De-blog

Ten years ago (to the day), I released Crying in the Rain – a bi/gay love story (MM romance) and a stand-alone novel in the Hiding Behind The Couch universe. Today, I’m releasing the second edition of  Crying in the Rain . I’ve been updating the formatting of all my books for a while now – optimistically I thought I’d have them all done in 2023, and I don’t have too many left to do, but it’s a lengthy task. While I’m at it, I’m reading through each story, correcting any errors I notice and sorting out my British commas. That’s all most of the stories need for me to be happy with them. But then I reached  Crying in the Rain , and, well, rather than paraphrase myself, here’s my Author’s Note from the new edition: To be clear, I didn’t hate the first edition, but seeing the things I didn’t like about it crop up in reviews…well, there’s an argument there for not reading reviews, I suppose, but those readers weren’t wrong. There was too much ‘head-hopping’.  Crying in the Rai...

Phew! [wipes brow] I've finally done it! My new novel is out in the wild (admittedly, it's still sitting on Amazon's doorstep waiting to be let in). Reverberations  is a stand-alone-ish novel in the Hiding Behind The Couch series – purchase links will appear on Beaten Track as soon as they're live. The ebook is already live on the Beaten Track store. Mysterious happenings are mounting up for Josh, Sean and their estranged alumni. Josh Sandison-Morley was born a sceptic. Why else would he insist there’s no such thing as ghosts when he’s eliminated every plausible explanation for the noises in his former therapy rooms? Sean Tierney’s having some ‘performance issues’. His GP says there’s no physical reason: his blood pressure is under control, and he’s stayed off the booze, ergo it’s all in his head. In the circumstances, being a palliative clinical psychologist isn’t proving (self-)helpful. Despite two decades of friendship and their grand plans to open a private psycho...

Alumni – Reverberations is finished! Now I wonder what all the fuss was about. :D To explain further/recap, here’s the Author’s Note I’ve added to the start of the book: As a way of making light of how long it’s taken me to finish this novel, I’ve spent the past five(!) years saying, “Josh has been stuck in the loft for [x] years now.” That was where I left him at the end of Reunions , published in April 2017—dangling from the loft hatch in his former ‘surgery’, a space he previously rented but now owns. It might, therefore, be somewhat confusing to find that Josh is not stuck in the loft at the beginning of this book. This isn’t because he cunningly escaped while the author was under siege from burnout. Rather, the five-chapter epilogue of Reunions and the first seven chapters of Reverberations overlap. This was always my intention—to add in the ‘how did we get here?’ background to events at the end of Reunions —but it should, I hope, also serve as something of a Previously…in...

  Three years after his partner’s death, Detective Chief Inspector Gray Fisher has finally made the break from the police. With a new place to live, a new job and his PhD underway, Gray welcomes the friendship of Will Richards, an investment banker with hidden depths and a farmhouse menagerie of rescue animals. Gray’s not looking for love, and he’s certainly not interested in becoming involved in police work again…until former colleague Rob Simpson-Stone tracks him down to ask for his help with a case. So begins Gray and Rob’s new business partnership. For Rob Simpson-Stone, the career change may have come too late to rescue his marriage, but his relationship with his son is back on track. Rob’s grown-up nieces might be a taller order, but he’s prepared to do whatever it takes to prove they no longer need to worry that one day he won’t come home. As events unfold, Gray’s past recklessness catches up with him and Rob both, putting those they hold close in danger and forcing them to ...

Not My Christmas by Debbie McGowan Published: 25th December, 2019 Length: 18,000 words (approx.) 99c from Smashwords  • Amazon Blurb: Christmas at the Davenports has never been a relaxing affair, so when the opportunity for a little alone time with a beautiful, available woman comes Charlie Davenport’s way, she takes it, breaking several family traditions and risking the wrath of her siblings. But it’ll be worth it, right? And she can always make it up to them later…or next Christmas. A stand-alone story from the world of Hiding Behind The Couch. Keywords: LGBTQ+, ownvoices, romance, family, bisexual women, Christmas, humour

