Missing Pieces by Laura Pearson

What if the one thing that kept you together was breaking you apart?

All Linda wants to do is sleep. She won’t look at her husband. She can’t stand her daughter. And she doesn’t want to have this baby. Having this baby means moving on, and she just wants to go back to before. Before their family was torn apart, before the blame was placed.

Alienated by their own guilt and struggling to cope, the Sadler family unravels. They grow up, grow apart, never talking about their terrible secret.

That is until Linda's daughter finds out she’s pregnant. Before Bea brings another Sadler into the world, she needs to know what happened twenty-five years ago. What did they keep from her? What happened that couldn’t be fixed?

A devastating mistake, a lifetime of consequences. How can you repair something broken if pieces are missing?

Laura Pearson has very kindly written a guest post for me on writing tips! I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Guest Post:
Writing tips

I feel like a bit of a fraud writing a blog post with this title, even as my first novel is being published and my second one is going through edits. The truth is, I never really know what it is I’ve done that’s worked, and why other things haven’t. It’s so hard to be critical of your own work, when you’ve spent weeks and months and possibly years working on it and you cannot possibly be objective about it. Having said all that, I’ve been doing this (or trying to) for a really long time, and along the way I’ve picked up a few tips that I’d love to share with you. They’re not revolutionary, but they are simple and true (as far as I’m concerned).

1. Write as often as you can

I don’t really like it when people say you have to write every day. Writing every day is ideal but it’s not always practical. Writers have jobs and they’re parents and they have responsibilities and they can’t always prioritise writing over these things, especially when there’s no guarantee that they’ll ever be paid for their writing work. So if you have to skip a few days because work is insane or the kids are ill, don’t beat yourself up about it. Just get back to it when you can, and pick up where you left off.

2. Read as much as possible

We all know that reading is crucial for writers, right? Reading great writers is the best masterclass in writing you’ll ever get, in my opinion. And forget any literary snobbery you’ve come across in the past. Read whatever you want to read. Read the books you think your book might sit alongside in the market; read the classics; read the books you loved as a kid. Learn from books you think don’t work, and learn from those you can’t put down. And then channel it all into your own writing.

3. Help other writers to help yourself

I’ve only really discovered the writing community on Twitter fairly recently, and it’s wonderful. There are so many kind readers and writers out there who want you to succeed. So whether you’re looking for competitions to enter, hoping to connect with other writers for feedback or trying to find your way through the tricky publishing process, the best way to help yourself is to help others and then let them help you right back. I promise you, those people are there, ready and waiting. Join them.