Wednesday, 27 May 2020
A The Towpath review...
I’m a bit disappointed reading a review of my latest book The Towpath by someone saying it contained ‘untrue facts’. I always stated that the book is a FICTIONAL book based on a true story and there is a disclaimer in the book saying that some characters and events were purely fictional and necessary due to the historic nature of the story. If this was a factual book it would be marketed as non-fiction. But it’s not. It’s a work of fiction. I hope that has cleared up the matter 🤷🏻♀️
Saturday, 4 January 2020
The Towpath Paperback Is Here!
Well that was quick! The Towpath is now available to buy in paperback, which I must say is still my preferred way to read a book. Click on the link below to get your copy! Happy (not sure that's the right word for this book...) reading!
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1654937894/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=the+towpath+tracy+hefferon&qid=1578132990&s=books&sr=1-2
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1654937894/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=the+towpath+tracy+hefferon&qid=1578132990&s=books&sr=1-2
Thursday, 2 January 2020
The Towpath is published!
Wow... I haven't blogged for so long but I have been very busy (as usual) and although I've been writing and editing and publishing, I've neglected my blog. A thousand apologies!
Anyway... I have some exciting news! The Towpath is published!
Anyway... I have some exciting news! The Towpath is published!
New year, new decade, new book! I am very proud to announce my fourth book is now published and on sale as an ebook on Amazon. I will be publishing the paperback version very soon for all those who prefer the 'real thing' 😊
I LOVED researching and writing this book. I had no idea how to write a narrative non-fiction novel but I took the bull by the horns and found out everything I could about the story and just went for it. I'm really pleased with the finished book and it's a great story, albeit a sad one. I'd be very interested to hear any of your views with regards to the epilogue section of the book... the twist in the tale, so to speak. There will be no spoilers here but please feel free to comment on your ideas! As I say at the end of the book, if this case had happened in 2020, the outcome may have been very different. Forensics didn't exist in 1953 and people were convicted by the smallest of incidentals such as a speck of blood on a shoe or a witness statement.
Here is a teaser to entice you into reading the book. I hope you enjoy it!
The Towpath
It’s the end of May 1953. A heatwave has burned the country to a crisp and the whole nation is at fever pitch as it prepares to crown its beautiful new Queen. Streets are scrubbed spotless. Red, white and blue bunting is strung from every lamppost. And thousands of kitchens have produced thousands of cakes as the countdown begins to a magical day full of pomp, pageantry and patriotism, the likes of which the country has never seen before.
Barbara Songhurst and Christine Reed, two young friends from Teddington, have planned the weekend leading up to the big day with military precision. Christine is going to battle through the crowds just so she can see the dashingly handsome Prince Phillip with her very own eyes and Barbara has bought a yellow and white floral bathing suit from the West End which will hopefully clinch her the title of Beauty Pageant Queen 1953.
Alfred Whiteway also lives in Teddington. He despises the Royal Family and the Queen and everything she stands for. The only plans he has for the 2nd of June are to get completely rat-arsed and fuck a prostitute or two. With a penchant for knives and a reputation locally as a lunatic who swings through the trees of Bushey Park like an ape, Alfie is the kind of man best avoided.
But on the 31st of May, two days before Princess Elizabeth became Queen Elizabeth II, Barbara and Christine's paths crossed with Alfie Whiteway's. It was totally unavoidable. And it cost them both their lives.
Thursday, 8 August 2019
Bad Habits. We all have them.
Morning! Just a little plug for my latest book! Please let me know what you think of it if you read it. I'd love to hear your comments. Good or bad! :)
Judith Croft is a respectable, middle-aged, God-fearing schoolteacher. She is also a virgin. One day, she overhears two colleagues talking about her in the staff loos. Deeply wounded by their disparaging remarks, she sets about reinventing herself but to what consequence? Her life, after meeting the equivocal yet captivating Hunter Kyloe-Pilkington, descends into debauchery, which in turn sees her questioning everything from her faith to her status as a morally upstanding pillar of the community.
A dark, brutally honest, sexually-explicit and at times hilarious tale of friendship, family, colleagues and life. Bad Habits. We all have them.
