I have always avoided movies and books which dealt with the issues surrounding sexual assaults and things of that nature, finding them unedifying in more ways than I could possibly write about. My novels have always been more comedic, light hearted with a decent morality running through them. I have touched on raw issues but never really delved into them.

The book I am currently writing was not meant to be, for a lot of reasons. I was having a rest from writing primarily. It wears me out quite frankly. When I have a book at the creation stage, I am driven like a team of rider-less horses. I cannot stop until the thing is out, edited, covered, blurbed and published. Then comes an enormous sense of relief and achievement. Followed sadly by the fear, that nobody will want it, buy it, read it, review it. But on the whole no matter. It is outside of me and not inside. "Better off out than in," my father used to say, although I think he was speaking more about wind and other unpleasantries than artistic creations. But it fits somehow.

I woke up one morning recently with an idea in my head and by the end of that day, it was fleshed out into a book. The intriguing tale of Jayden Mitchell has been growing ever since, into something I could not have imagined. It began as a mystery, about a counselling centre at the back of an Anglican Church in the city of Lincoln in England. It was a 'who killed the vicar?' type intrigue but a few weeks later, it is so much more than that.

I have dusted off my old counselling notes, mainly still in my head and delved into personal experience to produce something which is at the same time chilling and yet full of hope. It was never my intention to do this and so it has come as a complete surprise to me, as much as anyone reading it. It is a very different offering from the K T Bowes of the Hana series. This book will not be for the faint hearted, but neither will it be gory or unnecessarily explicit. But it may be hard to read.

I think that it will be one of those creations which I will hold in my hands shortly and ask myself the stern question, 'Did you do that?' This will probably be only moments after I stare helplessly at the list of possible categories to put the thing in on Amazon. I'm telling you now, I really don't have a clue as it seems to cross so many genres already, that it will be an impossible task.

A novel which began as 'The Counsellor' has now undergone a dramatic metamorphosis before my very eyes into something which is likely to bear the name, 'The Demons on Her Shoulder'. Time will answer the question as to why I have changed it.

The process of writing is always a fascinating one for me but this experience is a complete first. It's a bit like mixing cooking ingredients, when the journey is as much a mystery for the chef as it is for the seated guests. I genuinely have no idea how this is all going to turn out, but I am sincerely hoping that it will be palatable.

Here is a little sneak preview of the first two paragraphs of my next novel. Out soon.

Chapter 1

The clamour of irrepressible sobbing erupted suddenly and without warning. Jayden kept her demure face neutral as the overweight client in front of her crumpled into the swollen armchair like a deflated airbed. The tissues were a fraction to the left of her seat, easily within reach. A jug of cold water condensated quietly on the coffee table next to three robust looking glasses.

Jayden kept very still, not wanting to halt the spell. It had taken weeks to get to this point and she had begun to doubt herself. Long, intensely frustrating hours of pushing the knotty issue around and around in a giant, self-defeating circle which had the potential to go exactly nowhere. The demons sat figuratively on the woman’s shoulder, unseen but unquestionably there and undeniably felt. Grief. Bitterness. Rejection. Sinking in their claws and patting at her shoulder with their filthy, clammy hands. Jayden knew them well. She had those of her own whom she managed periodically to wrestle off and bind, but they invariably returned when she wasn’t looking, or when remembered pain made her forget to close the doors of her heart.

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