From supernatural tales of intrigue to a curious modern romance, a thoroughly British relationship and a classic fairytale all twisted up, Bedtime Stories is a collection of short stories designed to be read one at a time, at bedtime. Let us wish you goodnight with gay romances that are sure to leave you ready for a night of sweet, lingering dreams.

My story is called Frangipani Kisses and it’s about John, who lives in Canvey Island, Essex, baking his way to happiness as he works in a charity shop since he lost his job in accounts doing something or other to do with outsourcing and units.

How did it all start?

Anna Martin grabbed me at the UK Meet 2013 in Manchester and asked if I wanted to be part of an anthology of bedtime stories/ re-imaginings of fairy tales. I did what I always do with writing-related things, I said yes.

What was the inspiration for this story?

In winter 2013 the BF and I drove in my little impractical but fun Mazda MX5 to Canvey Island. We were working our way around the Essex coast. The BF was photographing its windswept industrial landscape and I was driving and walking and observing alongside him. We spent a cold Saturday in Canvey Island – a remote and slightly down at the heel coastal town in Essex, perusing the charity shops, walking along the beach and eating in an art deco cafe on the seafront. We walked into one of the charity shops into the middle of a group of retired, white haired women talking about who was doing the tea, and who wanted what. I listened intently as I pretended to flick through the nick knacks and books. As we left I made a quick note of what they’d said as it had made me smile.

I’ve watched every series of The Great British Bake Off and there’s been a few gay men in the competition, and a couple who’ve won it, including John Whaite. One of the themes of the contestants is they usually bake for pleasure, and only when they get into the competition do they realise how good they really are.

I spoke to a friend just before Christmas 2012 about the change he and his boyfriend had noticed moving from Southend in Essex to a flat in The Barbican in London.

I have experience of my granddad passing away in 2007, and his reaction to meeting my BF.

All of these separate incidents and ideas went into Frangipani Kisses.

The theme for the anthology was bedtime stories and modern interpretations of fairy tales, so I thought it would be interesting to see if I could turn a difficult situation and turn it into a fairy tale outcome.  

Tigger the cat

In May 2014 one of our cats, Tigger was hit by a car and after a lot of attempts to fix him, died. Originally John’s pet in Frangipani Kissses was called Tiger, but after Tigger had passed away, I knew I wanted to put more of our cat into the story. I changed the name of the cat, and added some little things Tigger used to do. So in a little way Tigger lives on in my story.

Why older people?

I’ve always found older people endlessly interesting. I find older people easier to talk to than children. I’m often struggling for things to talk about with children, but with older people for me, the conversation just flows. I started working in a nursing home in the New Forest when I was fifteen, at first as a domestic, then as a care assistant for two years. I then spent the three years studying at university working in elderly care wards as a health care assistant at various hospitals in Hampshire and London, always trying to make the time to talk to the older patients, to hear about their lives.

I knew one grandparent – granddad Livings (Mum’s dad) and always enjoyed spending time with him. I was very honoured to find his account of what he did in world war two that he’d written for me. He hadn’t even told his wife or children about any of it. He worked as a nursing auxiliary – what we’d call a healthcare assistant nowadays – in field surgical units just behind the front.

I’ve also been fortunate enough to have helped look after my grandma’s sister – Great Auntie - during the last five years of her life. Among the social care reviews and the broken washing machines, I made time to talk to Great Auntie about her earlier life, during the war, growing up during the nineteen forties, memories of her sister (my grandma I never saw). I was endlessly surprised at her sense of humour and fun. I enjoyed talking to her friends at her wake about their early retirement together, sequence dancing, UK holidays together.

So after over-hearing the staff at the charity shop in Canvey Island it seemed obvious I needed some interesting older characters in John’s story. 

If you want to read an unedited extract of Frangipani Kisses it's on my website.

If you'd like to buy the anthology it's available on the Wilde City Press website, Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk

I hope you enjoy the anthology and my story within it!

Until next time,

Liam Livings xx

I had a lovely 4 of 4 star review for Frangipani Kisses from multitaskingmomma blog.

I've copied the review and interview below as well:

Review
FRANGIPANI KISSES by Liam Livings

My Rating: 4 of 4 Stars
(Based on the Short&Light Read Category)

After John loses his accounting job in an outsourcing logistics company, the novelty of not having to get up early every day soon wore off. Looking for work was an exercise in futility. To feel busy, he found himself volunteering in a cancer charity shop and soon found friends he could spend time with and who loved to eat his cakes.  Keith, his long time partner and best friend, continued to be supportive and John loved him for it. But John needed to feel useful. He needed to earn. When the charity shop was lined up for closing, it was Keith who steered him to the right direction: use his accountancy and baking skills to advantage.

