Sweet Caroline

This is the most bizarre post I think I've written. At no point did it ever cross my mind that I'd be writing about the death of Caroline Flack, The Flack Attack, Strictly Come Dancing Winner 2014 a few months after her 40th birthday.
She's a presenter who's always been in my line of tv sight, with her startling eyes and husky voice. And it's so strange to think she'll never do her slow motion strut into the Love Island villa, squeeze an islander's hand, ask a cheeky question, defend someone on Twitter, have the naughtiest little photos on her Instagram or be singing on a dance floor.
I didn't know her personally, but you can see from the out pour of messages and tributes from the people that did - she was so deeply loved. And she still took her own life.
While we'll never know the why, the breadcrumbs lead us to inevitable conclusions. Social media has changed something in us all. It's not just the tabloid press - who are crying crocodile tears while they delete all the negative stories they had up right up until they published Caroline's death - but us as individuals. I'm not going to plead innocence in how I tweet about reality television - it's tv, come on - but good God, why would anyone put their fingers to a keyboard, or touch their phones to tell another person that they should die?
Love Island has had three suicides (Sophie Gradon, her boyfriend and Mike Thalassitis) and after each one, the same sad faces, the same platitudes wandered around before the same record played again. Only a few days ago, I was listening to the Laid Bare Podcast, and Leanne, a recently dumped islander, revealed how she was receiving death threats. It's a television show. She told a guy she didn't like him. That's it. She didn't beat anyone. She didn't bully anyone. That's all it took for her to get death threats from a bunch of cunts. It's supposed to be entertainment. We're supposed to be watching people form relationships and win a bit of money. Their motives behind going on a show may be monetarily based (the prize money is only £25,000 if you share it in your couple, so the partnerships, the promotions can run into the hundreds of thousands) but these are still human beings. What gives anyone the right to do that to another human being?
Clemmie Hooper, a mummy blogger, who had almost 700,000 Instagram followers created a whole persona to troll herself, other bloggers, to be racist, even to troll her own husband. Because it gave her power - she enjoyed how it made her feel - superior.
People who tweet horrible things about Meghan Markle get likes, traffic, attention - so the trolling works for them. Think of Piers Morgan, Katie Hopkins, and the latest troll for hire, Lawrence Fox. It pays to be racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic - to mock, to ridicule, to undermine. And in that same vein, people thought it was okay to mock and ridicule Caroline Flack. She faced a difficult trial for assaulting her boyfriend and it wasn't a show, because her boyfriend didn't support the case against her.
Listen, I've applied for protective orders. I've sat with clients and reassured them. I've gone to bed worried that I would get a call or an email telling me that client had died at the hands of their partner. I've had arguments with police officers who haven't taken what I've warned them about seriously and they get called back to the same address over and over again. I've also desperately tried to talk clients out of making statements that withdraw their complaints against their partner for fear of worse happening to them. And it does. The worse happens. The law exists for a reason, especially when it's failed survivors of abuse for decades. Even worse for male survivors because they're simply not believed. "How could your five foot two wife burn you like that, sir?"
Caroline needed to have her trial. She needed to be left alone to deal with that. She didn't deserve people laughing at her, tweeting at her daily that she'd lamped her boyfriend, to have the papers reprint a Valentine's card with a mocking cartoon of her on the front with a threat. She didn't deserve to hear that she was an abuser and deserved to go to jail forever.  That she was a paedophile and a nonce for dating Harry Styles when he was seventeen and Caroline was thirty one. That she should kill herself for what she did to her boyfriend.
I've had the barest of negativity from my work. I can't imagine what it would be like to open your Instagram to look at photos of your boyfriend, whom you're not allowed to be with because of your bail conditions, and instead see hundreds of messages telling you that you deserve to die. When you hear something enough, you start to believe it. And she did believe it. Despite all her friends and all her family telling her otherwise; she believed that she deserved to die. That the world would be better without her. That she didn't belong on this earth any more.
That's not fair.
There's a lot that needs to be changed with the media - god look at what the media did to Meghan and all she did was marry a man she loved who happened to be a member of the British Royal Family! Prince Harry and Caroline dated in the past and you know why they broke up? Same media. There needs to be some consequence for their recklessness. But there also needs to be tougher measures on social media and what that needs to be - smarter minds than I need to come up with that.
Most of all, I need people to know that they're not alone. Never alone. It can be a daily, unrelenting battle and the way this has come about can only be triggering when you struggle with your mental health. Please believe me when I say you deserve to be here. You deserve to live. You'd be missed. Please stay.
Please.

https://www.samaritans.org/

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/Suicide/

Valentine

It's the romance author's national holiday today! And in case you fancy a little bit of self-love and some time alone with a book boyfriend, let me reintroduce you to the Valentine's OGs.

I created Season of Love to front a few short stories to celebrate Valentine's Day. I've linked the pdfs here so you can remind yourself!

Season of Love Vol 1

From Volume 1, I got Stella and Niels and Wynne and Bren!

Season of Love Vol 2

From Volume 2, I got Art and Patricia and I'll also have Salina and Cael too.

All these stories started on this magical day and will continue to give me a place to start, to evolve, to do better than the boys on Love Island because that's what Hot Muse Hank demands.

No matter what, today you are super loved and appreciated and you're needed right here.

Fake Love

I am on something at the moment, so let's roll!

How beautiful is this cover? Black Jazz Design coming through for me like the proverbial knight in shining armour!

To explain! If you follow me on social media (and if not, why not? I'm freaking hilarious!) you'll know that I love reality tv or scripted tv shows. My day job although now part time is tough work mentally and emotionally. Other people's lives are terrible to untangle legally and if I'm not reaching for a glass of Merlot, I'm watching Love Island or First Dates or The Undateables. It's the best way for me to switch off and to distance myself from my work. By the time the hour has finished and I'm raging over what so and so has said to whatshisface or I'm dabbing my tears because a person with Tourette's is proposing to his girlfriend aka crunchy tits or I'm laughing at the seventy year old woman who doesn't fancy her date and wants her loins to be on fire before she jumps into another relationship, I can't even remember what the hell triggered me the entirety of my journey home. 

One of my favourites is a little show where two strangers meet on their wedding day and go for the plunge - they actually get married. The romantic in me is desperate to see these people fall for each other, to get closer, to introduce each other to friends, to be thoughtful and caring and to make a decision where they stay together forever and ever and they tell their kids how mum and dad met each other on television. To be fair, the concept is a Westernised version of arranged marriages, without a camera crew following you about and people tweeting about your lives (also me typing in capitals for the husband usually to not be a dick!)

When NaNoWriMo rolled around November 2019, I knew what I was going to do. Twitter fingers Billy was going to use all that energy into getting a scripted tv show romance done. 

My main character, Victoria is amazing. I love all my ladies for real, but Vic has such flavour, no filter, a mum to two, an appreciation of all of her curves (and she got cuuuuuurves) a giant not just in heels but bare feet and the best baker in London town - ask the reality stars who've been Instagramming the crap out of her work. She's the perfect foil for Hal (I was having a Shakespeare moment, let me at it) my severe, half Korean, one legged, former army man who just wants to live a quiet life and run his nice restaurant in peace. Between their three respective kids, exes, parents, grandparents, best friends Vic and Hal are going to do what I've very kindly asked them to - fall for each other hard because a tv show put them together. 

I love it when a tv show works out - don't you?