#9 April is Always Welcome Here
lessons and tests + baking updates + books that don't sell
👋🏼👋🏼👋🏼 Hi! If you’re new to these parts, the short version is this: I’ve worked for myself for a long time, writing 15 (!) books, largely done from home. It sent me a bit doolally, being alone that much and also working within an industry that hasn’t always treated me kindly. That’s why I started writing How to Build a Life, now delivered to thousands of readers in over 80 countries. I’d been desperate to unpick why I seemingly had a dream career but life in general felt so underwhelming. I figured out that my brain likes writing but my soul needs something else, so at the start of this year - in addition to still writing my novels - I took a job in a high school mixing teaching and pastoral work. In one million ways this makes no sense at all, apart from the fact that working out of the house with teenagers is making me really very happy. I’m almost 40, a solo parent by choice, and knowing all this means you’re all caught up. WELCOME.
Looking Backwards, Looking Forwards is my free-to-read monthly round-up. So here we go: this was my April, and what I’m looking forward to in May :)
Looking backwards…
Well, April was largely characterised by it being the Easter holidays, two weeks (and a day!) off school with relatively good weather, culminating in Easter weekend to finish us off. I found that kinda weird though?? Like we were spending the whole two weeks waiting for something. Maybe that’s because I was too excited, had expectations that were too high. There’s such A Vibe over that long weekend for me, the only four-day weekend we get. I really do love it, really do think Easter weekend is the ultimate British time off with all its daffodils and tasty treats and ‘Oh us? We’re not doing much. Just some bits around the house.’ I still enjoyed bank holiday - we had my friend staying and went out for breakfast two days in a row, found an ice cream place near our house, got to use said friend’s camera to take photos of our feet, which was, my kid says, his best bit - but this year we had our two weeks school holiday, then we got the bank holiday, and then the day after had to go right back into routine. I walked around school last Tuesday saying, ‘I’ve forgotten how to do my job.’ I also walked around school saying, ‘But we break up again in four weeks and four days… is it really worth remembering?’
(Lol, yes! Of course it is! I’m still subbing, still looking after a form of 12- and 13-year olds, still finding that my brain is quieter in those corridors and classrooms than anywhere else, that I feel useful even if I have forgotten to take the register and the front desk has to call to remind me.)
I made two mistakes in the break, and that was 1) I let my son bunk up with me in bed, and I didn’t realise until he went back to his own just how much that was impacting my sleep quality, womp, and 2) in week one I did a gym class and went so hard that… I then couldn’t walk for four days. I was trying out a new place, because the schedule at my old gym doesn’t work with my new job, and… well. You know that saying, sometimes the test comes first and the lesson comes after? That was me. The test was, ‘Can Laura put her ego aside and go slowly in this gym induction, rather than being concerned about proving her abilities and therefore her “right” to be here?’ And the answer was, unfortunately for me, no I cannot, and the lesson at the end of it was babe, nobody gives a shit about you, you haven’t worked out in 4 months, you’ll need a minute to get back into it, BE A BEGINNER. A boy who broke my heart once taught me that. Be a beginner. Like, if in doubt, be humble, listen, pay attention and don’t be afraid to be seen trying. Great advice from a shit guy!! 🤡
In other news, I found out my entire book back-catalog is free to listen to on Spotify. My kid gets to DJ in the car (good job I like the Moana soundtrack!!) and on the way back from a trip somehow saw I’d been searching for my own books in order to take these screenshots. He’s always said words to the effect of, Mummy, I can’t believe you’re an author! and I’m so lucky to know an author! and Mummy, are you famous? But what was so nice was that he asked to listen to one, and I said well, you know they use actors to do these but if you pick The Wrong Suitcase you might recognise the voice… His face! When he realised it was me! You do all these voices very well, mummy, he said, genuinely impressed at my neutral RP, my Italian, Canadian, and my Yorkshire. I kept thinking he’d ask to put his own playlist on but he didn’t, we listened to me, describing an authentic Tuscan castle and the set-up for an elaborate wedding, the whole way home, and it made me proud to have made him proud. Also, we only got to chapter 3 - way before any sex happens. Thank God. Go and listen to something if you like!
I’m sure you’ve been on the edge of your seat wondering if I will address how my Nigella Olive Oil Chocolate Cake turned out, the one I mentioned I was going to be making in my monthly update last time. The answer is, good!! My kid said it was as tasty as the one in IKEA, and of course there is no higher compliment. I used ground almonds as the recipe suggests, because I had some in the baking box, but for me, I probably should have used flour. The consistency of the cake was good - once again I will shout out how I don’t think it is possible to do a Nigella cake wrong, she writes those recipes with such care and detail - but the aftertaste of the almond? For some people, that’s the vibe, for me… no. But onwards! We also made an Easter Tray bake in the holidays, and it was disgusting in the best possible way. Rice Krispies, golden syrup, crushed mini eggs, marshmallows, melted chocolate, and then more eggs and chocolate on top. Tray bakes are lethal for me. More than cake, more than pastries, if there’s a tray bake in the fridge I will go to that fridge every fifteen minutes to slice off a corner, until at the end of several of those fifteen minutes there is nothing left. The whole thing was gone in a day, and I know that treats are treats and who cares but truly, you guys, it was pure sugar. I measured out those ingredients, I know just how much 400g of chocolate is, what exactly 200g of golden syrup looks like. And put it this way: you couldn’t eat that much sugar without it being combined this way, a bit like Ryan Gosling melting tubs of Haagan Das to drink in order to gain weight for The Lovely Bones (he was fired from the role for turning up to set overweight, his idea about the character at odds with the very surprised director’s). We’re all grown-ups here, we all know two things can be true at once, and my two truths r.e. the easter tray bake are this: I regret nothing, and I will not tray bake again until next Easter. I still dream of it though.
