Isobel Blackthorn's Blog

About Murder on the Great Ocean Walk

When her zany neighbour Doris Cleaver invites Ruth Finlay on a hiking tour with a mixed group of trauma survivors, neither anticipates that they’ll have to solve a murder.

When one of the party, a nurse from Melbourne, is found dead in her room before they’ve even started the hike in Apollo Bay, they know there is a killer in their midst. Then, on that same day, one of the tour group disappears.

As Ruth battles a bout of influenza that leaves her weak and scarcely able to think, Doris gets up to her usual cantankerous antics. But are they being followed and why does the group seem to have a death wish, putting themselves in mortal danger on a daily basis?

An unputdownable mystery set in a wilderness of steep cliffs and tidal beaches, MURDER ON THE GREAT OCEAN WALK is the fourth book in Isobel Blackthorn’s Ruth Finlay Mysteries series.

Read the other the Ruth Finlay Mysteries

Choose your Bookstore

UNIVERSAL BOOK LINK: https://books2read.com/u/4EraPz

AMAZON: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FHVYZRHH

APPLE BOOKS: https://books.apple.com/us/book/murder-on-the-great-ocean-walk/id6748860532

BARNES & NOBLE: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/murder-on-the-great-ocean-walk-isobel-blackthorn/1147858450?ean=2940182248051

GOOGLE BOOKS: https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=-35yEQAAQBAJ

RAKUTEN KOBO: https://www.kobo.com/ebook/murder-on-the-great-ocean-walk

“Facing Africa had me quietly rooting for a sweet outcome beneath all that blazing sky and swirling dust” – Henry Roi

About Facing Africa

Fuerteventura, 1901. The island, just off the coast of Africa, is in the grip of a severe drought. As merchant and journalist Javier Morales campaigns to reforest the island, Famara, the daughter of an out of work farm labourer, is facing starvation.

She has a thirst of her own: she wants to learn to read. When Famara and Javier’s paths intertwine, neither of them can foresee the heartache that lies ahead.

Every day, Famara stands on the rooftop of her home and sweeps the dust that blows in from Africa. Gazing at the horizon, she wonders what lies beyond as a new longing grows in her heart. A longing for a man and a life she knows she cannot have.

Meanwhile, Javier is consumed with desire and guilt. He sees in his protégé hope of a better future for the island. Yet his family stand opposed.

With a beautiful and heart rending love story at its centre, Isobel Blackthorn’s FACING AFRICA depicts the struggle for change and autonomy during catastrophic times.

https://books2read.com/u/4D0Pge

Twelve of my novels appear in collections

If you feel like a bargain and fancy taking a chance on my writing, or you already enjoy my books and are keen to read more, then these collections are for you. Included here are bestsellers and award winners. All have received critical acclaim from hard to please book reviewers. All my books are available in ebook, paperback and hardcover formats and most are audiobooks, too. Here are the links.

The Canary Islands Mysteries Complete Series

Canary Islands Mysteries Books 1-3

Canary Islands Mysteries Books 4-5

The Indigo Flame (featuring The Drago Tree, Emma’s Tapestry, The Unlikely Occultist, and A Perfect Square)

A Dark Thrillogy (featuring The Legacy of Old Gran Parks, The Cabin Sessions, and Twerk)

Photo by Hans-Jürgen Weinhardt on Unsplash

There’s a lot of talk right now about the new self-publishing start up Spines, who plan to bring to publication 8,000 titles in 2025 by using AI to deal with the entire publishing process, from editing and proofreading through to publication and beyond. Someone with a manuscript will pay up to $5,000 for the privilege, as this article in The Bookseller explains.

In my view, Spines is just another step towards the automation of publishing, cutting out staff employed as cover designers, book editors and proofreaders and office workers. I bet the big publishers are watching with interest as Spines’ owners rake in the profits. (8,000 titles multiplied by the top tier of $5,000 = $40,000,000)

As the various publishing roles disappear, authors get to see their work turned into a sausage in a sausage factory. Authors who quickly discover, after shelling out their hard cash, that their book is doomed to sell a couple of hundred copies at best unless they themselves perform miracles in the promo sphere.

Fiction publishing is already becoming a creative dead zone filled with uninspiring mass market books churned out by the indies and trad publishers alike to make as much money as possible. A flat landscape that has all but forgotten the concepts of art and creativity. A desert devoid of quality and integrity. A terrain that offers readers little to nothing by way of elevation or insight or light bulb moments.

