Stuff a Stocking

How's your Christmas prepping going? Me? I've got a few bits of food in the store cupboard but as for presents...not even started.

To be honest, I'm a wild procrastinator and I always leave things to the last minute.

But you...you don't have to because I'm here to remind you that you can now buy HIGH SPIRITS across loads of different platforms for your Kindle or other ebook devices. Find out how Alec, Jean and Pol are faring in the afterlife, trapped inside Partridge Hall

Fancy reading a heartwarming tale of rediscovering old friendships and putting the past to rest? The grab yourself a copy of SINCE YOU'VE BEEN GONE and find out how Hal finally let's go of his old flame Abigail and looks to the future and not the past.

Or maybe you like your stories in bite-size chunks, then why not check out TALES FOR THE FIRESIDE, five stories of love and friendship. Perfect for snuggling up on the sofa with.

You can link through to all the sellers by visiting my website LisaDyerAuthor.com

Meet my main characters - Michael Bayliss - Since You've Been Gone

What should we know about him?

Michael Bayliss, vet, Yorkshire man, legend.

On the surface, he seems a pretty uncomplicated person. He gets on with life, living in a flat above the practice and doesn't really have a long-term plan. This easy-going nature can put him at odds with people because they think he's easy to read, likes a bit of banter and therefore unable to be hurt but he is a vulnerable as the rest of us.

Michael is the product of a broken home, his mum having run off with the local bingo caller. It has given him a wary perspective on relationships but that doesn't stop him having them or having opinions on Hal's. It's the commitment he has the problem with.

What is the main conflict?

For Michael it is keeping Hal grounded in reality. He knows that his friend has an emotional block but all the while it is kept on a low level, he's not bothered what it is. When Hal's life is thrown into confusion, Michael must be the anchor but also, he must have one eye on what the impact of going home might have on his life and the practice his shares with Hal.

What is the personal goal of the character?

For Michael it is getting through life as peacefully as possible. He's a grafter but with a slacker mentality. Not for him the mortgage and the kids. He doesn't want convention and, although he is wary of relationships because they seem to go to fast for him, he is really looking for someone just like him; someone a little unconventional.

Since You've Been Gone is available exclusively on Amazon across all markets for download onto your Kindle and Kindle apps and Kindle Unlimited for £3.99.Paperback is available for £6.99

Meet my main character - Abigail Markham - Since You've Been Gone

What should we know about her?

Abigail Markham is a Dover girl through and through. Born and raised in the Tower Hamlets, she still lives in a tiny terraced house within a stone’s throw of her childhood home. Abigail is a fighter. She is also complex. She didn’t have the best start in her life and her prospects were patchy, to say the least but she has a good heart and is a strong woman. She married young and bore her first child in her late teens. The marriage produced one more child before it fell apart. She works at the local hairdressers and life is tough but she has her friends and her sister and they keep her going even though money is short.

What is the main conflict?

The main conflict for Abigail is reconciling herself with her past decisions. She has a secret and she has had to live with the consequences of the path she chose. Some would say she did it for the best of reasons and others might think that maybe she was crying out for attention but, the deed was done and she got on with it. There is a part of her that is angry, even though the decision was hers and hers alone, she feels let down. Only Abigail can reconcile herself to her decision and, although she doesn’t tacitly blame Hal, she feels anger towards him. Once she looks at herself and her own part in how her life turned out, she will be much more at peace.

What is the personal goal of the character?

Finding peace with her past. She is happy that Hal never came home because she doesn’t have to expose herself to having to tell the truth but she also suffers from an acute, unspoken sense of abandonment by him. It’s kind of given her a bit of a martyr complex – ‘look at me, look what I did without your help’. Once it all comes out, then she can move forward but she has to be prepared for it all to come out.

Since You've Been Gone through Amazon across all markets for download onto your Kindle or Kindle apps and Kindle Unlimited for £2.99. Paperback is available for £6.99

Meet my main character - Hal Bartlett - Since You've Been Gone

What is the name of your character?

Meet Hal Bartlett, sometime resident of Dover, Kent, now living in rural Oxfordshire with a veterinarian practice, a very opinionated business partner and a lot of marital problems.

When and where is the story set?

Hal Bartlett is the main character in Since You've Been Gone which is set fifteen years in the past. The story begins in Oxfordshire as Hal wrestles with the increasing deterioration in his relationship with his wife, Julienne. It's the eve of Julienne's spoilt younger sister's high-end wedding and Hal knows he's out of his depth. After a bitter row, Hal takes the only option open to him...he returns to the hometown and friends he abandoned years before and begins his journey to revisit his past and lay some old demons to rest.

What should we know about him?

Hal is a good man, a bit of a wimp but essentially a good bloke. His life is a bit messy, no neat edges. He left his hometown of Dover in the September of 1983 without ever realising how life expanding university would be.

Slowly, so slowly even he didn’t notice it happening, Hal shed his old life, old friends who never left the town into which they were born and, sadly, he shed his parents.

He didn't do any of this because he was denying his past...he did it because Hal is a man on the run, from his emotional past and in particular one person, Abigail Markham. She was 'the one'. The one that he loved first and last. The one that broke his heart. The one that cut him loose. His withdrawal from his old life and absorption into his new allowed him distance and an excuse never to go back and find out exactly what happened between them.

What is the main conflict?

Hal married out of his league and he knew it. His wife’s family have money, have never been on the type of rough council estate Hal grew up on let alone been in a council house and they glossed over Hal’s working-class roots and remade him in their image and Hal, for a quiet life, goes along with it. He’s an adaptor but never comfortable in his new role and always guilty of what he’s done to his parents in order to keep the charmed life he now has. Hal needs to man up and get out but he’s loyal and steady and really he’s looking for an excuse.

Hal is also wrestling with his past and is too scared to confront it, to move on and wipe his emotional slate clean. Forces outside of his control, however, end up making the choice for him and he goes back...back to the hometown he left as a teenager and back to the family and friends he's distanced himself from in order to heal his own heart. He's about to get a big wake up call and his life will never be the same again.

What is the personal goal of the character?

In the beginning Hal is drifting. He knows in his heart of heart he's in the wrong place and with the wrong person but he's also trying to be a 'good bloke'Like most people, circumstances drive him not the other way around and so he finds himself constantly fighting the tide to get upstream. What he really needs is a good old dose of 'closure'. To lay his past to rest so that he can move on with a new heart. He sort of understands this but is at a loss on how to act upon it without causing the hurt he some much desires to avoid. Hal wants to be at peace with himself.

Since You've Been Gone is available exclusively on Amazon across all markets to download onto your Kindle or Kindle apps and Kindle Unlimited for £2.99.Paperback is available through Amazon for £6.99