Triple Crown Dark Romance Thrillers

All of a sudden, I find myself reaching for my reading glasses to check the ingredients on a supermarket just-fry-in-the-pan-for-10-Minutes meal! Seriously, when did I get that old??? It must have happened while I was out enjoying life, doing something crazy, and I was too busy to notice.

Heraclitus of Ephesus (c. 535 – c. 475 BC) introduced us to the concept that “change is the only constant in life”. We certainly experience changes in the world every day. Some are deeply personal. Others barely register.

My interest is in what motivates people to change. Is it their goals and desires? Is it their fears? Or is change something that we allow to happen to us?

How we deal with our own changes is important. Change to our personal lives is almost always scary. Whether we are finishing school and starting work, entering a permanent relationship, changing jobs, or even changing where we live. We have high hopes of succeeding, whatever that means to us. But we are also afraid that it could all go horribly wrong.

So when change turns up in our lives, are we the kind of people who embrace it, find a way to grow, and see the benefits it brings? Or do we hang on to our “old ways” – the ways that make us feel safe, because we understand them?

Most of us are a mix of all these possibilities. I know I am!

I have my old ways that I value. For example, one of my favourite parts of Christmas is to hang a sock on the door for my daughter (now 22!) to find on Christmas morning. There is nothing special in there. Some chocolate, something I hope will make her smile, perhaps a small gift. To give you an idea, this year, one of the items she received was a pair of socks, knitted to look as though a cat is hugging her leg when she wears them. This kind of tradition is very special to me. It is a conscious choice to keep it and I work hard to keep it from changing. This is me resisting change.

I also have the changes I embraced: at 23, I moved from London to Germany. Why? I had what the Germans call “Wanderlust”: an intense desire to travel and experience new places, cultures, and people. Germany was the first European country to offer me a job, so I went there and have been living here ever since. The lifestyle is considerably more relaxed than in London, where I grew up. The people here work hard, but also know how to stop when the day is done.

So I write about change. I enjoy discovering how my characters change. I hope you will too…

I’d love to hear from you.

Jody