Patricia Dixon has her finger on the family pulse this festive season.
As readers everywhere settle into Boxing Day – some with disappointment over Christmas plans derailed and others with relief and joy that all has gone well – she explores the pressure of Yuletide and a dawning new year with a serious “nod” to Covid-19.
The mum-of-two – who once worked in the London world of haute couture before eventually becoming a novelist at 50 – tells P.S: “The reason I wrote Coming Home was because of all the effort that goes into Christmas and the feeling you have as it get closer that all your hard work and planning will be ruined.
“I asked my readers on line and they said they felt the same. So the basis of the book was the pressure we put on ourselves to get it right.”
Covid-19, she says, has made our Christmas and Hogmanay celebrations “very strange.”
The 57-year-old from Manchester explains: “You can’t not write about Covid because it’s there.
“I wouldn’t write a book centred on it, but you have to give it a nod. So this is about the first Christmas after the pandemic struck and Carmen who is determined to have all her family under one roof no matter what.
“Her three daughters are grown up and have children and she just wants them all together, where nothing can go wrong. But as with many families, each of the daughters has a secret that is about to be exposed.
“And the real reason Carmen hankers after the perfect Christmas day is because on Christmas Eve her dad left home. There are some big surprises in the novel and on the last page there is a twist that up to now not one person has seen coming.”
This book is her 14th, a family drama that mines “darker psychological demons”.
But the author of the Destiny series set in France says it’s not a departure – she regularly writes across genres for publishers Bloodhound Books.
She says: “I had just turned 50 when I started writing but I had never dreamed of being a writer.
“It wasn’t on my radar. After I had my children I was reading books and thinking, ‘I can do better than that’; I shocked myself more than anyone when I actually wrote a novel.”
Dixon – who with husband Brian, 61, a builder, has daughter Amy, 32, son Owen, 30, and grandson Harry, 12 – remembers the moment her life changed.
She says: “We were driving in France and I said to my husband: ‘I really want to write a book.’ He said, ‘Just do it then”. I got home and wrote the first book set in the Loire and inspired by everybody I know in France. That was in 2013.”
She self-published for three years until her first psychological thriller Over My Shoulder was picked up by Bloodhound co-founder Betsy Reavley.
“One morning I got an email from her saying they would like to work with me. I nearly fell off the chair,” she says.
That success was followed by They Don’t Know (2018), a top 100 best seller. Dixon says: “It was a dream ticket – the kind of thing everyone hopes will happen to them, but it happened to me. I couldn’t believe it and I couldn’t be more grateful to Betsy.”
Dixon’s next book is set in a French chateau but she has the kernel of an idea for Scotland. She smiles: “My favourite TV programme was Monarch of the Glen set in Kinloch Laggan. I have always wanted to do something in Scotland…”
Patricia Dixon – Coming Home, Bloodhound Books, £8.99
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