Tag Archives: @honno

A Wonderful Review from LoveReading for my next book, published by Honno

Posted on by
11

Grateful for this review from https://www.lovereading.co.uk/

“This gripping story of harrowing behind-closed-doors coercion has tremendous emotional pull.”

LoveReading Says

Domestic thriller fiction at its most heart-wrenching, Judith Barrow’s The Stranger in My House is also utterly un-put-down-able — readers will be desperate for a family broken by cruel coercive control to be reunited.

The novel opens in 1967 when twins Charlie and Chloe are introduced to their “new mummy” Lynne while they’re still bereft at losing their mother to cancer. Early on, Lynne’s behaviour causes alarms bells to ring for the twins — and readers — which only adds to the mounting tension and fear of where things are going, with their father, Graham, vulnerable to emotional manipulation, rendered powerless to do anything to stop his life from careering out of control, which it does at alarming speed.

Before Graham can catch his breath, he’s lost everything, as have his children, who are separated from their father and each other, while Lynne and her bully of a son continue their campaign of cruelty.

Years later, the twins are living separate lives in different parts of the country, both scarred but their hearts lifted by kind souls. And then comes a race-against-time to find each other and save their dad.

Though weighty and harrowing in subject, The Stranger in My House is grippingly easy-to-read in delivery, which makes it a powerful page-turner that will have fans of family drama thrillers reading long after they’d planned to turn out the lights.

Joanne Owen

Books of the Month

Find This Book In

Primary GenreCrime and Mystery
Recommendations:Books of the Month

£9.99 £8.99

This title will be released on 14/11/2024. Pre-order now.

Add To Wishlist

Buy from our bookstore and 25% of the cover price will be given to a school of your choice to buy more books. *15% of eBooks.

Collections Featuring This Book

Best Domestic Noir Novels – 30+ Brilliant Books about Household Horrors and Domestic Just Desserts.

https://www.lovereading.co.uk/book/9781916821224/isbn/The-Stranger-in-My-House-by-Judith-Barrow.html?awc=30897_1730738102_df174f2c9bf111ec6852167c1371767c

Honno’s Story

Honno is an independent co-operative press run by women and committed to bringing you the best in Welsh women’s writing.​

It was established in 1986 by a determined group of volunteers who wanted to increase the opportunities for Welsh women in publishing and bring Welsh women’s literature to a wider public. They asked the people of Wales to show their support for the new enterprise by becoming shareholders in the cooperative and in the first six months more than 400 people bought shares. Honno continues to be supported by hundreds of individual shareholders who believe in its work.

​True to its roots the press still only publishes work by women of Wales. Most of Honno’s titles are novels, autobiographies and short story anthologies in English as well as Classics in both Welsh and English. We have in the past also published poetry, children’s and teenage titles and books in both Welsh and English.​

Over the years the Press and its titles have been awarded many prizes.

​It is guided by the Honno Committee of volunteers who set the strategic direction of the Press, decide the publishing programme and manage the office and staff. The Honno office is located in the mid-Wales coastal town of Aberystwyth.

​Honno receives financial support from the Books Council for Wales.

Looking Back over my Writing Years – Is it Safe to Smile Now? #memories #writing #agents #publishing #MondayBlogs @Honno

Posted on by
24
Me in a thoughtful mood.

I thought I would revisit a time of my life when I despaired of ever being in print. It cheers me up as I agonise over yesterday’s efforts, altering and editing before I can even start with today’s writing and the realisation that one of my lovely characters has a cob on and won’t do as I want her to do. I’ve spent hours trying to persuade her, putting her in different scenarios, story lines. But no, she’s adamant – she wouldn’t act in that way,

So I’ve gone back to the heady day when I found an agent. And I kept a diary.

Sometime… a long time ago.

It’s been a fortnight since I met with my agent (get me! – and it was in London and she treated me to a meal in a posh restaurant). Carried away with her enthusiasm for my writing, her promises to make me into a ‘brand name’ and her assurance that she had many contacts in the publishing world that would ‘snap her hand off for my novel’, I signed on the dotted line.

Today she telephones, summarily dismissing an offer. ‘We can do better than this.’