In response, this author will keep bucking the trend regardless of how many copies get sold. If those are the sorts of books you like, stick around.

I’m 62 years old and a woman. After living sixteen months now with Long Covid, I have decided to add my story to my website in the hope that it contributes something of value. First up, this is not a recovery story. It is a story of what it takes to live with Long Covid.

I caught Covid in March 2023. An Omicron variant, I imagine. I had a weird sore throat that lasted for two weeks, the virus heading north into my sinuses. I seemed to bounce back okay and thought nothing of it. I started to notice weird symptoms in May and June. I couldn’t handle the sun or the heat. I would go dizzy and feel strange. I continued as normal, keeping fit working out at home. Then, on 4 August that year, I was getting up off the floor after a half hour workout – 2 kilos weights, squats etc, followed by some stretches – when something felt like it had exploded in my head and I went violently dizzy. I felt as though I was overheating. I crawled to a spot under the air conditioning and turned it on full. I began to cool down but the dizziness wouldn’t stop. I worried that I had had a stroke so I called an ambulance. At the hospital, I was briefly examined (with no tests) and told it was heat stress and to go home and rest. I only realised it was not heat stress when I was still dizzy and foggy in my head many days later. Plus, I had fatigue. I also noticed that the symptoms were a lot like those I endured after the Covid vaccines. I even wondered if it was possible to relapse from a vaccine. But no. It was Long Covid.

The brain fog and dizziness and fatigue and migraines and energy crashes went on for months. Simple domestic tasks were an ordeal. I became very heat intolerant and had to run the air con 24/7. I was living in a hot climate and I could scarcely leave my little upstairs flat. I sold that flat and moved to somewhere a lot cooler.

The cooler weather made a difference. By now I was taking low dose aspirin. I also rested and rested and rested. I found resting helped a lot. Plus sleep. Loads and loads of sleep. Every day was the same as the last, a long and tedious marathon. Unpacking the groceries delivered to the door was a major ordeal that had to be done in stages. Cleaning the home was an all-day activity. I tried to pace and often failed and paid the price.

I began reading up on Long Covid, seeing if I could find any other ways I could help myself. After reading scores of research papers, I was as sure as I could be that I was looking at thrombo-inflammation, and that it was most likely caused by viral persistence. That my immune system was going nuts one way and another.

I didn’t get far into my research before I caught Covid for the second time between Christmas and New Year 2023. It manifested as a very bad head cold. I was infectious for about ten days. I bounced back okay but I knew I still had Long Covid 1 and needed to be careful. I found myself turning down invitations to go out. I couldn’t walk far without feeling dizzy. And then at the end of March, Long Covid 2 made itself known to me and I went downhill again with fatigue and dizziness and brain fog and energy crashes.

By then, I had seen a doctor for some blood tests. My C-reactive protein was elevated but not alarmingly so, as was my erythrocyte sedimentation rate. Both show inflammation. Negative for Rheumatoid Arthritis. I compared my results to those I found in a study of other Long Covid sufferers and they matched.

The doctor was no help. He told me to go home, lead a normal life and forget about it. I do wonder if he even believed me.

After a few months of rest and self care, the fatigue and dizziness and crashing eased somewhat, but a new wave of pain took centre stage. Sharp pain in my tendons and muscles, especially in my butt and upper legs. Tender fascia. Migraines, and whole body aches as though I have the flu. Pain in my spine. There one day, gone the next. Pain in a tooth. I went to the dentist. All was fine.

Now, sixteen months in, I look for signs of recovery. I know I am a lot better than I was, but that might be because I am managing it. With the exception of brain fog, every symptom will and does resurface.

There is also something that I would call the Long Covid mood, a sort of internal ambience, a dullness of being, an absence of enthusiasm, that for me is not depression, not even pessimism, but a mild psychological bleakness, the sort of state of mind that comes with perpetual struggle. I have read that Serotonin levels are reduced in Long Covid sufferers. Maybe that explains it.

I think my muscles have atrophied. I have tried to exercise and stretch but my body really doesn’t like it. I can walk one kilometre – I used to walk 10, fast – and I mean 500 metres there and 500 metres back at a moderate pace. I can do that maybe twice a week. That is all. I have learned to listen to my body. I try to pace. I avoid pushing myself because I have post-exertional malaise or PEM. It can come on quickly, or one or even two days later. Sometimes it is hard to pinpoint the trigger. PEM equals the reappearance of all the usual symptoms in varying degrees of intensity and duration. The more active I am, the worse the PEM backlash. It can set me back weeks. I have decided that triggering PEM is a very bad idea. After all, if I have symptoms, then what damage is being done inside my body? Consequently, I go deaf when someone mentions graded exercise.

