debut – Josephine Moon

Reading By the Moon Book Club is back again in February with The Funny Thing About Norman Foreman by debut author Julietta Henderson.

Click this link to register.

The blurb reads…

Norman and Jax are a legendary comedy duo in the making, with a five-year plan to perform at the Edinburgh Fringe by the time they’re fifteen. But then Jax dies before they even turn twelve.

Norman’s mum Sadie knows she won’t win Mother of the Year anytime soon, and she really doesn’t know, or care, who Norman’s father is. But her heart is broken when she discovers her grieving son’s revised plan: ‘Find Dad’ and ‘Get to the Edinburgh Fringe’.

If meeting his dad and performing at the Festival are the two things that will help Norman through this devastating time, then Sadie is going to make them happen.

So mother and son set off from Cornwall, with their friend Leonard in his vintage Austin Maxi, on a pilgrimage to Edinburgh – to honour Jax and to track down a few maybe-fathers on the way . . .

I hope you can join us!

Life’s a funny thing. This week started out difficult for several reasons and then got really tough, with me having to make the heartbreaking decision to euthanase my cat Jasmine, who was 18 years old, and had been with me since a week before I turned 20. That’s almost half my life. Her loss is very much the end of an era.

She’d been with me from university through relationships, house moves, marriage, miscarriage, a baby, and finally my dream of becoming a career author. And now she’s gone.

And then today, a fellow author alerted me to the Allen & Unwin website. My debut novel, which Jasmine helped me write by sitting in my lap and drooling on my pants till I had to lay tissues down while she purred, has just ranked no. 1 in their Top 10 Bestsellers.

Proud? Yep. In awe? Yep. Grateful? Hell yeah. Sad? Yes, sad too.

It amazes me that really sad and really happy things can happen at the same time. It amazes me that, on my last day with Jasmine, I could lie in bed with her, grieving, and be hungry for goodness sake. Hungry! Like, how could my body just keep going on doing its thing when this really important and special part of my life was ending?

I have no words of wisdom here to share, just an observation that really awesome things and really sad things don’t always happen at neatly scheduled times. Life just keeps dishing stuff up and sometimes it’s brilliant and sometimes it sucks. But I guess there’s always hope that more good stuff is on its way.

I’m incredibly grateful to everyone who has been buying and reading The Tea Chest. Thank you.

And to you, my dear Jasmine, thanks for the company on this crazy journey of life.

Jasmine in healthier days, off to greet my horse Lincoln