these days. So it's a really, really important area, and, and the good companies are actually helping their employees to manage it. Um, so I do, I do a lot of that and help people develop the right products and services for older people and that sort of thing. And I've also written a book which is effectively a book of the website that covers everything you need to know on that subject so that, you know, people can keep it as a manual. You know, like you'd buy a childcare manual. This is really a manual for older people that you can basically look up anything you need to know in there and go, and it will at least point you in the right direction to the people that you need to talk to. Well, it's kind of reminded me, it's The Essential Family Guide to Caring for Older People. I'm pretty certain my mum still has this book at the moment because my grandma ended up developing Alzheimer's and dementia. And we've got a fractious family at the best of times, and rather large family as well. There's my mum, her two sisters, and their brother that lives in Australia. One lives in London, the, you know, there's others in up north where my grandma was before she passed away last year. Um, actually it was the year before now. And, um, and I remember everything that she was complaining about, all the problems they had, all the stress that she was having, and she wasn't looking after herself. And I just read the book because I just interviewed you on it as well. And, um, and I was— and it was— I found it incredibly helpful because some of it felt like it was common sense, but you just don't have the time to think of common sense sometimes. Times. And you come into it in a crisis often as well. So, you know, these things strike when you're least expecting them. You know, someone has a fall or they have something else wrong with them, or yeah, it could be anything. And, you know, it's, uh, and obviously things changed a lot during the pandemic as well. So, um, you know, it became even more critical to, to, to basically have this stuff to hand. But you can, you can never know when you're going to need it. But, and I think The biggest thing for me is also with the book to try and get people to plan ahead, because if you've— it's not something anybody likes to think about, but actually if you do plan ahead for when your parents are old, or even when yourself, even for yourself, you know, if you've got basic planks in place, like you've got a will and you've got power of attorney and you've got, you know, you've looked at your finances and worked out what you would do if you had to pay for care, which most people will end up having to pay for care, You know, it will help, you know, your children or, you know, or whatever, or if you can persuade your parents to do that, it will make things easier to cope with when there's a crisis. But the problem is that everyone's care situation is individual. So everybody's families are individual, everybody's personalities are individual. I think the main thing is there's some great pointers in there about how to manage some of the interesting situations that you're going to come across and I think communication is key, and everybody's petrified of how much they can take away from their immediate life, the cost it's going to cost, and especially when you don't live close by and who takes response, you know, the main responsibility, who lives closer by, and there's a lot of resentment flying around. I think ultimately you have to just remember that you need to communicate. If somebody's not doing enough, the person, possibly if you identify you're not doing enough, you just say, listen, I'm really, really worried. I'm sorry if I'm being really short with you. Let's just decide who makes these certain decisions and how we kind of keep the information kind of circulating around. And it's, it's people, you know, stabbing in the dark. And the poor people at care homes that have to deal with people who don't make actual firm decisions on who's in charge and who should be doing this, that, and whatever. Um, I, I must say, um, unfortunately, I do think it's a book that everybody needs to have. Well, yes, I mean, I, I agree with you, which is, you know, why I wrote it, and because for just from firsthand experience. And, um, you know, we all, as I say, we all have different crises, but, you know, the, the basic fundamentals are, you know, pretty much the same. And as you said, it's about communication. It is. I mean, you know, if you do live a long way and somebody's much closer, then obviously the person who's closer is going to bear a lot of the brunt of the care. But if you live further away, there are lots of things you can do to help. So you can take on managing the finances and doing the banking and organising insurance and, you know, anything needs doing on the phone. And I think there's a lot of resentment that builds up with, well, you know, you're not here, so you don't get it. And, you know, actually, I'm here all the time. And it's fraught with difficulty. Um, it is unfortunately. There's, um, very tongue-in-cheek, but my— most of my family don't live anywhere near me, but my— which means I don't get any help with the children or anything. But my brother has constant on-hand free babysitting