Lots of links

I was just reading the Friday Novel Racers’ Coffee blog, brought to us this week by BE Sanderson and I’ve ground to a halt before making my own comment.

The reason I stopped is to come here and write about something that’s been in my head for a week or more. I suddenly realised that I haven’t done it and while I know others have posted about it and you’ll already have seen it, I want to add my bit too.

If you look left to my sidebar, you’ll see a rather striking book jacket for Caroline Smailes’ ebook, Disraeli Avenue, which you can download here. The book jacket has been made into a widget by the clever and talented Stray (who I know through a non cyber life too). You should all know by now that Disraeli Avenue tells back stories about the folk we met through Jude in Caroline’s debut novel, In Search of Adam. It’s a tough subject, exquisitely told.

Caroline is asking where possible we make a donation to One in Four, a charity that helps people who have experienced sexual abuse. Research shows that one in four children experiences sexual abuse before the age of 18. Any child being abused is too many, but that’s a horrible number to contemplate. What that makes me feel as a mother, aunt, godless parent for the children around me, is terror and fury.

If you want you can add your own secret to the widgety thing that Stray made – I’ve done it. I keep looking at that widget; I’ve sat looking at for quite some time, with the secrets rotating past… And it makes me realise that even without any incidence of abuse, we humans are fragile creatures. We’re full of anxiety, vulnerability and fear. We’re happy too, which is great, but we don’t always feel we deserve it.

So if you’re in a position to donate, please do. And don’t forget to download Caroline’s ebook Disraeli Avenue, too.