What? What’s better than getting this novel published? Than seeing, holding, a book in my hand that I’ve actually written? I get an offer, perfectly acceptable to me, but according to this agent, it’s not enough. ‘We’ll try other publishers, bigger publishers,’ she says.

Image courtesy of Pixabay

I’m worried. But she knows the business.

Doesn’t she?

Still a long time ago … It’s been six months of waiting.

So far, four rejections from publishers. Couched, mind you, in encouraging remarks:

“Believable characters … strong and powerful writing … gripping story … Judith has an exciting flair for plot … evocative descriptions.”

And then the death knell on my hopes:

Image courtesy of Pixabay

‘Unfortunately … our lists are full … we’ve just accepted a similar book … we are only a small publishers … (what? The agent rejects one small independant publishers who I really liked the sound of, but then sends the manuscript to another?) …’I’m sure you’ll find a platform for Judith’s work …’

Yes, yes, we did, we did find ‘a platform’, as they put it. Or rather I did. I found a publisher: I liked their ethos, the way they presented and supported their authors – a feminist press, for goodness sake; one right up my street.

The self-doubt, the frustration, floods back. I’m never going to get the book published.
 
Still a long time ago: Another three months later.

I’ve had a call from the agent; ‘I think it’s time to re-evaluate the comments we’ve had so far,’ she says. ‘Parts of the storyline need tweaking. I’ve negotiated a deal with a commercial editor for you. It’s a realistic charge by today’s standards,’ she says. ’Think about it,’ she says. ‘In the end we’ll have a book that will take you to the top of your field.’

I think about it. Reject the idea. Listen to advice from my various acquaintances. Think about it again.

And think about it some more.

And then I ring the agent. ‘Okay,’ I say, ‘I’ll do it. I’ll pay’

I have no choice; after all she’s the expert. What do I know?

Still sometime … a long time ago (I have to keep saying “a long time ago”. just in case you think I’m still as gullible as I was then).

Another six months gone. The first commercial editor (the best, apparently) has succumbed to maternity leave. The one who was finally chosen by my agent (the second best?) has had my script all this time. I’ve already paid her.

You’re now wondering what kind of credulous idiot is this, yes? Well, let me say here that this latest saga (an apt word as my first book is actually a saga!) has been going on for over eighteen months and I’m desperate.

All creativity has gone. I can’t write anything but emails – and believe me, there are plenty on this subject. The commercial editor’s reasons (excuses) for the delay are numerous: an urgent journey to Europe to do research for a project, a family crisis (alright, I’ll believe that one) she’s ghost writing a celebrity’s autobiography (how can it be an autobiography if someone else is writing it? That always puzzles me. Surely then, it’s a biography?) Okay, okay, bitterness is creeping in.

We were supposed to be having a meeting to discuss the way forward with my book. It didn’t happen.

Now a friend, a successful and published author herself, is concerned I’m being conned. So am I! I feel foolish but say surely it’s only a few things that need tweaking.

It’s back!

I read it in disbelief; if I follow all the ‘suggestions’ it will change from being a saga into romantic fiction. Okay, I like a bit romance; don’t we all? The book does have some romance threaded throughout, but it also crosses other genres: history, crime, domestic thriller.

I ring my agent,

‘Yes,’ she says, ‘it is a little more drastic than I expected but go with it.’

I tried- really I did. For two months I worked. With less and less interest. In the end I stopped. I didn’t recognise my story; I had no empathy with the characters. It wasn’t my book any-more.

So…

I made a decision, one of the biggest I’ve ever made. I sent a letter terminating our contract. Despite persuasive tactics from her I don’t waiver.

In trepidation I start again; I contact the publisher I first found, submit my manuscript. And wait

They will meet with me. No promises…

 Pattern of Shadows, the first book of my Haworth trilogy published by Honno finally made the shelves.

This is my favourite review of all time for the trilogy: Mary’s story: WWII in Howarth family generational saga: “Every now and then, I come across books so beautifully written that their characters follow me around, demanding I understand their lives, their mistakes, their loves, and in this case, their families. Taken together, the Howarth Family stories are an achievement worth every one of the five stars I’d give them.”

Sixteen years late I’m still with Honno.

And, in November, Honno will be publishing my eighth book with them. Cover reveal on the 30th July… so tomorrow!! Hooray!!!

The Stranger in My House.