This is an inspiring story to read. It is not a formulaic romance, neither is it erotica. It is a story of how two gay men, an established couple, could rely on the other and be the support each one needs. This is the story of how John finally found himself and got the happily ever after for both his relationship and his career. All he needed to do was find that right path to take him there.
As per the style of Livings, Frangipani focuses on the day to day lives of characters who just happened to be gay, dusted with the element of romance. There is a whole lot of humor going on especially with the author playing around with some of the techie terms used by the older characters in reference to multi media: Ipaps. It is my new favorite word :D He talks about life and how it can be dealt with should it go against all expectations. He talks about friendships and how it can be solidified over a cup of tea and a serving of cake and macaroons. What really got me hooked was the ease of the flow of the story and how it did make me feel good and relaxed enough to sleep.

If I have to be disappointed over one thing, it would be because no recipes were shared, especially for the lemon drizzle sandwich cake. Otherwise, this is a sweet, dreamy story meant to be read while in bed. It is relaxing, inspiring and tempting to the senses.

 In short, this is a bedtime story, just as promised.


Author Interview
Note from multitaskingmomma: I have only just started reading Liam Livings' works but was immediately taken by his style, his British humor, and impression that his stories are real stories about real people, even if I knew they are fictional. When he thankfully agreed to be interviewed, I knew I had to take the chance and ask him about his work, his thoughts on romance, his baking, and his car. Yes, that lovely, sporty car.

m: One of the ‘facts’ in your About page is that you enjoy baking. In Frangipani Kisses, your main character is someone who loves to bake and is very good at it, but he never thought to make a living from it. The descriptions of his cakes and ices were quite delicious. How much of you is John and how much of the cakes mentioned are your cakes you actually serve?

LL: The more I’ve written the more I realise that all my main characters are different parts of me. John from Frangipani Kisses is the baking part of me, he’s the getting on well with older people part of me, he’s the living in a long term relationship with another man part of me. I’ve served pretty much all the cakes mentioned in Frangipani Kisses, except macaroons – even I don’t have enough time for that much faffing about. 

m: In Best Friends Perfect, you made the story flow through your characters’ conversations and it was very unique. Yet, in Frangipani, it was a totally different style. You narrated the story and yet you still sounded like you. How was writing Frangipani different from writing Best Friends?

LL: Best Friends Perfect was the first thing I ever wrote with a view to it being published. It’s probably the most autobiographical of everything I’ve written. Pulp front man, Jarvis Cocker, when asked if Disco 2000 was true said, ‘the only bit that isn’t true is the woodchip wallpaper.’ Best Friends Perfect is my Disco 2000. It is fiction, but it draws more heavily from my real life. By the time I wrote Frangipani Kisses I’d written another two novels and had met other authors, been to a few writers conferences, and had started editing Best Friends Perfect Book One with my publisher. Frangipani Kisses was the first short story I’d written, which was a different exercise in introducing characters and just getting right into the story straight away. 

m: What genre would you consider your books to be?

LL: Best Friends Perfect is a gay coming of age story with lots of humour and camp – gay fiction I suppose if I had to put it in a box. Frangipani Kisses is more romantic as it has John’s relationship with Keith as an integral way in which John copes with the changes in his life. And Then That Happened is romance, but not a traditional sense of man meets man, men fall in love and they live happily ever after. It’s about two men who meet, both in relationships that aren’t right, and their friendship causes them to re-evaluate everything in their lives. Of course it’s got a happily ever after – I love a HEA. 

m: After reading two of your works, I thought that you were not really a romance writer but rather a storyteller. How would you like to be known or remembered? Why?

LL: I think you’d be right to conclude that after reading Best Friends Perfect Book One and Frangipani Kisses to a lesser extent. I think as I’ve become more involved in the romance writing *world* - going to the Romantic Novelist’s Association (RNA) conference and local chapter meetings – I’ve realised romance is a very broad sweep. All my stories have a romantic element in them – they aren’t about car chases, murders or bank heists – they all have the relationships of gay men at their hearts. I’d like to be known as an author who writes British stories with heart, with believable characters, with humour, a good bit of camp and with romance. 

m: You talk about life and men in the gay community but not so much the romances. I look at your blog and you have And Then That Happened which is coming out September. What are we to expect from this work that would differentiate it from Best Friends and Frangipani?

