What price tag would you put on a baby?
Set in and around Glasgow, Buy Buy Baby is a moving and funny story of life, loss and longing. Packed full of bitchy banter, it follows the bittersweet quest of two very different women united by the same desire – they desperately want a baby.
Carol talks to her dog, has an expensive eBay habit and relies on wine to forget she’s no longer a mum following the death of her young son. Cheeky besom Julia is career-driven and appears to have it all. But after disastrous attempts at internet dating, she feels there is a baby-shaped hole in her life.
In steps Dan, a total charmer with a solution to their problems. But only if they are willing to pay the price, on every level…
It was an absolute delight to welcome author Helen MacKinven to Being Anne on the release of her debut novel, Talk of the Toun, last year – here’s the link. Although I never did get round to reading (sorry, Helen!), the reviews have been quite amazing. And I’m thrilled to welcome Helen back as part of the blog tour for her latest book, Buy Buy Baby, published by Cranachan Publishing on 5th July, available in paperback and for kindle.
Helen’s written a lovely guest post on feeling the fear and doing it anyway…
Does the thought of public speaking make you break out in a cold sweat?
Two years ago, I read my writing out aloud for the first time in public. Considering my day job is training teachers, this shouldn’t have been a big deal but according to Eleanor Roosevelt, you should do one thing every day that scares you. That’s a great theory but unrealistic for most folk. But I do believe it’s a good idea to step outside your comfort zone as often as possible, or life would be pretty damn boring if you never challenged yourself to try something new.
So, with this ‘who dares wins’ attitude, I accepted an invitation to read my work at a local spoken word event. As the day grew closer, it was the thought of baring my soul and feeling judged that made me nervous. And stupidly, I’d built the scenario up in my mind to be something to avoid rather than embrace.
At work, I know from the evaluations that I’m very good at holding an audience’s attention (not easy when the subject matter is numeracy and there’s nearly 400 PowerPoint slides to get through), so I needed to transfer my ability to ‘perform’ into reading my own work.
In the end, I LOVED it. And of course I now wish I’d put myself and my words out there a lot sooner. My advice to any new writers or anyone holding back from experimenting in an activity that is unfamiliar to them is to remember that FEAR stands for Fear Exceeds Actual Reality.
Since my debut novel was published last year, I’ve been out and about across Scotland reading from Talk of the Toun in Kilsyth, Falkirk, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Stirling and Kirkcaldy. To get the chance to share my writing has been an absolute privilege and I’m hoping that my new novel, Buy Buy Baby, a juicy story with dark themes, will also be popular, as for me, there really isn’t a better buzz that meeting readers in person.
Helen, thank you. Although I’m pretty fearless these days, that brought back uncomfortable memories of being paralysed with nerves before work presentations – good to hear you’re now getting the buzz, and wishing you every success with Buy Buy Baby!
Do visit the other stops on the Buy Buy Baby blog tour:
Helen MacKinven writes contemporary Scottish fiction and graduated with merit from Stirling University with an MLitt in Creative Writing in 2012. Her short stories have appeared in a number of anthologies and literary journals, such as Gutter magazine. Helen’s debut novel, Talk of the Toun, was published by ThunderPoint in 2015.
Helen has an excellent website: you can also find her on Twitter and via her Facebook author page.
Having heard Helen speak at a book event, I find it amazing she was worried about it. She's such a natural and so entertaining!