A gripping ‘cuckoo in the nest’ domestic thriller

After the death of their mum, twins Chloe and Charlie are shocked when their dad introduces Lynne as their ‘new mummy’. Lynne, a district nurse, is trusted in the community, but the twins can see her kind smile doesn’t meet her eyes. In the months that follow they suffer the torment Lynne brings to their house as she stops at nothing in her need to be in control.

Betrayed, separated and alone, the twins struggle to build new lives as adults, but will they find happiness or repeat past mistakes? Will they discover Lynne’s secret plans for their father? Will they find each other in time?

The Stranger in My House is a gripping ‘cuckoo in the nest’ domestic thriller, exploring how coercive control can tear a family apart. Set in Yorkshire and Cardiff, from the 60s to the winter of discontent, The Stranger in My House dramatises both the cruelty and the love families hide behind closed doors.

“Judith Barrow’s greatest strength is her understanding of her characters and the time.” TerryTyler

A writing and Gardening day. And a Small Mention of the Cover Reveal of The Stranger in my House. #Sundaythoughts #photographs #garden #Bosherstonlilyponds

Posted on by
17

It’s a writing, The Archers on Radio Four, Sunday lunch, and a gardening day – the latter if the rain holds off. Oh, and a small mention of the cover reveal by Honno, of my next book, The Stranger in my House…. on Tuesday 30th July 2024.

The garden is looking quite good, even after a day and night of being drenched in Pembrokeshire rain.

Photos of Bosherston Lily Ponds, courtesy of Husband, on one of the few sunny days. Lovely now – but when the lilies are out, even more gorgeous.

Swans again – but from a safe distance!!

Must get on…

Hope you all have a lovely Sunday, wherever you are. x

Memories Make the Story #MondayBlogs #Memories #families #sisters #secrets

Posted on by
12

Many people have asked me what was the inspiration for The Memory and my answer is always – memories: memories of being a carer for two of my aunts who lived with us, memories of losing a friend in my childhood; a friend who, although at the time I didn’t realise, was a Downs’ Syndrome child. But why I started to write the story; a story so different from my other four books, I can’t remember. Because it was something I’d begun years ago and was based around the journal I’d kept during that decade of looking after my relatives.

But what did begin to evolve when I settled down to writing The Memory was the realisation of why I’d been so reluctant to delve too far into my memories. The isolation, the loneliness, that Irene Hargreaves, the protagonist, endures; despite being married to Sam, her loving husband, dragged up my own feelings of being alone so much as a child. That awareness of always being on the outside; looking in on other families, relationships and friendships had followed me; had hidden deep inside my subconscious. And now, as content with my life as I am, it unsettled me.

Many people, and as an occasional creative writing tutor I’m one, say that writing is cathartic. Working through Irene’s memories; especially that one memory that has ruled her life, made me acknowledge my own. And that’s fine. I always say to my students, if you don’t feel the emotions as you write, then neither will your reader.

In The Memory I’m hoping the reader will sense the poignant, sad times with Irene, but will also rejoice with her in the happier memories.

Over the last few years I’ve moved from writing the historical family sagas of Haworth trilogy, that moves through the decades from 1914 – 1968, and The Heartstone, set during WW1, to contemporary fiction such as The Memory (which was shortlisted for the Wales Book of the Year 2021 The Rhys Davies Trust Award) and domestic thrillers, such as Sisters.

My next book, due to be published in November 2024 is The Stranger in My House:

“A gripping ‘cuckoo in the nest’ domestic thriller.”

After the death of their mum, twins Chloe and Charlie are shocked when their dad introduces Lynne as their ‘new mummy’. Lynne, a district nurse, is trusted in the community, but the twins can see her kind smile doesn’t meet her eyes. In the months that follow they suffer the torment Lynne brings to their house as she stops at nothing in her need to be in control.

Betrayed, separated and alone, the twins struggle to build new lives as adults, but will they find happiness or repeat past mistakes? Will they discover Lynne’s secret plans for their father? Will they find each other in time?

The Stranger in My House is a gripping ‘cuckoo in the nest’ domestic thriller, exploring how coercive control can tear a family apart. Set in Yorkshire and Cardiff, from the 60s to the winter of discontent, The Stranger in My House dramatises both the cruelty and the love families hide behind closed doors.