LL: I suppose it depends on your definition of romances. My stories have love, relationships and romance in them. I don’t write explicit sex scenes as I don’t like to read them either – you won’t find any tops or a bottoms, or anything fluttering or having its entrance demanded in my books. There’s nothing wrong with any of that, but I don’t write it. I don’t read what are defined as ‘category romance’ books – I prefer to read ‘chick lit’ focusing on the characters, with an element of romance. I suppose I write books like that, with gay main characters. The only time I’d write something like a scene in a romantic film would be to point out that didn’t happen to the character as they weren’t living in a romcom – back to the humour again. 
One of the main themes in Best Friends Perfect is Kieran trying to find his Prince Charming. He just has to kiss a few frogs before he finds his prince. I think my stories are more every day, you’re more likely to find an accountant and a nurse than an astronaut or a cowboy. Not that there’s anything wrong with books with astronauts or cowboys, I just don’t write them.  
And Then That Happened is completely different from Best Friends Perfect – it’s about a man in a long term relationship who’s been out for a long time. It’s about what happens when a long term relationship isn’t quite what you expected it to be. It’s about trying to make sense of a romantic ideal of long term love, against the reality you’re faced with. Both stories have strong themes of friendship – I’m all about my friends, so this makes sense I suppose! 

m: You said that you just write how you talk in one of our conversations. Do you go straight to the keyboard and imagine up a conversation and you just write down everything that happens in your imagination or do you do the usual outlines that other authors resort to? 

LL: I am a planner. I even plan a day of relaxing, but that’s not for now. I plan everything in my life and writing is no different. Having written a few stories now, I think I’ve refined what my process is *mops brow dramatically*. Once I’ve got an idea, I hand write character biographies on a few bits of paper. I then plan the story on post it notes stuck onto more paper. The post it notes can be anything from ‘They have a dirty weekend in Margate’ to notes on what the characters will say. I write with the post it plan to one side of my laptop and the character biographies to the other. I add new things I make up/find out about the characters as I go along. I try to write a first draft as quickly as possible and can do 2000 words an hour if I’ve planned, have no Internet and am enthusiastic. I like to write a first draft without leaving more than a couple of days between adding words to the story. I write right through to the end, leave it a month or so, then revise, before sending to my lovely beta readers, more revisions, then it’s submitted. 

m: How do you relax when you are not writing? Is it like John in Frangipani who takes to the oven?

LL: I enjoy reading, watching rom com films and TV series (I’m working through Gilmore Girls box set for the first time). I love cars, and go to a variety of classic car shows around the country. I like to drive in my show-pony car, my Mazda MX 5 through the country lanes near where we live. I like to keep up with friends and family – hosting dinners and lunches at the weekend or visiting them around the country. At the moment we’re taking bookings from October – weekends fill up quickly!  

As for the car, here is Liam with Muriel (2002 Mk 2.5 in Crystal Mika Blue). Isn't she lovely? :D

Back to Liam now:

If you want to read an unedited extract of Frangipani Kisses it's on my website.

If you'd like to buy the anthology it's availabale on the Wilde City Press website, Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk

I hope you enjoy the anthology and my story within it!

Liam Livings xx

This is the second of my posts about why I lost a bit of my sparkle in June. Here's the first part. I wasn’t able to write or talk about it then, but now time has passed, I can share what happened. Since I’m an author I’ve done it in the form of a story.

*Opens page of book*

August 2014

Liam and his mum went to the crematorium’s garden of remembrance to bury her ashes. The man from the crematorium had scattered pink rose petals at the bottom of the small hole in the ground.  Liam and his mum scattered half the ashes each into the hole and topped them with the remaining rose petals. Liam hugged his mum and said they’d done a good job looking after Great Auntie together over the years. Liam’s mum nodded and wiped her eyes with a tissue.

Then

Since the mid nineties Liam’s mum helped run Great Auntie’s life for her, organising for home care, installing a downstairs bathroom, repairing her house, organising for her to go twice weekly to a day centre, having her for Christmas in her house in the New Forest, or booking her a place at a church dinner.