Here is an excerpt from the book.
Bad Habits is available now as an eBook on Amazon priced at £4.99 or FREE if you are Kindle Unlimited subscriber.
Judith Croft is a respectable, middle-aged, God-fearing schoolteacher. She is also a virgin. One day, she overhears two colleagues talking about her in the staff loos. Deeply wounded by their disparaging remarks, she sets about reinventing herself but to what consequence? Her life, after meeting the equivocal yet captivating Hunter Kyloe-Pilkington, descends into debauchery, which in turn sees her questioning everything from her faith to her status as a morally upstanding pillar of the community.
A dark, brutally honest, sexually-explicit and at times hilarious tale of friendship, family, colleagues and life. Bad Habits. We all have them.
Here is an excerpt from the book.
She drained her coffee cup and stood up, packed her trolley and retrieved her coat from the hook in the store cupboard.
‘I’d better get off home. I’m having dinner with my parents tonight. And my mother is attempting to cook beef cannelloni.’
‘Out of jars or from scratch?’
‘From scratch. She said it’s one of Delia’s. I assume she means Delia Smith.’
‘I thought she was dead.’
‘No. That’s Fanny Craddock.’
‘Fanny who?’
‘Never mind. I just hope it’s edible. I don’t trust my mother with tinned tomatoes at the best of times let alone mozzarella. She didn’t even know what mozzarella was until this week. She thought it was something the Pope wears. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that's a mozetta.’
‘I’d better get off home. I’m having dinner with my parents tonight. And my mother is attempting to cook beef cannelloni.’
‘Out of jars or from scratch?’
‘From scratch. She said it’s one of Delia’s. I assume she means Delia Smith.’
‘I thought she was dead.’
‘No. That’s Fanny Craddock.’
‘Fanny who?’
‘Never mind. I just hope it’s edible. I don’t trust my mother with tinned tomatoes at the best of times let alone mozzarella. She didn’t even know what mozzarella was until this week. She thought it was something the Pope wears. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that's a mozetta.’
Bad Habits is available now as an eBook on Amazon priced at £4.99 or FREE if you are Kindle Unlimited subscriber.
Sunday, 9 June 2019
Time and Tide well under way!
It seems like ages since I last posted on my blog. It is ages. Two months to be precise. But I have been writing, when I can find the time. I've had a busy few weeks with only one day free for writing during half term but I'm plodding along, writing whenever I can snatch a few minutes in between working, swimming, gymming, walking, shopping, cooking, cleaning, eating, breathing and sleeping. It's tough but I have now written the first two chapters of Time and Tide, which equates to around 10,000 words.
I've had a lot of research to do with this book, mainly about the early 1900s and the first world war. The trouble is I get easily distracted during this phase as I end up reading one article then something will grab my attention and I find myself researching that too, whether I need to or not. It has been very interesting so far. It's a good thing I love history so much!
I have tried to put myself in the position of someone who has just woken up one hundred years in the future and just how surreal that would be. I've also tried to see it from my main character's point of view; stumbling across somebody who claims to have been fighting in WW1 one minute and flat on his back on a Cornish beach the next. I need to make it as realistic as possible even though the notion of time travel seems improbable to most of us. In my book it has happened. As absurd as that may sound. It has actually happened and both Kitty and Edward have to deal with the consequences, whether they like it or not.
I love writing. It is my favourite hobby. I have self-published three books and written a further two which are currently with agents but even if I never get a bona fide publishing deal, I don't really care. I write because it is my escape. Interestingly, I wrote an article recently for a women's magazine where I talked about a recent study discovering that a creative hobby is one of the best things we can do for our mental health. And I completely agree. Writing, painting, singing, crafting, gardening, dancing... the list is endless... all make you step away from your every day life and allows you to create time for you; an hour or so of pure escapism where your sole attention is focused on what you are doing in that moment. I will publish the article on my blog soon so you can read it and hopefully take up a creative hobby!
I've had a lot of research to do with this book, mainly about the early 1900s and the first world war. The trouble is I get easily distracted during this phase as I end up reading one article then something will grab my attention and I find myself researching that too, whether I need to or not. It has been very interesting so far. It's a good thing I love history so much!