Sisters

The Memory

The Heart Stone

Discover the Haworth trilogy

Prequel to the Haworth trilogy

https://tinyurl.com/3m5xhnsu

Pals Regiments – An Experiment Never Repeated #WW1 #crime #romance #excerpt #TheHeartStone #historicalFiction #Honno

Posted on by
17

 As members of the human race we feel safest with those we know and trust. And we choose who to trust; friends and those members of our families with whom we can empathise. Those who think like us, who, on the whole, believe in the things we believe in, who share group values.

Even if those ideals are instigated by someone else, we can sometimes be persuaded to take them onboard. To consider them as our own core principles. And, as such we cooperate; we work together towards a shared goal.

It was this theory; that man has evolved to cooperate within a trusted group and so is able to achieve more than any one person could ever accomplish alone, that in nineteen fourteen led to the formation of the Pals Battalions.

When the First World War broke out in the August, Britain was the only major power not to begin with a mass conscripted army. It quickly became clear that the small professional British Army was not large enough for such a comprehensive conflict. Despite the general belief that the war would be over by Christmas, the newly appointed Secretary of State for War, Lord Kitchener, was unconvinced. He approached Asquith’s Government to allow conscription, but this was considered politically dangerous for the Liberals. However, Parliament did sanction strengthening the Army through volunteering.  And so, on the sixth of August, Kitchener set about recruiting.

General Henry Rawlinson, serving as Director of Recruiting at the War Office on the outbreak of war, believed that men would be more willing to join up if they could serve with men they already knew, they would enlist if they could serve alongside their friends, relatives and, local football teams, church members, workmates.

pals-batallion

Image courtesy of A Date with History

Building on General Rawlinson’s idea Lord Derby, Conservative member of the House of Lords, organised one of the most successful recruitment campaigns to Kitchener’s Army.

In  a speech to the men of Liverpool , he said: “This should be a battalion of pals, a battalion in which friends from the same office will fight shoulder to shoulder for the honour of Britain and the credit of Liverpool.”

Pals battalions were formed on patriotic fervour and community spirit, spurred on by local magistrates and officials on behalf of Lord Kitchener. Thousands answered the call. Cities, driven by civic pride, competed to sign up new recruits until there were too many for the military to train. So they were drilled in their own towns by those same magistrates and officials, until the army could take over.

December 1915, London: A recruiting campaign attacts recruits to Southwark Town Hall. Read more: http://www.mademan.com/ga… | World war one, World war i, World war
Image courtesy of Pinterest

It was easier to sign on recruits from areas where mining or mass industry were the main employment. It appears that, to many men, the army gave them a great opportunity to escape dire poverty: to have regular pay, food, clothing, sometimes better living conditions in barracks compared with their homes. Most had never been abroad. The war offered the opportunity to go to France and Belgium with their friends and get paid for it.

Hull and the First World War | World war one, World war, War
Image courtesy of Pinterest
World War One: Manchester Pals battalion details to go online - Manchester Evening News

Members of Manchester pals battalions – image courtesy of Manchester Evening news

Once they had been formed, most Pals Battalions spent 1914 and 1915 training in Britain. But plans were being made for a major offensive on the Somme that was intended to relieve the pressure on the French and break through German lines to force an early victory. It would be the first major battle for most volunteers.

For many it would also be their last. The first day of the Somme was disastrous. Most of these units sustained heavy casualties.

Certainly the Pals Battalions increased the number of volunteers. However, poor military tactics by the higher ranks meant that there was a heavy price to pay by the men in those battalions. Neighbourhoods and families were devastated.

 With the introduction of conscription in 1916, the close-knit nature of the Pals battalions was never to be replicated.

Quote from one Pal: ‘Two years in the making. Ten minutes in the destroying. That was our history.‘.

Image courtesy of The Manchester Evening News

The Heart Stone

Excerpt:

In The Heart Stone, Jessie’s young love, Arthur, joins the local Pals Brigade, even though, at sixteen, he is too young.

They held onto one another for a while.

‘I have to go, sweetheart.’ Arthur pulled away from her. ‘Best I go first, eh?’

Jessie nodded, not trusting herself to speak. She didn’t watch him walk away...