from my mum, so I just turned around and said, as long as we understand, if she needs it, you're up, it's your responsibility. My mum said, I feel your pain, I never had any. I never had any access to babysitting either, so it's, yeah, it's a real shame when they're not close by. Um, but you know, I had two sisters and, um, you know, obviously we all have our own personalities, but we, we actually did deal with it quite well between us, actually. And unfortunately, I lost my mum from COVID during the pandemic, so that was also very traumatic. But, um, you know, it's, it is what it is, and you have, you know, as families, the most important thing is to keep communicating, as you say. And not bottle it up, because resentment is the worst possible thing, and it's not going to help your parents at the end of the day. So, which is what you're trying to manage. Yeah, that, that's, that's a shame, isn't it? It's very counterproductive. And yeah, unfortunately. Now, unsurprisingly, we're running out of time. Uh, I just want to quickly remind everybody they can pop over to deborahstonebooks.com, or they can pop onto maturethinking.co.uk. UK. And we'll just very quickly squeeze in, because I do like to pack on my guests here on Get Booked, for 3 top tips on mental well-being. Well, I think having a dog is, um, like— oh, that's it, that's it, that's all 3 done. Yeah. Um, you know, I, I was— we lost George after 13 and a half years, and it was one of the hardest things that's ever happened. And we had dogs as children as well, but it was just— he was like my soulmate, you know. Wrote my books with me and all that kind of thing. And just, I was with him all the time, um, and just the, the gap was too much to bear. And didn't take us very long before we decided that we needed to get Stanley. But just, you know, having him, having a presence around the house, being able to walk him every day, whatever the weather, or however many puddles he likes to roll in, um, it is just for me a huge import— hugely important to my mental health. And, you know, I think having— doesn't have to be a dog, a cat, anything, you know, just having a pet or something. I think it's good for the whole family as well. And when we— I had to argue with my husband for years about getting a dog, and I said to him, look, someone will be pleased to see you when you get home. And he said— and honestly, he's the big— he was the biggest convert to the dog, and I've never seen him cry apart from when we lost him. So, you know, it's— they are brilliant. So that would be my first tip. I think the second one is just exercise generally. I think just you know, making sure that you do something physical is, is, is really, really important. And the other thing for my mental health is reading. And I know that you're a great reader as well, but, you know, I think being able to put yourself in different situations, in different people's heads, is— but for me, totally relaxing, because it takes you away from your own life and anything else that you're worried about and what you're thinking about. And I think those are probably my 3 main tips for wellbeing? I think, do you know what, they're probably my, my top 3 as well. I mean, my dog is absolutely everything. I will go away on a spa weekend with my dog and my friends are like, oh, we'd have come with you. I went, yeah, I know. I can't live without the dog. I want to go for a nice long walk, listen to some, listen to Audible while I'm doing 2 or 3 hours out and about somewhere, then sit there with a glass of wine reading a book, chatting to the dog, having a few random conversations. And don't get me wrong, I am sociable, I do actually speak to other people as well, but it is, you know, it's a regular scene in Southwest London that I'm sitting there in a bar reading a book with my dog, and the dog's just sitting there going, yeah, just leave her to it, you can speak to me if you want, but you know. I'm totally with you. Yeah, yeah, I think, I think it's fantastic. I'm not completely in agreement about the cat thing. Cats, cats are not for— no, I'm not a cat person at all, but I just threw that in because some people aren't able to have dogs, you know, they just doesn't fit their lifestyle. And I just think having a pet— I mean, I wouldn't go as far as having a hamster or a rat or anything, but hey, each their own, I suppose. But yeah, I mean, my dog's in the other room currently snoring away because I've just taken her out for a nice long walk. Uh, she'll be very jealous when she finds out that Stanley's been on the interview, but hopefully, hopefully she'll be fine. Well, thank you so much, Deborah, for joining us on Get Booked, the women's and men's radio station. I've loved chatting to you. I'm definitely looking forward to the next book, and best of luck with Semi-Detached. I think it's cracking. Thank you so much, Hazel, much appreciated. You are very welcome. Enjoy the rest of your day. Thank you. Semi-Detached by Deborah Stone. Chapter 1: Claire. It took me many years to realize that the more hopeful you feel about something, the more disappointed you will inevitably be. However, back then as a student, excited to show off my new boyfriend to my doting mother, it never crossed my mind that things might not go