OK, so I missed it by a few minutes in BST as it's technically now the 21st August, but let's assume it's still the 20th for me as it still is for many of you. Today I released Meredith's Dagger - my fiftieth novel - on my fiftieth birthday! Both of those facts are quite hard to believe. I made it to fifty! Woot! And fifty books? Well, I wrote most of them in the last ten years, not sure how... I'm going to keep this short and give a little background to  Meredith's Dagger , which I originally wrote in 2011 but then set it aside while I did further research into the relevant local history. Then I got caught up in all that research and it was a bit overwhelming, so I let it rest awhile to work on other books. I've come back to it several times over the years since and made it through the first few chapters before I reached the point where I wanted to slap Julian - you'll reach that point too, but he's not so bad really once you get...

BLURB: For a relationship to work, it is not just love which is demanded. Resolve is, too. Cole has his senior year of college and a photography business to worry about, so he could really do without the multiple sessions with physiotherapists his parents force him to go to. It leaves little room to consider romance as a choice for him. Pool instructor and avid swimmer Justin has always been his twin’s shadow. Where Aaron goes, he follows. He may not have much of a social life outside of his twin, but he loves his job and all the extra swim time he gets. He doesn’t think that he’s lacking anything. Then Justin’s booked for a photo shoot with Cole. Being together, as right as it feels, also means they’ll have to come face to face with their belief systems. They must find the resolve to be their own person, or they could lose it all –themselves included. Resolve is the 2nd book of the Demands series. Although they can be read as stand-alones, characters from previous books wi...

Today, I've been playing around with different video editing programmes, both on and offline, and in the process made a trailer for the audiobook of  Of The Bauble  even though we (the narrator and I) are still finalising the recordings. So I won't be sharing that trailer just yet. But! I figured it was time to announce the audiobooks. :) The Great Village Bun Fight is somewhere between ACX's file storage system and the retailers, so it should appear on Audible, Amazon and iTunes with the next couple of weeks. Of The Bauble (as mentioned) is undergoing a few final tweaks before we submit it to ACX for approval. My narrator for both books is Jack Hardman, who describes his accent as "[not] so northern that it is difficult to understand, but is common enough sounding that it isn't alienating to people outside of the London area." I'm inclined to agree, which is why he is the perfect narrator for both stories. I'll post again when ...

I haven’t posted to  Rainbow Snippets  in such a long time—busy life, in short—but I decided to join in today to celebrate Trans Awareness Week. I’ll be honest: there are very few trans characters in my stories, and for no good reason, but I’ve become aware of it over the past couple of years, and I’m working on changing that. :) Anyway, here’s a snippet from The Making of Us featuring Jazz—one of the officers of (MC) Jesse’s university’s LGBT+ society. * * * * * Most of the members identified as gay or lesbian; there were a couple of trans students—Jazz being the only one I knew well, because we’d been at Weight Watchers together the previous year. I’d lost six kilos, and I was pretty sure I’d put them all back on again in a matter of weeks. Jazz had lost around twenty kilos and kept the weight off, and she looked amazing. Well, she’d looked amazing before, but now, she was more confident and less self-conscious, and she got to wear clothes that accentuated her cur...

It's here! It's here! At times, I honestly wondered if it ever would be. Two years of writing, weeks of editing, proofreading, formatting and faffing. Phew! Reunions - Season Seven of Hiding Behind The Couch - is out today (19th April). I'll keep this short. Firstly, thank you x millions to: Nige, Andrea, Amy and Jor for editing, proofreading, reading and cheering me on. Thank you also to the Rainbow Snippets and WIPpet Wednesday authors for snippeteering, reading, commenting and sharing. If you haven't read any of the Hiding Behind The Couch series before, you could start with this book, but it does contain spoilers for previous stories. You can find a reading guide on this page: http://deb248211.blogspot.co.uk/p/hiding-behind-couch.html There is also the Hiding Behind The Couch website , which has some bonus extras as well as background information about the stories and what inspires me to write them. Lastly, there is my website: debbiemcgowan.co....