Chapter Eighteen September 20th 1914

She didn’t go to watch him leave the town with the other two hundred men and boys either. Through her opened bedroom window, she listened to the uneven thud of their undisciplined marching between the changing tunes of the brass band and the singing. How she resented the singing. And the cheering.

Sitting on her bed, her handkerchief sodden between her fingers, she tried to shut down the images she’d conjured up in her mind of what Arthur might face. She had no idea, but she’d read in the newspapers about the atrocities the Germans were committing in Belgium; killing randomly, deliberate cruelty. What kind of men were they?

Despite Amos Morgan’s constant calls to go down to serve in the shop, she ignored him. She wouldn’t face the excitement, the proud chatter of the customer. She didn’t, wouldn’t, couldn’t share it.

Eventually the crowds moved away from in front of the shop. She heard the noise from below quieten to a low murmur and thought bitterly that Amos Morgan would be worried about making less money now so many men had gone. Gone to a foreign land to be killed in a war that her own country shouldn’t have become involved in. It didn’t make sense to her.

Links:

https://twitter.com/judithbarrow77

https://www.facebook.com/judith.barrow.3

https://www.instagram.com/judithbarrow2912/

https://www.honno.co.uk/authors/judith-barrow

Honoured to be included in a Post Written by Thorne Moore (Alongside Jane Austen No Less!!)

Posted on by
12
Thorny matters

Home, Hearth and Murder – domestic drama

Back in 1816, Jane Austen (yes, I always try to bring her into anything if I can) commiserated with her nephew when he reported that he had lost 2 whole chapters of his own tentative novel. She hadn’t stolen them, she promised. “What should I do with your strong, manly, spirited Sketches, full of Variety & Glow? — How could I possibly join them on to the little bit (two Inches wide) of Ivory on which I work with so fine a Brush, as produces little effect after much labour?”

Being Jane Austen, she was, of course, being ironic, suggesting that her own writing was on such a slight and insignificant scale. Sir Walter Scott recognised that her work was fair more powerful than a little bit of ivory would allow. “The big bow-wow strain I can do myself like any now going; but the exquisite touch, which renders ordinary commonplace things and characters interesting, from the truth of the description and the sentiment, is denied to me.”

And yet critics have dared to complain that Austen’s novels are too limited, confined to “three or four families in a country village,” when all around her, the social upheaval of the industrial revolution, the French Terror, the Napoleonic wars were playing out. She knew well enough what great dramas were happening out there. A cousin’s husband was guillotined, an aunt was hauled off to prison, two brothers were serving in the navy, and yet she chose to concentrate on a small group of people interacting on a tiny stage as if the outside world didn’t exist. But what Jane Austen appreciated was that there is just as much emotional and psychological drama to be found in closed families as on wide battlefields.

I write about crime. My genre has been defined as Domestic Noir and it always focuses on the dark dynamics at work within a family, a neighbourhood, a close circle of friends. Does that mean it lacks the drama of a crime novel set, say, among Columbian drug barons, or the Mafia, or human traffickers or crooked financiers in the city? It probably lacks the extreme gore of a hard-boiled thriller. I work on the assumption that lashing out wildly and causing a loved one’s death with a misplaced blow is just as tragic and dramatic as a gruesome plot involving a victim’s head being chewed off by a bear.

Domestic drama might lack the fast pace of mainstream crime fiction too. It tends to be a matter of a slow burn, rising gradually to a rolling boil, scalding oil and an all-consuming blaze. That’s what I like, because it is what goes on in families – and with isolating lock-down, even more so. You don’t have to look to the scheming world of international crime or the grimy nastiness of the underworld to discover every facet of human emotion – thundering passion, consuming rage, seething jealousy, love, hope, disappointment, despair, joy, triumph, resentment, remorse. They are all there, simmering behind lace curtains.

Judith Barrow’s latest book, The Memory, proves the point exactly. Following the story of Irene from young girl greeting the birth of her beloved Downs Syndrome sister to aging carer of a mother with dementia, it is an exquisite study of how family ties and stresses stir up every possible joy and anguish from deep protective love to long-nursed hatred, with sheer bloody exhaustion nudging inexorably towards a fatal brink.

Read it and tell me a domestic drama can’t shake the reader as much as a shoot-out in bank vaults or torture in a cellar.

The Memory by Judith Barrow

www.thornemoore.co.uk