exactly according to plan. These days I am far more circumspect and urge myself to expect the worst. But let's face it, I could never have prepared myself for what actually occurred that day. Jack and I were driving home for the Christmas holidays after a gruelling first term of my third year in university in Bath. Alternately negotiating roadworks, contraflows, tailbacks, and bad drivers— the ones who only took their cars out on high days and holidays. The radio in the Fiesta that Jack had hired was malfunctioning, so I had turned it off despite Rihanna's valiant attempts to warble about her diamonds over the static and frequent drops in signal. Both of our phones had died and the car had nowhere to recharge them, so Jack and I were forced to entertain ourselves by singing tuneless a cappella karaoke and, at our most desperate point, resorting to I Spy. Do you think your mum will like me? Of course she will, why wouldn't she? I sighed and shifted in my seat. Is it sheep? No, it's not sheep. Can you spy any sheep in the middle of the M4 in the dark? No, but I've run out of things beginning with S. Will this bloody traffic ever move? I need the loo. I've got an empty Coke bottle here if you're really desperate. Months of sleeping together and you still know nothing of my anatomy. Me. I wriggled in my seat as we inched forward. Getting back to your mother, I groaned, but Jack persisted. Your mother is bound to feel overprotective of you, given that you're her only child, and I just don't want to get off on the wrong foot. Jack released the brake and we rolled forward a half inch. Stop stressing, you'll have loads in common with her, and my mum is so easygoing, she likes all my friends. I leant over and planted a noisy kiss on on his cheek. "And anyway, it's not like you're intending to propose or anything, is it?" I teased, deliberately staring straight at Jack. He paled. "No, of course not." "Well, there's nothing to worry about then, is there? She'll adore you. Crisp?" I shook the dregs that remained at the bottom of a large packet of Walker's Cheese and Onion. "I think I've finished them already, sorry." An hour or so later, we drew up outside my mother's flat in Kentish Town. It was raining with monsoon intensity, so I bolted out of the car and ran up the steps of the block as fast as I could, pressing continuously on our buzzer until my mother let me in. I raced up the two flights of stairs to our flat, straight past my mother who stood waiting to greet me in the open doorway, and shot into the toilet. 'Sorry, Mum, I'm busting,' I called, slamming the bathroom door shut. Re-emerging a few minutes later, I realised that Jack was still outside in the car. "Better now?" my mother asked smiling. "Yes, much. We should have stopped at the last services but we wanted to crack on. The journey took forever." I held my arms out and Mum enveloped me in her warm familiar embrace, her scent reassuring and instant relaxing. I was home. My mother was on the large side, chunky you might call her, but I always loved her bulk. It had allowed me to sink into her lap and rest my head on her ample chest as a child and even as a sulky teenager when my hormones demanded it. To me, she represented pure, unadulterated comfort. Hang on a minute while I go to rescue Jack. I peeled myself and ran back out of the flat and down the front steps to the car where he sat shivering. Come on, Jack, jump out, I instructed him as he opened the car door. We can leave the car here until 9 tomorrow, but we'll have to move it before the wardens stop patrolling. They're real bastards around here. Jack jumped out, blinking away the rain that flooded down his face the moment he emerged. He opened the boot and we grabbed our bags as fast as we could. By the time we had shut the front door of the block, we were soaked. Just dump the bags by the front door, Jack. We can sort them out later. Jack did as he was told, and as he straightened up, I introduced him to my mother, who was still waiting by the door. She held out two towels, handing one to each of us. 'Thanks, Mum. So this is Jack. Jack, this is Mum.' 'It's a pleasure to meet you,' Jack said a little too loudly, shaking her hand so vigorously that water from his sleeve sprayed the front of my mother's cardigan. 'Gosh, I am sorry,' he gasped, offering the towel back to my mother for her to use. My mother did not take it, nor did she reply. Her hand lay limp in Jack's and her mouth hung open. Jack glanced at me and I shrugged. 'You okay, Mum?' I asked, placing my hand gently on her shoulder. She started at my touch. 'What? Oh, oh yes, Claire, I'm fine. It's a pleasure to meet you, Jack. Claire has told me so much about you. Come into the flat, both of you, and dry off properly by the gas fire. You're wet through.' My mother stopped momentarily and turned back to stare at Jack again. She shook her head as if trying to clear a blockage. 