I fail at reading calendars. I've been telling everyone Reunions is out on Thursday 19th April, and it is out on the 19th of April, but that's...Wednesday. Tomorrow! Gulp. In my defence, writing Hiding Behind The Couch does require rather creative use of calendars. To illustrate, here a screenshot of my timeline calendar, which I use to keep track of characters' birthdays, ages, anniversaries and so on: Yes, OK, I know April 19th isn't a Thursday there, either, but my brain frazzes on numbers if I consciously think about what I'm doing. So, anyway, the long and short of it is this: Reunions   - Season Seven of Hiding Behind The Couch -  is out tomorrow! (Oh, and did you spot that little sneaky title up there, next to 'Reunions' in the screenshot? That's Season Eight...coming when it gets here. ;) ) FOR FUN... A quick-fire interview with Sean Tierney (caught on the hop between jobs) Place of birth: Derry, The North of Ire...

So, yesterday (Sunday), I started my Reunions launch week really well by totally forgetting to run my giveaways while I was on Beaten Track Radio . That's typical of me...as is blaming Nige, and it was his fault. Honest. ;) Thank you to all of you who tuned in and listened on Sunday. I had a lot of fun, and your questions were awesome! Now, the whole point of these launch week shenanigans is to let people know about the release of Reunions , because I do have a few series readers, but it's been a couple of years since Season Six ( Two By Two ) was released, and I want to make sure everyone who's interested gets to know about it. If you are new to Hiding Behind The Couch you probably don't want to start with Reunions . Although I do re-introduce the characters in each of the main books (the 'Seasons'), there will be lots of spoilers relating to events that have happened previously. The good news is that you can download the first prequel ( Beginnings ...

I read an interesting post about sensitivity readers over the weekend, and by interesting, I mean more than a bit offensive and - accidentally, I'm quite certain - an excellent demonstration of why sensitivity readers are important if an author/editor/publisher wants to avoid a public trouncing. (I'll come back to why I have phrased it this way.) For those reading this post who don't know already, a sensitivity reader is someone a publisher/author asks to read a manuscript to check for potentially offensive/problematic content. This includes the deployment of discriminatory/offensive language, events that may act as psychological triggers and anything else that may be considered a 'sensitive subject' for some readers. Sensitivity readers have specific expertise, either through professional affiliation and experience (e.g. a nurse in palliative care fact-checking a book dealing with the treatment of terminal illness) or because they are part of the political mi...

Brief explanation: This is another snippet from Reunions (Hiding Behind The Couch Season Seven), which is currently a little under 230k, and I’m on the home straight! Woot! I decided to go with six short paragraphs rather than six sentences, because I’d have had to make it seven sentences, and I felt the number was more important (the colours of the Pride flag) than the briefness of the snippet. In this snippet, George is meeting Gabby—an art therapist and fellow student of Josh’s from their undergraduate days—for the first time, with a view to commencing art therapy to treat his dissociative attacks. Josh has just offered to make drinks in order to give George and Gabby time to chat. Zara Lederman (mentioned in the snippet) is a psychotherapist/art therapist who lives and works in George and Josh’s local town, and she rubs George up the wrong way, so he’s come to this introductory meeting with some reluctance. Here’s the snippet: “Be right back.” George followed Josh’s...

WIPpet numbers for 15th February, 2017: 1+5 = 6 paragraphs from Reunions ( Hiding Behind The Couch Season Seven) The current word count is…225,922. Nearly there… WIPpet Context: It’s New Year's Eve. Josh has just dropped Libby (foster daughter) off at her friend’s place and is trying to figure out how to fill the time until George (husband) finishes work. Iris (in WIPpet) is George’s mum. Monty is Iris’s Westie. * * * * * As with all days where Josh was at a lonely loose end with a dozen or more thoughts vying for pole position, each driving decision came with the ‘or I could visit Iris’ option, which was not to say she was there only for when all else failed. One of their more salient points of commonality was valuing their solitude, and there was no guarantee she’d welcome the company just because he needed it. Nonetheless, at the next junction, he took his chances and turned right towards Campion House, rather than left towards home. She’d let him know if she did...