I have tried to put myself in the position of someone who has just woken up one hundred years in the future and just how surreal that would be. I've also tried to see it from my main character's point of view; stumbling across somebody who claims to have been fighting in WW1 one minute and flat on his back on a Cornish beach the next. I need to make it as realistic as possible even though the notion of time travel seems improbable to most of us. In my book it has happened. As absurd as that may sound. It has actually happened and both Kitty and Edward have to deal with the consequences, whether they like it or not.
I love writing. It is my favourite hobby. I have self-published three books and written a further two which are currently with agents but even if I never get a bona fide publishing deal, I don't really care. I write because it is my escape. Interestingly, I wrote an article recently for a women's magazine where I talked about a recent study discovering that a creative hobby is one of the best things we can do for our mental health. And I completely agree. Writing, painting, singing, crafting, gardening, dancing... the list is endless... all make you step away from your every day life and allows you to create time for you; an hour or so of pure escapism where your sole attention is focused on what you are doing in that moment. I will publish the article on my blog soon so you can read it and hopefully take up a creative hobby!
Friday, 12 April 2019
It's true. Honestly.
With the Boggins and Towpath novels both out for consideration with agents, I have nothing else to do than START WRITING ANOTHER BOOK! My sixth novel (have I really written five books?) will be called Time and Tide and is based on a mind-bending experience I had on a beach in Cornwall nearly two years ago. And no, it didn't involve any kind of enchanted fungi either. In fact I got home from my holiday and wrote down the outline of the story straight away, it affected me that much. I have only now got round to writing it.
To cut a long story short, I think we – yes other people saw him too – might have seen a time traveller. Ok, it sounds weird and you're probably sitting there laughing and thinking 'oh my god, she has totally lost the plot altogether' but it happened and I really, REALLY wish I'd taken a photo of him. Actually, I really, REALLY wish I'd asked him straight out who he was. But I didn't. I had just found a three-foot-square pitch of wet sand to sit on after driving for two hours in increasingly bad weather to find the bloody beach. You'd think it was Torremolinos, it was that jam-packed. And everywhere we looked, glum, irritated, pale faces looked back at us as if to say 'isn't Cornwall shit when it rains?' After umming and aahing whether to stay there or not or just go back to the static caravan, watch the telly and crack open the red wine and Doritos, we decided to have our picnic then leave. I wasn't in the best of moods, it has to be said.
Just as I'd got the food out and we sat there staring at a grey sea along with an equally grey sky, popping snack eggs into our mouths like they were going out of fashion, this figure appeared over by the rocks to our right. I noticed him straight away. He wasn't dressed like a tourist so he kind of stood out. There were no combat shorts, slogan t-shirts or Converse on him, that's for sure. No sirree! He was wearing what can only be described as a military uniform. In fact, he looked like he'd just stepped off the set of a World War One movie. I watched as he carefully made his way over the rocks and started to pick his way through the crowd. He looked dishevelled and tired and kept pushing his hair back off his face. He carried an old cloth backpack over one shoulder and looked utterly bemused.
I nudged my partner, then kicked my daughter and said in low tones 'bloke at two o'clock, bloke at two o'clock - looks like he's stepped out of the war'. This confused my daughter initially. She'd never heard of using the clock for positional purposes before so she started rummaging around for her phone to tell me what the time was. I kicked her again and hissed 'just look at that man Florence!' All three of us held our breath as he walked right by our feet and I remember looking at his muddy leather boots as he passed and thinking 'I've just seen a bloody time traveller'. I turned and watched as he disappeared over the dirt bank behind us. I stood up, expecting to see him sauntering across the car park beyond, but he was gone. Vanished. Into. Thin. Air.
I sat down and we all looked at each other blankly. I asked my partner and daughter if they definitely just saw 'that man', thinking maybe I was indeed losing the plot, but they both confirmed they had. All I remember saying was 'that was the weirdest thing I've ever seen'. We talked about him for a few minutes and then carried on eating our picnic in silence.