Since 2008 Liam started to help his mum look after Great Auntie, since the suburban house they moved to was fifteen minutes from hers. Great Auntie had no children, and both Liam’s grandmas had died before he was born, so Great Auntie, his maternal grandma’s sister, was the nearest he had to a grandma. Liam visited Great Auntie every week to pick up the things that fell in the gaps between different agencies’ responsibilities:

• Co-ordinated her care with the home care agency – he was happy to ‘be the bad guy’ as his Mum described it, because Great Auntie would never complain herself
• washed her hair when she stopped going to the day centre where it had been washed. At first he walked her to the kitchen sink and then outside in the sun for it to dry while he mowed her lawn
• cleaned and trimmed her nails and put hand cream on them
• attended social care reviews to discuss how to ensure she remain in her own home safely
• argued with the local pharmacy when their ‘policy’ changed so they couldn’t deliver Great Auntie’s medication to the house using a key safe so someone had to be there to take delivery. He asked all Great Auntie’s neighbours if they could take delivery once a month and no one called him back. He asked if the pharmacy could deliver to his home, but that was too far from their catchment area. He asked if the prescription could be sent to a pharmacy near him which he could then collect, but that was outside the GP’s catchment area. Eventually he agreed that the care agency would collect the medication once a month while in the town doing Great Auntie’s shopping
• serviced or replaced her appliances – who can forget the Great Auntie’s new washing machine saga of March 2014?
• had Freeview installed so she could watch TV after the analogue aerial was disconnected
• made flat pack clothes rails – he laughed because he doesn’t even do that sort of thing in his house
• visited her every Christmas Day since 2008
• Celebrated her birthdays with cards, chocolates and photos. She asked if ‘all these flowers and cards’ were for her on her 90th birthday
• Ate fish and chips with her – plaice was her favourite and had to be requested from the chippie each time. He used to call the fish and chip shop as he left his house, so the plaice was ready to collect when he arrived
• Watched TV with her when she became unsteady on her feet so had to stay in bed – episodes of Birds of a Feather, All Creatures Great and Small, wildlife programmes
• Paid for her Daily Mirror and The People’s Friend at the newsagent, until she could no longer read them
• Took her to the local hospital for an assessment for cataracts surgery. She had the operation on one eye in 2012, greatly improving her ability to recognise who was who in the family pictures
• Brought two of her old friends from Harlow to visit her and eat with her
• Ask her who everyone was in the photos she had and talk about who they were, including the picture of her husband in his soldier’s uniform

On Thursday 5 June Great Auntie died, aged 92. She saw her GP, with Liam on Monday 2 June about her legs – a concern the carers had raised with him. The GP said her legs were fine and she wasn't in any pain or discomfort. On Thursday 5 June Liam visited Great Auntie, cleaned her hands and nails, put hand cream on. Liam’s Mum had permed Great Auntie’s hair on Tuesday 3 June and spent 2 and 3 June with her. On 5 June Liam sat with Great Auntie, holding her hand while they watched the Queen and the French president. Liam asked her who the woman in pink was and she said 'it’s the Queen dear.' He asked her who he was, and who his mum was, and she correctly said her nephew and niece. She said she felt 'a bit sicky' (which the carers had reported to Liam and his Mum earlier that day.) Liam sat with her and helped her sip juice and wiped her mouth when she felt a bit sick. He asked if she was in pain and she said, 'no, just feel a bit sicky, dear.' 

He left her at about 6.30pm on 5 June. The carers visited her at 7pm and reported Great Auntie didn't look well, and did Liam and his mum want to call an ambulance for her to be taken to hospital? Liam discussed this with his mum and said as Great Auntie wasn't ill with anything a hospital could fix, the disturbance of moving her to hospital wasn't what they or Great Auntie wanted. The carers went back to visit Great Auntie at 8.15pm that night (an extra visit they weren't meant to do, because they were concerned about her.) Liam agreed with his mum he would visit Great Auntie later that night to see how she was. Liam waited until his boyfriend, James was home from work at 9pm and they ate dinner together. He arrived at Great Auntie’s at 10.15pm and she was in bed, her eyes closed and mouth open slightly. He held her hand, which was still slightly warm and tried to wake her. He checked her pulse and breath with a mirror and realised she had passed away.  When the ambulance arrived, the paramedic woman said she had fallen asleep and not woken up. There was no evidence of her being sick or any discomfort. They said the time of death was between 8.15 and 10.15, maybe an hour or so before Liam arrived. After the ambulance then police then undertakers arrived, Liam got home at 1am. Liam felt very sad he wasn't with Great Auntie when she actually passed away.

