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NEW: Online Book Club<br />
more than books, books with messages<br />
J<br />
ennifer<br />
Gilmour has launched a book club with a difference.<br />
Read books that relate to domestic abuse. There will be<br />
interviews, reviews, a chance to share your thoughts as talking<br />
points and win exclusive signed copies of some of the books<br />
featured. Any questions or want to get involved?<br />
Email: JLJarratt@hotmail.com<br />
Book for November 2017<br />
Autumn Sky by Helen Pryke ????? on Amazon UK. FREE short story on Amazon:<br />
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Autumn-Sky-Helen-Pryke-ebook/dp/B01N4G80LN<br />
The day Julia’s best friend Becky gives her a magazine article to read, her whole world falls apart.<br />
After years of emotional and psychological abuse, is Julia ready to face the truth about her perfect<br />
marriage to Simon or will she continue to hide her head in the sand? Autumn Sky is a short story of<br />
7,000 words. It includes an excerpt of Walls of Silence, Helen Pryke’s debut novel. My own thoughts<br />
on Autumn Sky: “What a powerful short story that makes an impact. Helen has done a fantastic job<br />
on portraying the anxiety of a victim and I have to say I particularly valued how she has brought<br />
some of the facts of domestic abuse through a magazine article in the book.<br />
It is a challenging job to educate through fiction when you are using it as a piece of entertainment<br />
and Helen has done this exceptionally well. I wanted to read more and find out what happened<br />
further, I was kept intrigued and I related to the victim. Thank you Helen for this short piece which I<br />
am sure will help those who are in abusive relationships realise they are worth more and that it’s<br />
unacceptable behaviour. A must read”<br />
I had the opportunity to ask Helen a couple of questions:<br />
What would you like readers to gain from your short story?<br />
I hope that my short story will reach readers from all walks of life, both male and female, and help<br />
them understand what psychological abuse is like and why the victim can’t leave in most cases. I<br />
hope that people who have never been in an abusive situation will come away from my story with a<br />
deeper understanding and compassion for those who go through these things every day. Most of all, I<br />
hope that someone who is experiencing this type of abuse will read Autumn Sky and it will give them<br />
the courage, and the hope, to take the first step towards asking for help.<br />
Is domestic abuse at the core of all your writing or do you write about anything else?<br />
My books do have abuse at their core, but they are also about strong women who overcome terrible<br />
situations, despite the odds. I’ve written a full-length novel, Walls of Silence, that deals with all kinds<br />
of abuse – sexual, domestic, psychological, emotional. I wrote it just after having left an abusive<br />
relationship, and it was a way to get rid of the anger and hurt inside me. My latest novel, The Healer’s<br />
Secret, is also about abuse, and the effects it has on a family, but there are other elements interwoven<br />
into the story. Sometimes I need to take a break from writing about such traumatic subjects, and I<br />
have recently published a middle grade children’s book under a pen name, with another one due out<br />
next year.<br />
Thank you Helen for giving your time to answer those questions. Do you have thoughts on<br />
Autumn Sky? Email me by the end of November at jljarratt@hotmail.com.<br />
<strong>CCChat</strong> <strong>Magazine</strong> - Making the Invisible Visible