Thread by @garius

Last night we hit 70% funded for The Brexit Tapes. In 4 days! The lovely people at @unbounders tell me that's 👍

For the first time, this feels like it might be real. So I want to share something with you: the dedication. And tell you about two women who helped make me, well, me

So the first person mentioned is @dduane and I have talked about how her books got me reading as a kid before.

I won't rehash that too much, but I was about nine and I read because people EXPECTED me to, not because I wanted to. Then I read her books and they blew me away.

She's had to put up with me tweeting about this already and I've no desire to embarrass her further, when more often these days I get to discuss with her how a dragon would take down a cruise missile. Because Twitter is the fucking best.

It's here though:

https://twitter.com/garius/status/1081350337775185920

The other woman I have NOT talked about on here before. She is my mother, Moira.

Moira was the one who nagged me to read early on, feeding me an endless sea of Terrance Dicks Doctor Who novels before I found 'proper' books, and making me spend time reading even though I moaned.

I should tell you a bit about my mother. Moira was born to, and raised by, Irish immigrants. They both fought in Italy in WW2. Him in the army and her as a nurse. Unwelcome in Ireland they moved to Stevenage, near London. They raised kids and hoped they'd go to university.

For my mother, that didn't quite work out as planned. She ended up divorced and pregnant quite young with my sister. A single mother, she worked as a secretary at @BAESystemsplc.

She was actually on the very first non-test Concorde flight. Because someone had to take notes... 😂

Being a single mother in the seventies wasn't fun. But she did it and took no shit about it. At one point, while trying to claim benefits, she felt so angry about the intrusive questions she was asked because of her divorced status that she wrote to her MP, Shirley Williams.

"How is it right?" She demanded, "For them to ask questions of me as a divorcee that they wouldn't ask a man?"

Shirley (Now Baroness) Williams wrote back:

"They wouldn't dare ask me either." She said. "I'll make sure they stop asking other women too."

The questions stopped. 😎

So my mum's life didn't perhaps turn out how she planned, but she was happy and shortly after met my dad. In 1980 I was born, and my brother and another sister followed.

She had to give up full-time work and money was always tight, but she worked where she could, as we got older

This included delivering Yellow Pages, being a childminder, taking in student lodgers and eventually becoming a teaching assistant (I think she really wanted to be a teacher if she'd had the chance) to supplement the household income. Money was always tight though.

This is all important context because we never really NOTICED this growing up. She was always there for us - for me - and, more importantly, there was ONE THING she made sure I was never short of once she'd realised I'd discovered them:

New books.

Once I fell in love with reading, I DEVOURED books. Constantly. A lot from the library (to which she'd always take me) but often, even better and so much more important to a kid, they were mine to own.

I'd finish a book at night secretly (I thought) keeping my light on extra late. Then I'd go to school and come home, thinking about what I'd reread, only to find my mum in the kitchen holding a new book

"Oh I was in WH Smiths and saw this." She'd say. "I think you'll like it"

For YEARS she nurtured in me, without me realising it, not just a love of books, but of different TYPES of books. With the benefit of hindsight, I see now that she'd carefully flip me between genres and watch for when I was ready for something new or more adult.

Indeed I STILL remember the Christmas, when I was twelve, when I opened my present to discover that it was the omnibus edition of A Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.

I'd never heard of it. I remember looking at her doubtfully.

"I think you'll LOVE it." She said.

Reader, I did.

Over the years, my relationship with my mother waxed and waned, as things do when you grow up, go to university, and move through life.

One thing we ALWAYS had in common though was books. Whenever I'd come home, she'd excitedly tell me what she was reading. I would do the same.

In fact, I STILL remember the first time she fell in love with something I recommended. It was Lindsey Davis' first Falco book. I felt like I'd made it somehow. From that point, we both loved that series.

She would then buy them and lend them to me when I came home from uni.

Which leads me to the inevitable sad bit here: My mum died, too young, a few years back.

Cancer, as they say, is fucking shit.

I am fine with this now. Life is finite and I believe that we live on through the impact we have on others and hers was huge.

Grief is weird though and to this day I CANNOT read Lindsey Davis Falco novels. I miss them. But, they're the one thing that reminds me too much of her.

Like, seriously. I can barely even look at them

I once saw a rack of them in @waterstones and burst into tears.

And let me tell you that Waterstones is THE WORST place to cry about books. Because everyone is very understanding, totally gets it, and that just makes you cry more!

One thing I do know though is she would be CHUFFED TO BITS about the fact that I am almost, possibly, going to publish a book. She lived long enough to enjoy my writing, but this would be the icing on the cake.

She'd pretend to be embarrassed about the dedication though! 😂

And that's partly why I wanted to post - and explain - that dedication. Because I LOVE a good book dedication (who doesn't?) but often feel a bit sad that I don't get the full story behind it.

And so given that many of you here are my backers, I wanted to share my story with you

But it's also because I wanted to highlight something really important - something that both Diane Duane and my own mother did for me:

Writers don't spawn, fully formed, from typewriters.

We START, with a furious and often sudden spark, as readers.

So next time your own, your sibling's or your friend's child shows a hunger for a book: Feed them one. Or if you're thinking about writing something, ANYTHING, then just write it.

Because words... because BOOKS... change lives.

And that's pretty damn cool.

ADDENDUM: Because someone will probably ask, link to unbound is here: unbound.com/books/the-brex…

This isn't about backing though. I just wanted to share the dedication and what it means.

Thanks for reading that. It makes YOU pretty cool, to me at least. 👍