I go deaf when anyone not suffering from Long Covid (or ME/CFS/fibromyalgia) offers me advice.

And I am not giving any health advice to anyone. But out of interest, here’s what I take every day: Two litres of filtered water. Low dose aspirin to help with microclots. An antihistamine as I am allergic to house dust anyway and it’s recommended. Top quality coenzyme Q10 for mitochondria and heart. Vitamin D, Vitamins B, live yogurt (although I know keffir is better), Magnesium in case it helps my muscles, and CBD oil which has completely cleared my brain fog. Also olives and olive oil. I stick to a healthy diet, as healthy as I am able to make it. I do my best to avoid anti-inflammatories but I will take a paracetamol occasionally, to take the edge off. I am still toying with Nattokinase as quite a few have said it helps.

I am not able to forget that I have Long Covid. I have no idea if I am going to recover or at what point my body decides it has reached a new status quo. I do know that improvements in my health are progressing at the speed of a glacier. I might have a couple of good weeks and think I’m doing fine, and then I go downhill again. I know if I push myself, I get worse. Everything I do has a price.

I am learning from my own experience that catching Covid a second time has meant a second round of Long Covid on top of the first, and I am as sure as I can be that the ‘recovery’ clock has reset to zero. Maybe the new Covid strain has parked up in a reservoir or two somewhere in the body, playing a game of dare with the old strain, maybe. My poor body! When the immune system is out of whack, when for whatever reason it doesn’t work like it’s supposed to, it feels like you are being beaten up on the inside and there is scarcely a thing you can do to fix it.

I want to end on a note of hope. I’m a novelist and I have found that the one activity I can pursue with relative ease is being creative. I don’t know why it is that my creative brain is pretty much unaffected by Long Covid, whereas if I have to concentrate on anything, do stuff like admin or problem solving or do anything mentally that is stressful, I quickly go downhill and I can stay that way for days or weeks. Being creative is relaxing and soothing. If I didn’t write, then maybe I would draw or get out the colouring pencils. Anything I can pick up and put down that is not strenuous and puts me in the zone. I mention this here in case it helps. They do say that activating the parasympathetic nervous system can help. But I am not going to claim that it is a cure. It is very easy to mistake cause for coincidence.

I stand in solidarity with the worldwide community of Long Covid sufferers as well as those with ME/CFS/fibromyalgia.

I’m 62 years old and a woman. After living sixteen months now with Long Covid, I have decided to add my story to my website in the hope that it contributes something of value. First up, this is not a recovery story. It is a story of what it takes to live with Long Covid.

I caught Covid in March 2023. An Omicron variant, I imagine. I had a weird sore throat that lasted for two weeks, the virus heading north into my sinuses. I seemed to bounce back okay and thought nothing of it. I started to notice weird symptoms in May and June. I couldn’t handle the sun or the heat. I would go dizzy and feel strange. I continued as normal, keeping fit working out at home. Then, on 4 August that year, I was getting up off the floor after a half hour workout – 2 kilos weights, squats etc, followed by some stretches – when something felt like it had exploded in my head and I went violently dizzy. I felt as though I was overheating. I crawled to a spot under the air conditioning and turned it on full. I began to cool down but the dizziness wouldn’t stop. I worried that I had had a stroke so I called an ambulance. At the hospital, I was briefly examined (with no tests) and told it was heat stress and to go home and rest. I only realised it was not heat stress when I was still dizzy and foggy in my head many days later. Plus, I had fatigue. I also noticed that the symptoms were a lot like those I endured after the Covid vaccines. I even wondered if it was possible to relapse from a vaccine. But no. It was Long Covid.

The brain fog and dizziness and fatigue and migraines and energy crashes went on for months. Simple domestic tasks were an ordeal. I became very heat intolerant and had to run the air con 24/7. I was living in a hot climate and I could scarcely leave my little upstairs flat. I sold that flat and moved to somewhere a lot cooler.

The cooler weather made a difference. By now I was taking low dose aspirin. I also rested and rested and rested. I found resting helped a lot. Plus sleep. Loads and loads of sleep. Every day was the same as the last, a long and tedious marathon. Unpacking the groceries delivered to the door was a major ordeal that had to be done in stages. Cleaning the home was an all-day activity. I tried to pace and often failed and paid the price.