Anyway, that's my time-travelling story. Last year a similar story made the headlines and national news. A photo was uploaded to Twitter of a beach in Cornwall (honestly) in the 1940s. There in the forefront is a man with both his hands raised in front of him. Somebody commented that it looked like he was using a mobile phone and so the time travelling story exploded. I checked out the photo. I wasn't convinced at all. That man was merely rolling a cigarette. Not texting somebody.
But I saw a REAL time traveller. With my very own eyes. And that is what my new book is about. It's going to be brill.
To cut a long story short, I think we – yes other people saw him too – might have seen a time traveller. Ok, it sounds weird and you're probably sitting there laughing and thinking 'oh my god, she has totally lost the plot altogether' but it happened and I really, REALLY wish I'd taken a photo of him. Actually, I really, REALLY wish I'd asked him straight out who he was. But I didn't. I had just found a three-foot-square pitch of wet sand to sit on after driving for two hours in increasingly bad weather to find the bloody beach. You'd think it was Torremolinos, it was that jam-packed. And everywhere we looked, glum, irritated, pale faces looked back at us as if to say 'isn't Cornwall shit when it rains?' After umming and aahing whether to stay there or not or just go back to the static caravan, watch the telly and crack open the red wine and Doritos, we decided to have our picnic then leave. I wasn't in the best of moods, it has to be said.
Just as I'd got the food out and we sat there staring at a grey sea along with an equally grey sky, popping snack eggs into our mouths like they were going out of fashion, this figure appeared over by the rocks to our right. I noticed him straight away. He wasn't dressed like a tourist so he kind of stood out. There were no combat shorts, slogan t-shirts or Converse on him, that's for sure. No sirree! He was wearing what can only be described as a military uniform. In fact, he looked like he'd just stepped off the set of a World War One movie. I watched as he carefully made his way over the rocks and started to pick his way through the crowd. He looked dishevelled and tired and kept pushing his hair back off his face. He carried an old cloth backpack over one shoulder and looked utterly bemused.
I nudged my partner, then kicked my daughter and said in low tones 'bloke at two o'clock, bloke at two o'clock - looks like he's stepped out of the war'. This confused my daughter initially. She'd never heard of using the clock for positional purposes before so she started rummaging around for her phone to tell me what the time was. I kicked her again and hissed 'just look at that man Florence!' All three of us held our breath as he walked right by our feet and I remember looking at his muddy leather boots as he passed and thinking 'I've just seen a bloody time traveller'. I turned and watched as he disappeared over the dirt bank behind us. I stood up, expecting to see him sauntering across the car park beyond, but he was gone. Vanished. Into. Thin. Air.
I sat down and we all looked at each other blankly. I asked my partner and daughter if they definitely just saw 'that man', thinking maybe I was indeed losing the plot, but they both confirmed they had. All I remember saying was 'that was the weirdest thing I've ever seen'. We talked about him for a few minutes and then carried on eating our picnic in silence.
Anyway, that's my time-travelling story. Last year a similar story made the headlines and national news. A photo was uploaded to Twitter of a beach in Cornwall (honestly) in the 1940s. There in the forefront is a man with both his hands raised in front of him. Somebody commented that it looked like he was using a mobile phone and so the time travelling story exploded. I checked out the photo. I wasn't convinced at all. That man was merely rolling a cigarette. Not texting somebody.
But I saw a REAL time traveller. With my very own eyes. And that is what my new book is about. It's going to be brill.
Tuesday, 26 March 2019
The Charm
There has been a sudden resurgence in The Charm, five years after it was published! If you fancy reading it, you can find it on Amazon (as an e-book) at the below link:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Charm-Tracy-Hefferon-ebook/dp/B00KWL9HVA/ref=sr_1_fkmrnull_1?keywords=the+charm+tracy+hefferon&qid=1553619446&s=gateway&sr=8-1-fkmrnull
Or if you would like to buy a beautifully-printed, white-paper paperback, please click on the link below.
https://www.lulu.com/shop/search.ep?keyWords=The+Charm+Tracy+Hefferon&type=
Happy reading!
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