'Come into the kitchen and let me make you both some tea. It'll warm you up.' Jack and I settled ourselves around the formica table in the small kitchen, which was somewhat cracked and worn from years of meals eaten, homework pored over, and arts and crafts badly made. There were very few indicators of the festive season in the flat. A sad string of fraying red tinsel hung down from the light fitting over the table, and in the hall there was the smallest plastic silver tree with a couple of chipped baubles hanging from it. Underneath was a solitary present for me, to which I would add mine for my mother when I finally got around to buying one for her. Mum busied herself for a strangely long time with the tap and then the kettle and for even longer in her strange quest to arrange 6 hobnobs intricately on a small plate. I hadn't made dinner yet as I couldn't be sure what time you were arriving. Don't worry, we got stuck in terrible traffic and our phones were out of charge, otherwise I would have called. We ate all sorts of crap on the way here, so we will live. Claire, language! I rolled my eyes at Jack. Mum set down the biscuits and placed a mug of tea in front of each of us, her hands trembling. She splashed some down her front, leaving a brown stain on her long white cardigan. She moved over to the sink and grabbed a tea towel, absently dabbing at the mark while standing next to the calendar hanging on the wall. It featured the sports in the 2012 London Olympics, which I'd given her the previous Christmas. Suddenly, my mother slammed her mug onto the draining board, causing Jack and I to jump. 'Could you excuse me for just a moment?' she whispered, rushing out of the kitchen. Jack looked at me and mouthed, 'What the fuck?' 'I have no idea what's up with her. Maybe she's ill or something,' I muttered. 'Let me go and see if she's all right.' I padded across the small flat, knocked gently on my mother's bedroom door. 'Come in,' she answered in a flat voice. I opened the door and found her sitting on the stool by the small fold-up table which served as her dressing table by the window. She was afforded a clear view of the drab frenetic high street below, the shops now closed, shuttered for the night apart from the bustling 24-hour store. 'What's the matter?' She made no reply, continuing to stare out of the window, seemingly fascinated with the comings and goings in the shop opposite. 'You and Jack, have you— are you?' 'Susie, what kind of question is that? You've not even spoken to Jack yet and you're already worried about whether he's deflowered me.' I'm 21, Mum, not 15, and it's not the bloody Dark Ages. No, she replied almost inaudibly, I know that, Clare, but I need to know. Have you had sex with Jack? What the hell is wrong with you? I leapt off the bed, banging my back against the wooden knob of the wardrobe door. Since when has my sex life been any of your bloody business? My mother swivelled around to face me. It's not. I'm well aware that I've got no right to reply. 'So why the hell are you behaving like this? Jack and I have been going out for ages, so what do you think we've been doing, drinking tea?' 'You must stop seeing that boy right now.' My mother began to weep, hiding her face in her hands. 'What the hell are you on about? You haven't even made the slightest effort to get to know Jack yet.' 'You just have to trust me on this one.' A solitary streak of mascara stained her cheek. 'You're being completely ridiculous and irrational, Mum. If you won't come out of your room right now and be civil to Jack, then I'll leave with him. I love him. I've never felt this way about anyone before.' My mother raised her head and stared at me wild-eyed. 'Claire, sweetheart, you must listen to me. Go back in there right now and tell him he must go. Use me as an excuse if you must. I really don't care what you say to him. Just get him out of your life right now.' 'You are totally unbloody believable, you know that!' I screeched, tears pricking at the corner of my eyes. 'If you want Jack out of my life, that's not gonna happen. But as of now, I'm gonna be out of yours.' I turned and left the bedroom, slamming the flimsy door behind me. 'Come on, Jack, we're leaving. Grab the bags.' I'm Hazel Butterfield, and you've been listening to Get Booked for Women's and Men's Radio Station. Catch me here every day of the week at Women's Radio Station at 5 PM, and every Tuesday at 4 PM on Men's Radio Station. You can catch up on previous shows at womensradiostation.com/shows/getbooked. Thank you to today's guest, Deborah Stone, for chatting to us. And to play us out, we're gonna have a little bit of a reminder of last week's show, the author Senta Rich chatting to us about Hotel 21. Thanks for listening. Right, now time on the show to have a chat with today's author, Senta Rich, about her debut novel, Hotel 21. This is a sympathetically written, intriguing, and relatable story of belonging, coping mechanisms, psychodynamics, and how wonderful an earth-shattering life can be, often simultaneously. Noelle, the main character, is a survivor. She does what she needs to to get by in life without having to rely on anyone because that is all she knows. Sometimes that involves acquiring random and useless items from the hotel rooms that she cleans because it's an art form, especially not to be caught. The thrill she gets from her success and precise methodology gives her purpose and a buzz until it doesn't. And it's— I've had so much fun reading this book, but I know for a fact before I next go away on holiday, I'm going to catalogue everything I've got in my vanity case. Uh, so let's talk about Hotel 