I began reading up on Long Covid, seeing if I could find any other ways I could help myself. After reading scores of research papers, I was as sure as I could be that I was looking at thrombo-inflammation, and that it was most likely caused by viral persistence. That my immune system was going nuts one way and another.

I didn’t get far into my research before I caught Covid for the second time between Christmas and New Year 2024. It manifested as a very bad head cold. I was infectious for about ten days. I bounced back okay but I knew I still had Long Covid 1 and needed to be careful. I found myself turning down invitations to go out. I couldn’t walk far without feeling dizzy. And then at the end of March, Long Covid 2 made itself known to me and I went downhill again with fatigue and dizziness and brain fog and energy crashes.

By then, I had seen a doctor for some blood tests. My C-reactive protein was elevated but not alarmingly so, as was my erythrocyte sedimentation rate. Both show inflammation. Negative for Rheumatoid Arthritis. I compared my results to those I found in a study of other Long Covid sufferers and they matched.

The doctor was no help. He told me to go home, lead a normal life and forget about it. I do wonder if he even believed me.

After a few months of rest and self care, the fatigue and dizziness and crashing eased somewhat, but a new wave of pain took centre stage. Sharp pain in my tendons and muscles, especially in my butt and upper legs. Tender fascia. Migraines, and whole body aches as though I have the flu. Pain in my spine. There one day, gone the next. Pain in a tooth. I went to the dentist. All was fine.

Now, sixteen months in, I look for signs of recovery. I know I am a lot better than I was, but that might be because I am managing it. With the exception of brain fog, every symptom will and does resurface.

There is also something that I would call the Long Covid mood, a sort of internal ambience, a dullness of being, an absence of enthusiasm, that for me is not depression, not even pessimism, but a mild psychological bleakness, the sort of state of mind that comes with perpetual struggle. I have read that Serotonin levels are reduced in Long Covid sufferers. Maybe that explains it.

I think my muscles have atrophied. I have tried to exercise and stretch but my body really doesn’t like it. I can walk one kilometre – I used to walk 10, fast – and I mean 500 metres there and 500 metres back at a moderate pace. I can do that maybe twice a week. That is all. I have learned to listen to my body. I try to pace. I avoid pushing myself because I have post-exertional malaise or PEM. It can come on quickly, or one or even two days later. Sometimes it is hard to pinpoint the trigger. PEM equals the reappearance of all the usual symptoms in varying degrees of intensity and duration. The more active I am, the worse the PEM backlash. It can set me back weeks. I have decided that triggering PEM is a very bad idea. After all, if I have symptoms, then what damage is being done inside my body? Consequently, I go deaf when someone mentions graded exercise.

I go deaf when anyone not suffering from Long Covid (or ME/CFS/fibromyalgia) offers me advice.

And I am not giving any health advice to anyone. But out of interest, here’s what I take every day: Two litres of filtered water. Low dose aspirin to help with microclots. An antihistamine as I am allergic to house dust anyway and it’s recommended. Top quality coenzyme Q10 for mitochondria and heart. Vitamin D, Vitamins B, live yogurt (although I know keffir is better), Magnesium in case it helps my muscles, and CBD oil which has completely cleared my brain fog. Also olives and olive oil. I stick to a healthy diet, as healthy as I am able to make it. I do my best to avoid anti-inflammatories but I will take a paracetamol occasionally, to take the edge off. I am still toying with Nattokinase as quite a few have said it helps.

I am not able to forget that I have Long Covid. I have no idea if I am going to recover or at what point my body decides it has reached a new status quo. I do know that improvements in my health are progressing at the speed of a glacier. I might have a couple of good weeks and think I’m doing fine, and then I go downhill again. I know if I push myself, I get worse. Everything I do has a price.

I am learning from my own experience that catching Covid a second time has meant a second round of Long Covid on top of the first, and I am as sure as I can be that the ‘recovery’ clock has reset to zero. Maybe the new Covid strain has parked up in a reservoir or two somewhere in the body, playing a game of dare with the old strain, maybe. My poor body! When the immune system is out of whack, when for whatever reason it doesn’t work like it’s supposed to, it feels like you are being beaten up on the inside and there is scarcely a thing you can do to fix it.