Liam’s Mum spoke to Great Auntie’s GP who said their decision not to take her to the hospital was right. Great Auntie always said she wanted to remain in her home as long as possible, which is why they did all they could to ensure she stayed there, with support, until the end. Great Auntie didn't want to go into a nursing home if it was avoidable, and the only time she did was a few weeks' respite care in 2008 after a series of falls. She returned home. ‘I’m glad to be back here, dear,’ she said with a smile to Liam from her chair holding a mug of sweet tea as she looked around her chintzy cluttered living room.

At Great Auntie’s funeral Liam and his mum asked for donations to the local cat sanctuary where Liam had adopted his cats. Great Auntie had two cats, Whiskers and Bibby and would often talk to Liam about his cats, when he showed her pictures on his phone. Great Auntie once visited Liam’s house for afternoon tea and stroked Tigger, saying ‘hello pussy!’ as he stretched out on the table in front of her. The cat sanctuary were very pleased Liam and his mum had thought of them. They enjoyed seeing the pictures of Liam and James’ cats and Great Auntie when he dropped off the donations.

Grief is the price we pay for love.

In August Liam and his mum started to sort through Great Auntie’s house. They had the TV on loudly in the background and stopped for regular tea breaks. They found papers and photos from Great Auntie’s life including:

• Great Auntie’s diaries from 1986 – 1989
• their marriage certificate from 14 February 1942 when she married at nineteen years of age and her husband had leave from the war
• birth certificates for Great Auntie and her husband Great Uncle
• Great Uncle’s fishing trophies
• Boxes and boxes and albums and albums of mostly named and dated photos going back to the start of the twentieth century
• her twenty first birthday cards and piles and piles of photos and papers
• ambulance and hospital discharge notes and hand written notes to the home carers

*closes book*

Don't ever let anyone tell you how you should feel if you lose someone or something dear to you. However you feel is the right feeling for you. Anyone who asked why I was upset as she was *only* my great aunt was told to go forth and multiply but in a much more direct way.

And what will I do with all this information and emotions about Great Auntie? I'm am author, I'll write about it of course!

In my current work in progress, Kev's mum iis very house-proud, and the more I write her, the more she uses elements of Great Auntie in her speech and behaviour. Great Auntie didn't know about my writing as Liam Livings, she became so deaf it was hard to have a full conversation with her, but I hope in some small way she lives on in stories I write.

Normal happy service will be resumed next week.

Liam Livings xxx

This is a sad blog post. It's about grief. There is no swish and sparkle, there are no pots of gold at the end of the rainbow. If that’s not for you then I suggest you click back and don’t read on. OK?

Everyone else, are you still with me, are you sitting comfortably? Good, then I’ll begin.

Grief is the price we pay for love
The title is a quote from The Queen. I am neither pro or anti monarchy, but whenever I feel grief about losing someone/something special in my life I remind myself of this quote. June is always a hard time for me, 1 June is the anniversary of Dad’s death, and two weeks later on 15 June it’s Fathers Day.

It surprises me how physically the feeling of grief can be felt. It’s like a physical blow to the heart, I often find, at the most inopportune moments.

I’ve also had two recent losses, hitting me like a hammer each time. I felt the grief pushing down on my chest and I could hardly breathe.

I will explain, using a story – which makes sense since I’m an author. I’m not sharing this to get sympathy, and I know many other people have experienced much sadder losses, of children, partners or siblings, and many people have been carers for relatives.

I am sharing this because the grief anyone feels is real, and is because they have loved. Even if the grief is for a pet, and for an elderly relative who had undeniably, ‘had a good innings’ it is still real grief.

I don’t think we talk about death and grief enough, so this, inspired by the amazing Channel 4 documentary, My Last Summer #mylastsummer is my attempt at starting something.  

I think you don’t ever fully get over grief, you just learn to live with it.   

*opens first page of book*

May 2014
Liam came home from a sweaty Tube journey to find a heavy bill from the specialist vet and another envelope from a pet cremation service. He opened them both and sat, hardly able to breathe, reading them thinking he’d better make some dinner soon, and wondered when James, his boyfriend, would be home.

June 2014
Liam sat next to his mum in the registrar’s office in Essex, as a friendly woman called Sharon, with bright pink nails, silver jewellery and a low-cut black sleeveless top went over the details of the deceased for the death certificate.

‘Do you do weddings too?’ Liam asked.

