I love a good twisty psychological thriller so I’m delighted to be part of the launch celebrations for Don’t Wake Up by Liz Lawler. Today Liz explains all about being fit to write in a fascinating guest post.

Don’t Wake Up was published by Twenty7, an imprint of Bonnier Zaffre, on 18th May 2017 and is available for e-book purchase and paperback pre-order here.

Don’t Wake Up

Alex Taylor wakes up tied to an operating table. The man who stands over her isn’t a doctor.

The choice he forces her to make is utterly unspeakable.

But when Alex re-awakens, she’s unharmed – and no one believes her horrifying story. Ostracised by her colleagues, her family and her partner, she begins to wonder if she really is losing her mind.

And then she meets the next victim.

So compulsive you can’t stop reading.

So chilling you won’t stop talking about it.

Don’t Wake Up is a dark, gripping psychological thriller with a horrifying premise and a stinging twist . . .

Being Fit To Write

A Guest Post by Liz Lawler

For those of you who write, you already know how much energy it takes. How it wrings every last drop of emotion from your bones. How you creak when you try to get up from a position you have been sat in for many hours. Wired from endless coffees and bloated from crisps and biscuits, the crumbs of which have fallen onto your keyboard, reminding you of the abuse you have wrought your body that day. Enough of the self-pity, I hear you cry.

And you’re right! I have experienced those days, too many to count and the only remedy is to get off my jacksie and exercise. Fortunately, l love swimming and swim most days, though not gracefully. I am a tsunami swimmer, not intentionally, but my strokes seem to cause large amounts of water to splash into the faces of other swimmers. You will often hear me call out a ‘sorry’, especially to the lovely two ladies that keep their hair up off their faces with intention of keeping it dry. I usually find when I take an aqua aerobics class the other ladies give me plenty of space, even the shorter ladies are considerate and don’t seem to mind standing on tip toe at the back. This is an exercise with high-speed movements and containment. After one such class, one of the attenders, wet hair plastered to her face and mucous dribbling from her nose, bless her, who had been standing behind me, asked if I had a problem with my balance?

When I approach the water, I am a toe dipper, taking sometimes minutes to get in, shrieking like a seagull as it covers my calves, my thighs, my bum, shouting, ‘that it’s too cold’ to my neighbouring swimmers, who shake their heads resignedly. They are used to my noise and know I will settle down soon. The only time I brave the water fast is when my swimsuit has seen better days, and is hanging from my bottom, baggy and becoming see-through. Swimming is a solitary exercise and once I get going I am happy to plough up and down. It is my thinking time where I get to examine my day and try and remember if I have forgotten anything important. Was it bin day, today? Was I meant to see So and So today, or was that tomorrow? Was my two o’clock appointment to have a root canal filling for this Tuesday or last Tuesday? I usually have a ten minute panic attack where I fill in the missing memories of my life before I can get on with the other thinking stuff – the story inside my head, where I hear my characters’ dialogues and get excited when one of them says something unexpected. Usually at this point I get out of the pool on auto pilot, rinse, barely dry and rush home with a towel wrapped round my head, eager to write down what I heard. Invariably noticing later that I have my buttons done up wrong or my jumper on inside out and on one occasion, like last night, guiltily seeing the towel I’d hung on the line, similar in colour to mine except for its stripes, knowing it’s not mine, because my own unused dry towel is still in my swim bag.

Being fit to write is all about what suits you. Being fit to write for me is not just a physical ability but a mental one as well. So my advice to myself now, is to close my laptop, tip it upside down to rid it of crumbs, throw the piled-up  half-filled coffee mugs into the sink, grab the foreign towel and swimsuit off the line and get myself down to the swimming pool for a splash.

(Happy swimming and writing Liz!)

About Liz Lawler

Born in Chatham and partly raised in Dublin, Liz Lawler comes from a large family where she shared underwear and a place at a table for meals with her thirteen siblings. Liz has been a nurse for over twenty years in a hospital emergency department, a flight attendant and a manager of a five-star hotel. She now lives in Bath with her husband and Don’t Wake Up is her debut novel.

You can follow Liz on Twitter and find her on Facebook.

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