Brief explanation: This is another snippet from Reunions (Hiding Behind The Couch Season Seven), which is currently a little under 220k. I have no defence; I write long stories. I was only writing a novella. ;) This snippet is another scene with George and Josh, or, at least, it should be. They are having lunch at a restaurant with Vincent, a local jeweller, and Josh is in the toilet/restroom. Thus, this conversation is between George and Vincent. This may give some insight into Josh’s odd behaviour in last week’s Rainbow Snippet . Or not. Here’s the snippet: George trained his eyes on the toilet door. “Why d’you think he helped you find your father?” “Because we are friends. Why else?” “That’s not how Josh sees it. Although he doesn’t see it for what it really is, either.” “I am not sure I understand.” “You have feelings for him.” George slowly turned back, once again fixing his gaze on Vincent, who looked like he’d been slapped in the face. “My soufflé has collaps...

Brief explanation: This is another snippet from Reunions (Hiding Behind The Couch Season Seven), which continues to grow. And grow. Current word count: 209,000. I’m aiming to stay under the word count of Two by Two (Hiding Behind The Couch Season Seven) …now I’ve passed all the other limits I set at the start. ;) Here’s a little more of Josh and George, this time together. Here’s the snippet: Josh looked him up and down as he got in the car. “Whose clothes are they?” “Mine.” George was thrown by the question and forgot to deliver his customary kiss. He attempted to rectify that, but Josh dodged him. He was still eyeing George’s clothes. “Are they?” “Who else’s would they be?” “Well, Jake’s, or…I don’t know. It just dawned on me you came to work in overalls.” “Under which I wear clothes,” George said like he was stating the obvious, because he was, in fact, stating the obvious. Josh remained perplexed. “What’s up?” * * * * * Rainbow Snippets is a group for L...

Reunions : I really am beginning to wonder if it will ever be finished. Current word count: 195,000. Brief explanation: My last couple of Rainbow Snippets have been George’s reflections on his and Josh’s relationship, so this time, I’ve gone with (one of) Josh’s (many) reflections. Note: if you’re reading the Hiding Behind The Couch series from the beginning, this contains a spoiler for anything before The Harder They Fall (Season Three) ( Reunions is Season Seven). Here’s the snippet: We’re together. Josh laughed a little and shivered. These days, it felt as if they’d never been apart, but then, this was the calm after the storm: a week of hypomania, dip into hell bypassed. He felt happy and at peace, and he had the house to himself, which meant he could finally get on with his research. Josh had wanted to use his heightened cognitions to escalate his investigation, but George had made him promise not to. It wasn’t George being mean or bossy; for as much as Josh revell...

Reunions: yep, I’m still writing that beast of a WIP. Today, the word count stands at 186,321, which means I’ve written 13,000 words in the past week and I’m still no closer to finishing it! That’s how it feels, at least, because I’ve been patching holes rather than moving towards the conclusion. Brief explanation: This snippet follows on from last week’s: George is thinking back to the verbal bullying he went through in high school, as well as his mum, who is much ‘lovelier’ than she comes across here. OK, she’s not that lovely, but she means well. Here's the snippet: Josh the boy genius, who remembered everything—every cruel and kind word spoken, every fight, argument, every mundane moment. All those times he’d recounted events of which George had no memory, yet when Josh had said those words, playing down the courage it had taken to stand up to Suzie Tyler, they had tattooed George’s brain. You make me brave. He wished he’d been braver. He wished he could have done...

Reunions: the never-ending WIP. Sigh. Today, the word count stands at 173,100. It’s a mess, still not finished, but I do believe it’s getting there. That said, trying to find six sentences that make sense in isolation is getting a bit tricky. Brief explanation: George is thinking back to the verbal bullying he went through in high school. Here's the snippet: Of course it bothered him. He hated being gay first, everything else second. It was what he’d always loved about Josh; he wasn’t ‘gay George’ or ‘star footballer George’. To Josh, he was ‘just George’, and when Josh had taken on Suzie Tyler, it hadn’t been only for George’s sake. He’d given her hell on Shaunna’s behalf, and Kris’s, and Rob’s—the list was endless. You make me brave. * * * * * Rainbow Snippets is a group for LGBTQ+ authors, readers, and bloggers to gather once a week to share six sentences from a work of fiction–a WIP or a finished work or even a 6-sentence book recommendation (no spoilers please...