‘Weddings and births yes. So it’s not all sad.’ Sharon flicked her long blonde hair and adjusted the silver cross round her neck; her silver bangles reflected the sunlight coming through the window. She explained they use special registrar’s ink for signing the certificates.

Then
Once upon a time, in a land far far away, there was a man called Liam Livings. In 2002 he went to a night club in London. A man called James sat next to Liam, mistakenly thinking Liam was with James’ group of friends. Liam wasn’t, but they talked about music, TV, films, life and ended up dancing to I think We’re Alone Now, by Tiffany.

In 2008 Liam and James moved from their central London flats to a house in suburban west Essex. Liam started to help look after Great Auntie, visiting her every week.

In January 2010 Liam and James adopted two five year old tabby cats called Tigger and Toffee. Their owner had emigrated to Canada and they couldn’t bring them along. Tigger was short haired with a white stomach and paws and Toffee was long haired, with a toffee coloured stomach. Tigger was always first to do everything, Toffee stayed back and was more cautious.

In January 2012 James was worried that Toffee hadn’t come in for the evening as usual. The next day James looked for Toffee and found him, dead in a ditch on the other side of the road outside their house. Toffee was seven years old and Liam and James had adopted him two years before.

After a few months they went to the cat sanctuary, explained their situation and asked if they could adopt another cat to join Tigger. They aimed to adopt one cat, but ended up adopting two as they couldn’t agree which one to take. In March 2012 they came home with Sparkle, a small silver tabby girl cat who had been a stray and who ate everything that wasn’t covered, and Domino a white and black long haired cat who had been kicked and suffered from a blocked bladder. His previous owner couldn’t pay for the bladder so the cat sanctuary had adopted him to save him from being put to sleep.

In July 2012 Sparkle was hit by a car and died almost instantly. Sparkle was three years old and had been part of Liam and James’ family for five months. Liam and James thought that having been a stray Sparkle would have road sense.

In May 2014 Tigger was hit by a car, suffering a fractured sacrum. He was referred to a specialist vet who fixed his sacrum. For the first few days they visited him every day they were allowed, and he started to eat food Liam and James gave him, and he rubbed his head against their hands, purring. After a week, fluid started to accumulate on Tigger’s lungs and the vets inserted a chest drain after manually draining it a few times. On Sunday 15 May the vet explained Tigger’s lungs were filling with fluid again. The options were: wait and see; let him go; try to insert a drain on the other side of his lungs. The wait and see option wasn’t felt to be fair as Tigger’s breathing was laboured, and it is a very unpleasant way to die, so Liam and James went for the option to hopefully save him. Tigger’s heart stopped beating on the operating table and the vet called Liam at just before midnight on 25 May. Tigger was almost nine years old, and had been part of Liam and James’ family for four years four months. 

Liam and James had all the treatment the vets suggested, regardless of cost. They just wanted him well and home.

Liam and James have lost three cats in two years four months. That is one cat every nine months. Liam felt stupid that they didn’t keep the cats inside after losing first Toffee, then Sparkle, but he rarely saw them out the front of the house, and thought they had road sense. Liam and James thought Tigger was old enough to have road sense at nine years old.

The cat they still have, Domino, is now a house cat. He has a six feet high cat climbing tree. He is allowed into the back garden with a lead and harness, and seems to be adapting well to this change. This is not something James thought he’d be happy with, but it is a compromise and life is about compromises.

It was a big day at Livings Towers when the back door with the catflap was replaced with a new door without a cat flap. It felt very final, but Liam and James didn't feel they had any other options.  

*closes page of book*

I changed my short story, Frangipani Kisses in the Bedtime Stories Anthology to include Tigger as the pet. Originally the cat was called Tiger, but after Tigger passed away, I renamed the pet and added in some things that Tigger used to do. In some small way, Tigger will live on in that story.

I think that's enough for today. Next time I will be talking about how the loss of Great Auntie feels.

Liam Livings xx

I had a wonderful review from Johanna at the multitaskingmomma blog.

The full review is here.

Some highlights that made me blush:

• What I found outstanding in this work was how relaxed this tale was written
• Each character is very well developed and even if that may sound too detailed, it really is not. Whatever details came out through conversations and short narratives and just gelled naturally.
• Hearing the author's voice in his work is not common and it resulted to my 'hearing' Kieran's story rather than just reading it. This is the one aspect of this work that made me love it.
• It is just a story of life. Period. Different. Personal. Intimate. A great read.

