I used to hate jigsaw puzzles… I could say – “Until I discovered Smirnoff” – but that would date me and anyone who remembers the ad campaign (and the awful jokes*) and baffle anyone who wasn’t in Britain in the nineteen seventies – so I won’t. Suffice to say, I loathed jigsaw puzzles as a kid and got into big trouble with my parents one year when, at the children’s Christmas party given by my Dad’s firm, Santa pulled a jigsaw puzzle out of his sack as my Christmas gift – and I made a face and said I didn’t want it. I think I got a smack back at home. In those days, smacking vigorously and often was de rigueur (and rigorous) in most households.

Jigsaws – yes. Well, time to own up that ‘Jigsaw’ has become an oft used word in my current household (where, thankfully, smacking is confined to the lips over a glass of Rioja). ‘Oft used word’ because of the project, JIGSAW ISLAND, which is my second novel after the publication of TERRIBLE WITH RAISINS in 2013.

In April of last year, I attended an Arvon course on editing a novel and met Rachael Kerr from Unbound publishing. Rachael liked the synopsis of the first draft of my novel and asked to read it. As a result of which, it’s up there on the Unbound Website being crowdfunded. Hoping to publish in late July. It is daunting, embarrassing, challenging and heart-stoppingly scary persuading people to buy an advance copy of an unpublished book. But I have lost all shame, become a marketeer, and in under three weeks, it’s at 24%. So not doing too badly…

And why is it called JIGSAW ISLAND? Well, the major part of the novel is set on the island of Leros which looks like this:

LEROS

The sunset islet heading up my website is Aghia Kyriaki in Pandeli Bay – which is about halfway up on the right of the map. Needless to say, Leros is somewhere that holds a very special place in my heart, despite its shape.

To find out more about the novel – see the synopsis, an excerpt and maybe have a laugh at my video – please go to the Unbound JIGSAW ISLAND page HERE.

Pledge if you will (and I’d be delighted if you did) – and whether or not you do, perhaps you’d click on the Share button at the top right of the page? Parakolo? Every little helps.

Efharisto poli.

* Can’t finish without a Smirnoff joke:
“I thought innuendo was an Italian suppository until I discovered Smirnoff.”
(There were definitely better – but inevitably much filthier ones.)