21 with today's guest, Santa. Thank you for joining us on Get Booked for Women's and Men's radio station. Hi Hazel, thank you so much for having me on the show, and thank you for talking about the book. Like that. It really brought— it really made me feel quite, um, emotional. Did it? Well, I felt quite emotional reading it because, you know, in a way it's a really simplistic story, isn't it? At the end of the day, it's just cleaners going about their everyday business, and it's one of those industries where you don't necessarily stay— there's quite a high turnover, um, and, you know, I stay in hotels a lot. I know for a fact that I wouldn't miss certain things if they went missing. But also in every single industry, everybody has lives and everybody has certain nuance and, and things that they go through. And we just plod along all the time, not really taking in what anybody else is doing. And I guess we don't have the time to involve ourselves in people's lives. And I think, I guess Noël kind of hopes that that is the case for many people. So I thoroughly loved the book. I think it's brilliant. It was, It went way too quickly for me. Well, you know, the funny thing is, when I— I got the idea for the story from when I stayed in a small hotel in Lisbon, and I accidentally annoyed the hotel cleaner when I didn't leave my room until really late, like it was way after lunch, and she was waiting outside the room for me to leave so she could clean it, and she had her arms crossed and a really nasty look on her face. And I felt really terrible because she, you know, I just thought if I'd had a bit of cop on, I would have stepped outside the room and let her clean it. It's no problem. It takes— it doesn't take very long. So I felt really bad. Later on, when I came back that evening, my hairbrush was missing. And I immediately— now, I don't now think she took it. I really don't. I think I lost it in transit. But because I'm a writer, probably I jumped to this idea, the cleaner took my hairbrush as a revenge lift. She was so annoyed that she took it to get back at me and ruined my, ruined my night. It's a small thing. It's very irritating when you're standing there with wet hair and you're away and you don't have your hairbrush, right? But I was immediately like excited and intrigued and I thought, you know, does she do this a lot? Does she take hairbrushes? Does she take other things, small things that maybe we don't know are missing, or is it just things she knows you won't phone up the manager about. Because I wasn't going to phone up and say, listen, someone's, someone's taken my secondhand hairbrush, you know, I want the hairbrush back with the hairs, you know, like, I wasn't gonna say that. So, so I started thinking more and more and more about this. And because I'm a screenwriter, I was thinking about TV and film. And then I started thinking, you know, she had this way to have to take some, um, control over me you know, by doing this. And I thought maybe she's doing it because she's trying to regain control in her own life in some way. So a couple of days later, I wrote the first 4,000 words of the book. And for me, it was very liberating to write in first person. And what I wanted to do, I was just really excited about this kind of small story of someone who's in crisis, and we pick them up in that moment and we also learn about why they do these things, but we're also seeing how they're managing and how they're coping. And that everyone— for me, it was a great story to want to tell because, you know, we're all in the mess, we're all in the chaos, we're all struggling. It doesn't really matter. And, and I really like the idea that, you know, you don't have to be super rich, super talented, or successful, or saving the world to be an exceptional person, you know. And for me, they're all exceptional. They're all exceptional people. And, and I really enjoyed taking her on this journey out of her crisis and her chaos. And, and I still worry about her. It's really weird. I just hope she's not— I have this feeling, I hope she's okay. Like, is she, you know, is she getting on at Hotel 21 still? Has she got friends? Has she managed to get over the issues? I mean, there's so many different things that were kind of— and as I said, it was like sympathetically written because she kind you talk about her issues with her mum, but it then gets ignored every now and again because sometimes you just have to ignore things to get on with life, otherwise you'll send yourself constantly crazy. And I loved the idea of kind of dipping in and out of dealing with mundanity at the same time as dealing with abuse and horrific stuff. And we all find different ways to just cope. And what really got me is that kleptomania— I mean, there are a lot of people out there, even that I know, that take things just because they can. I mean, I've got friends that are on, you know, £100 grand salaries, and they'll nick a packet of Polos. And I'm like, why do you do that? Because I can. Is that really kleptomania? I mean, um, that is theft. Yeah. But I mean, I, I, I mean, I, I would say that someone who nicks a packet of Polos, they've probably been doing that since they were a child, uh, because otherwise they wouldn't know what the, what the thrill is.