Best Friends Perfect Book One is available from Wilde City Press and Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com

Until next time,

Liam Livings xx

I’m still reeling about the very sad news about Robin Williams taking his life on Monday.

And now there were more details about a leather belt and how Williams had battled drug, alcohol and depression for a long time.

With everyone, but especially celebrities, you can never know the inside of someone else’s life.

According to IMDB Williams had about 100 film and TV series to his name. Everyone must have seen a film with Robin Williams in it. My three favourite Robin Williams films: The Birdcage, Mrs Doubtfire, Dead Poets Society.

He was a great actor and comedian and I feel like losing a part of my childhood.

I am very sad for his friends and family, as they must be shocked that he’d take his own life. I have lost a colleague and a friend’s husband to suicide in 2009 and 2012 respectively. The affect it has to those around the individual who takes their life is something like I’ve never seen before with other deaths.

I read that women attempt suicide more often, usually as a cry for help, but men succeed more often.

Suicide is the biggest killer of men under 50 in the UK. That’s from Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM).

I too have gone through some very dark periods of depression and it is something that’s always there, like Jiminy Cricket sitting on my shoulder. I have a variety of tools and techniques to keep little Jiminy at bay, ranging from medication I take when it gets really bad, counselling, to light therapy in winter, and also, the best therapy I think, is my writing.

When everything seems awful, pointless, black and hopeless, I can fire up my laptop or even just hand write in my notebook, and write about how I feel, or how I don’t feel. Often the feeling is one of emptiness, of feeling like I’m walking around under a bell jar, separated from the rest of the world. Sylvia Plath got the analogy right when she wrote The Bell Jar.

RJ Scott wrote about depression on her blog, and she said she doesn’t write depressed or suicidal characters for fear of losing herself in them if she did. Which I think is a very sensible approach.  

That had never occurred to me as a way of coping with depression. Because humans are endlessly complex, and different, I do write characters dealing with depression, and suicide. Writing what Dominic goes through in And Then That Happened, was my way of coping with my own very dark period at the time. The supermarket trolley scene in the book happened to me. On more than one occasion.

I wrote about how Richard deals with depression in another WIP, The Guardian Angel, again based on how I’d felt.

For me, writing about depression does three things:

1. It gets the feelings *out* of me, like when you write a diary (something else I do every day, as another way of coping I think)
2. It helps me express how I feel, even if I don’t feel anything
3. It helps me share with other people what it’s like to suffer from depression.

I think the third point is so important. Anyone who says, “Why did Robin Williams kill himself, he had money, celebrity, a family everything” really doesn’t understand depression at all. Cos it’s not about what’s going on outside, it’s what’s going on inside here *taps side of head*.

I first read about a depressed character in fiction in Lucy Sullivan Is Getting Married, by Marian Keyes. It's chick lit, but rest assured, it's very good chick lit. Keyes sufferers from depression and the way she writes about Lucy’s depression is so real, it can only have come from her experience.

So if you suffer from depression, go to your doctor and get help. Don’t keep it all inside, tell a friend, colleague partner. When someone asks how you are, say “not too great actually” it’s amazing how that opens up a whole different conversation from the normal “fine”.

If you have a friend who’s withdrawn from socialising, or you haven’t heard from in a while, pick up the phone – call them. Just call them for a chat. Ask how they are. Go round and sit with them over a cup of tea and biscuits. Listen to them telling you how they are, really listen, without a smart phone in one hand and the TV on in the background. Proper, eye contact, no interruptions, listen to them.

You might just save someone’s life.

Liam Livings xx

After my post about my nom de plume, it reminded me of that phrase everyone says in French when they first learn the language: la plume de ma tante est dans le bureau de mon oncle. Which means my aunt’s pen is in my uncle’s desk. It’s an example of a phrase taught at schools rarely applicable in real life. Eddie Izzard does a whole sketch about le singe est dans l’arbre – the money is in the tree – another equally pointless phrase he was taught at school.

Anyway, I’m mincing about now. Without further ado, here’s some snaps from ma semaine en France avec la famille de mon petit ami – my week in France with my boyfriend’s family. They moved to France near Carcasonne, in 2004 and we’ve had at least a week’s holiday there every year since. Our devices connect automatically to their wifi, we have holiday eau de toilette there, and I've been known to out-bake the BF's mum with my fig tarte, so it's a home from home.

