Harriet Bell
It’s been nearly a year since I published a post on this blog page, and that’s mainly because my workload is pretty full-on. Which, as those who know me will also know that suits me just fine. I’d work all the time if I could, but obviously I have other things to do, like cooking tea, laundry, feeding the cat, etc… However, about two years ago I started to write a spin-off book from my Gary Stringer series, something I’d been planning since I published Book 2 - Seminars and Shenanigans - in 2021. Harriet Bell features heavily in that book and I just knew she needed a book of her own one day. A fifty-eight-year-old menopausal woman, divorced with two grown-up sons, a voluptuous figure and rather blessed “up top”, and a penchant for having fun and drinking too much gin. Okay, so apart from the kids and the age (I’m 56, btw), I guess you could almost assume I’d based her a little bit on me - appearance-wise, of course, because I’m very happily married and intend to stay that way for the rest of my days.
I loved writing Harriet into the Gary Stringer series, and knew that if my books ever became famous and ended up on Netflix (or Nesquik as my lovely mother-in-law calls it), I would be first in line to play her. For now, however, I’ll settle for a few videos on YouTube where I read from the books and do a few impressions of her fabulous Northern humour.
So what’s this one about then, I hear you ask… It’s about a wonderfully entertaining main character called Harriet Bell (obvs) who decides she wants to join a dating website and see if she can find Mr Right. A few strays come along, one or two she’s quite taken with, and one in particular she’d like to get to know better called Graham. His daughter pushed him into joining the dating site after being concerned he wasn’t getting any younger and said that if he didn’t find someone soon, things might start to drop off.
But nothing’s straightforward where Harriet’s concerned. She’s a woman of the world, knows what she wants but is often in the wrong place at the wrong time and finds herself missing out. She’s also an admin supervisor at the local college, where, of course, Gary Stringer works, and together they have formed a close friendship - sometimes with benefits - that Harriet treasures. Between the two of them, things are concocted, plans are made, sticky situations are inevitable, and then suddenly, things go a bit pear-shaped. But you’ll have to read the book to find out what happens, because I have no intention of giving any more away…
I’m busy with edits, so can only write my own work as and when, but I hope to have the book at least finished in the near future, then I might pop a couple more readings on YouTube as a little teaser. Watch this space! If you want to read the Gary Stringer series, please do. They are entertaining, lighthearted, nothing heavy, lots of sex and language and just a bunch of people going through real life, with all its ups and downs. Both books available on Amazon.