Also a thing that happened: my friend Anna wrote about M&S food, an article I read at 8am. By 9am I was in the car with a “sod it” budget in mind, with my mother, who also engaged in the game with admirable gusto. Is there any other place that can fulfil our sense of snacking than M&S food? I got a cheese platter, a tart au citron for Easter Sunday, tulips, chocolate orange rounds (more chocolate than biscuit), the most sensational lemon fool (should have got more than one) as well as some of those TRIP CBD drinks I know you can get everywhere but for some reason M&S was where I took the plunge. I enjoyed them! It’s nice to have what I think of as an “exhale drink” that isn’t either caffeine or alcohol. I also finally did a big wardrobe clear-out. Anything that doesn’t fit either me or my son anymore I’ve been lobbing into a cupboard with vague suggestions of eventually taking it all to the charity shop. As you know, I finally popped my VINTED cherry this year because losing weight can be expensive if you try and acquire lots of new clothes. Also, wasteful if you’re not sure who you want to dress as any more? I enjoy using VINTED as permission to experiment with what I might like my style to be moving forward. Anyway. A colleague said she’d made ONE THOUSAND POUNDS on Vinted, and whilst I don’t have that much stuff to flog (!!), it has been on my mind to give it a whirl. Well!! What a trip! Bishes were snapping my hand off! On Easter Sunday I finally did my first upload, had my little production line of coat-hanger on the door for photographs, pile of clothes to snap, pile of clothes that have been snapped, diligently uploading each piece. I guess for the same reason I was the girlies were all online and browsing: it was a Sunday evening, the sun was going down and after Easter you start thinking about clothes for the summer, etc. The adrenaline rush when I got that first sale, I tell ya - not even an Easter tray bake could match it. I’ve been super methodical about uploading in batches, washing everything in batches, and then mailing in batches. I’ve made £120 so far, which if I keep within the VINTED economy (Vintonomy??) basically makes me a millionaire. I try not to spend over a tenner on any one thing, so that’s more than enough short-sleeved linen shirts to see me through.
(I feel like your grandmother’s grandmother asking if you’ve heard about this thing called “being online” writing about Vinted. I’m last person in England to get involved. I appreciate this. Better late than never!! But yes, for the avoidance of doubt, you were all right and Vinted is amazing.)
Looking forwards…
And so to May, which is wild. One third of the year has zoomed by already! May is my birthday month, although I currently have no desire to do anything special or of note. I don’t mean that in a sad way, it’s just it will fall on a Thursday and Thursday is the day my kid stays with his grandparents until 6pm so I can go to a workout class after work whilst knowing he’s getting fed and watered and loved and I don’t wanna change that up on my birthday? Because it’s the only night of the week I get to do it?? I’d like my kid to pull out a gift from under his bed in the morning, and to light a candle in perhaps an M&S apricot danish for breakfast, and that be that. I’ve asked my parents to buy me a couple of plants for the garden because I forgot to mention!!! I’ve been doing some gardening!!! We’re in a new build so literally just have a patch of grass. It’s going to take a bit to get it lush and lovely, but my gift request is: can you pot up some plants and deliver them to my garden whilst I’m out and then I come home and it’s all done? Kind of cheeky, but at least it’s honest. I would love to say it was my kid and I who planted a tree this Easter, but it wasn’t, it was my dad, because it turns out that digging holes for trees is really hard. But we have a tree now - and a bird feeder, and some lillies and bamboo and other things I don’t know the name of. I have more to say about all this. Stay tuned.
My second teen book is out on May 8th, Taylor Blake Seizes the Day. I still maintain the first one, Taylor Blake is a Legend, is the most rounded, well-executed plot I have ever written, of all my books, and I credit the editor of that book with so much - she really pushed me. There’s an interview with me here, on the Bloomsbury website, all about it. There’s no events for TAYLOR BLAKE or anything like that. She didn’t sell! Didn’t make so much of a peep in the teen book world. This is, of course, an absolutely travesty, and for me first-hand proof that sometimes it doesn’t matter how good a book is, for whatever reason it just doesn’t find its moment. But Taylor matters to me, and made me a better writer, and I treasure that. Some of our mightiest wins go unseen, and so we must hold them all the closer. That’s how I feel, anyway. It would have been nice to have more people meet Taylor, though. I think she’s marvellous.
Okay, that’s all from me for now. I hope your Easter was lovely, and the promise of May feels cheering and full of possibility.
Laura x
Hi Laura - would you be able to share your Vinted profile? Would love to see some of the clothes you’re selling 😊 x