My main objective of the holiday were:

1. to do as little as possible
2. to read as much as possible. I normally don't have loads of time to read, as I prioritise writing and real life over reading. I normally read about a book every 3 - 4 weeks
3. to spent time with the BF's parents
   

• Number of books read 4 ½ - one abandoned due to lack of interest in the characters
• Number of swims in the pool 7
• Number of breakfasts of a vat of tea with home made fig jam and French bread – at least eight
• Number of afternoon tea sessions – 5- no baking it was too hot and see main objective 1 above
  

• Number of excursions – 4 - a BBQ, Status Quo concert, disused monastery garden, fancy restaurant
• Number of days when I didn’t leave the property 5 – bliss
• Number of episodes of Desert Island Discs listened to – 1 Kenneth Williams, and it was brilliant. It’s in the archives, any UK based people should download the podcast and enjoy.

Number of times I snuck off to do edits using the BF's mum's laptop, despite being banned from taking my laptop for *exactly* that reason – 2 - this was for Best Friends Perfect Book Two and Frangipani Kisses – both out in August, so I think I’m excused.

I hope you've enjoyed this and it's inspired you to have a holiday yourself, whether that's a self catering week off work at home, a glitzy cruise around the Bahamas, or a week's camping in Cornwall with the family, whatever makes you happy.

Until next time,

Liam Livings xx

So there was a thing recently where two m/m fiction authors who’d said they were gay men, came out that they were women. Apparently this isn’t the first time, and life being what it is, I expect it won’t be the last time. Some people who’d followed their blogs were very upset at the deception. Others shrugged and said nothing.

It made me think about how your online persona can differ from your real life persona, if you want it to. The great thing about the internet is it allows you to be who you want to be – or who you feel like you should be in real life.

Of course there are lots of different real life personas too: a work one, a mother one, a daughter one, a friend one, a wife one, but essentially they’re all part of one whole congruent real life persona.

For some people they only share so much about their real life selves online. For others it means becoming a completely different person online from their real life persona.

I’m not going to make any judgements about which is right or wrong, but I am going to explain where I sit on that scale.

Authenticity
Some of you have met me in person, so the pictures of me on this website are me. Hopefully those who’ve met me think the Liam Livings in person is pretty much like the online Liam Livings. For me it’s about authenticity.  

Ok, hands up, Liam Livings is not my legal name, it’s not what’s on my passport or birth certificate, it’s a nom de plume taken from my dad’s best friend’s first name and my mum’s maiden name. I also like how it’s alliterative. In the m/m fiction genre people stick to their pen names much more than in mainstream romance. Mainstream romance authors often introduce themselves as ‘I’m Jan Smith, and I write as Mary Hatfield or Sandra Colant or Sharon Barina’ like it’s nothing. With all my writing friends, I am always Liam Livings. For me it keeps it simpler.

I am a British gay man in my *rolls eyes* twenties – thirties, living where east London ends and becomes Essex.

All of this about me stuff on here is true – except 5) but that’s something my mum did.

I did lose my dad in a light aircraft accident in 2001.

I read trashy autobiographies, chick lit and sometimes go off piste with an adventure or some m/m fiction.

I basically have the musical and TV taste of a teenaged girl, what is pretty stereotypically *gay* – and I don’t apologise about it: I love Gilmore Girls and Dawson’s Creek; I love The Wanted, Girls Aloud, Abba, Steps and lots and lots of eighties electro pop; I have a penchant for cheesy John Hughes films from the eighties and my favourite female actors are Toni Collette, Cameron Diaz, Goldie Hawn and Meryl Streep. As you can imagine, Death Becomes Her, The Holiday and Muriel’s Wedding are watched with remarkable regularity at Livings Towers.

What don’t do online as Liam Livings

• Use my BF’s name, or post any pictures of him
• Same with members of my family or friends
• Talk about my day job
• Talk about any bedroom activities – I know other male m/m fiction authors who do this all the time. No judgement, but it’s not for me.

All the rest is much WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get).

That's Me
So to paraphrase an Abba song – had to get one in somewhere – I’m Liam-not-the-kind-of-guy-you’d-ask-to-put-up-shelves that’s me!

*steepling fingers and twirling round in a white leather chair* Of course, I could be a human like android like that little boy in the film, AI Artificial Intelligence, controlled by a big computer in Milton Keynes.

How does your online persona differ from your real life persona? Do you have some rules about what you do and don’t talk about online similar to me?

I’d love to hear from you,

Until next time,

Liam xx