Guest blog: Colette McCormick, author of Things I Should Have Said and Done.

Today I am lucky to have a guest blog by author Colette McCormick, author of Things I Should Have Said and Done. She gives me an insight into the book and the simple comment that gave her the idea for the storyline. Things I Should Have Said and Done is available to buy now.

Not the End

On a work trip involving an overnight stay I started to think about the family I’d left at home. I’d spoken to my husband and asked him if he’d fed the kids and he announced that, yes he had and “We don’t need you.” His joke made me laugh because the truth is that if I was away from home for any length of time he would have to expand his culinary repertoire pretty quickly or he and our sons would suffer from carbohydrate overload. The comment started me thinking though. I was only going to be away for one night but what if I never went home. How does a family cope when one of them is ripped away suddenly? These are the questions that I wanted to explore in “Things I Should Have Said and Done,” and it wasn’t food that I was thinking about.
It’s often said that a sudden death is the best way to go, but is it? What about the things that you haven’t said? What about the things that you haven’t done? One minute life’s fine and the next minute its over. In a heartbeat and without any warning everything changes.
That’s the dilemma that Ellen faces. It’s an ordinary day, she has picked her daughter up from school then a split second later she’d dead and she’s understandably confused and annoyed. She doesn’t want to be dead. She isn’t prepared to be dead.
Naomi, Ellen’s daughter is also confused and annoyed. She was in the car when her mother dies and too young to really understand what death means, feels that he mummy has deserted her.
Marc, Ellen’s husband is left to raise their daughter alone and he has no idea how to do even the simplest of things like make spaghetti hoops taste the way his wife did. Who knew you could add cheese to them?
Ellen’s parents have lost their only child and they are devastated.
All of them, including Ellen, have things that they would have said and done if only they had known that she was going to die but now it’s too late.
Or is it?
George has been sent from “the other side” to help Ellen deal with the issues that her untimely death has left unresolved but he is new to the job and has issues of his own. George shows Ellen a way of communicating with those that she has left behind and in the months following her death she helps her family move on without her which in turn will allow her to move on beyond the limbo that she finds herself in.
I tried to put myself into the heads of my characters and imagine how I would feel if I were in their position. To be honest, not a lot of planning went into this book. I created a world in my head, put the characters I had created in that world and basically let them get on with it. It was their story; I was just the one telling it.
I didn’t set out to let Ellen and George fall in love, they just did. To be honest, I am a little bit in love with George myself so Ellen never really stood a chance.

Colette McCormick was born and raised in Sheffield but has made the North East her home for over 30 years. Writing is her love but her job is as a charity shop manager for a leading children’s charity. She has a husband, two sons and a daft dog.