I want to end on a note of hope. I’m a novelist and I have found that the one activity I can pursue with relative ease is being creative. I don’t know why it is that my creative brain is pretty much unaffected by Long Covid, whereas if I have to concentrate on anything, do stuff like admin or problem solving or do anything mentally that is stressful, I quickly go downhill and I can stay that way for days or weeks. Being creative is relaxing and soothing. If I didn’t write, then maybe I would draw or get out the colouring pencils. Anything I can pick up and put down that is not strenuous and puts me in the zone. I mention this here in case it helps. They do say that activating the parasympathetic nervous system can help. But I am not going to claim that it is a cure. It is very easy to mistake cause for coincidence.

I stand in solidarity with the worldwide community of Long Covid sufferers as well as those with ME/CFS/fibromyalgia.

About A Cat’s Cradle

Nobody is innocent, nobody tells the truth…
Perhaps, in the darkness, Ralph thinks of the other child, the child whom he killed all those years ago. But he will not say so: he has served his time. After all, he was little more than a child himself when he went to prison for it. He is older now and the world has moved on.
Only his ailing mother – who wishes he had been hanged – knows that he is out. She will not speak of him. Nobody wants him.
Nobody except Mary, a little girl from outside the village, who meets him one afternoon after chasing his mother’s cat. Perhaps he thinks of the other child then, but there is really no connection. The other child had been beautiful, which Mary wasn’t. The other child wanted everything, but Mary wants nothing except his friendship.
Everyone needs a friend. What could be the harm in that?

My Review

A superbly narrated psychological thriller set in 1962, A Cat’s Cradle will chill readers to the bone with its artfully deceptive narration. If you were to skip the first two pages, the novel reads as innocent as an Enid Blyton tale. A Cat’s Cradle is anything but. The depths of insight into childhood naivety, and the motivations, prejudices and self-justifications of adults is profound.

Seven-year-old Mary follows a wounded cat to an old house outside her village and encounters Ralph, a strange young man who is visiting his ageing and ill mother. They form and unlikely friendship, both of them loners seeking some form of happiness.

With every chapter that passes, Mary is led or lured ever more into the web woven from her by ex-con and child abuser and murderer Ralph, a man who appears not to know any other way of being, The up-close domestic feel that pervades the narrative contributes to the foreboding atmosphere as what may be passed over or hurried thorough in other novels is put under the microscope for detailed examination.

Ralph slowly erodes Mary’s boundaries by creating a fantasy world for them both to inhabit. It is their secret. He does wrestle with his conscience, he is in a perpetual state of crisis, and yet he is driven by compulsions he seems unable to understand, let alone transcend. And so it must be Mary’s fault, mustn’t it.

Meanwhile, everyone has a part to play in the village community of Heckleford. A harried and thoroughly disempowered mother abandoned by her husband and left poor and desperate, too proud and filled with shame and humiliation to seek help. Mary’s two older brothers who really can’t be bothered keeping an eye on their little sister. The harsh and judgmental grandmother. Mary’s ex-friend, Rita. What unfolds is a conspiracy of circumstances with an unexpected and dramatic ending. I commend the author for taking on such a difficult subject and doing so with such aplomb that the unfolding story holds the attention regardless.

About the Author

Carly Rheilan was born in Malta and lives in the UK. She was educated in Oxford University (which she hated and left) and then at Brunel (a small-town technological university where she stayed for a PhD). As an academic and a psychiatric nurse she has done research into criminal justice, taught in universities and worked for many years in the NHS. She has children of her own and has also fostered two children with mental health problems.

Her novels address issues at the edges of psychiatry, crime and personal trauma.

Asylum tells the story of Cabdi, the survivor of an African massacre, and Mustaf, a trafficked childCats Cradle tells the story of a relationship between a child and a paedophileBirthRights is a story about a childless psychiatrist seeking a fraudulent motherhood

When not writing her own novels, Carly promotes the work of other indie authors through the book promotion company Coffee and Thorn. She also boxes (joyfully but badly), rages against the decline of left wing politics in her unequal country (pointlessly), campaigns for the introduction of parole in Mississippi (without success), and fights a solitary battle against acres of nettles in a community garden (so far the nettles are winning). But most of all, she loves to spend time with her family, who forgive her failures and make her happy.

Purchase link: https://mybook.to/CatsCradle

Ebook editions only $0.99 for a limited time.

“inspiring and engrossing” – Pickled Thoughts and Pinot

“absolutely beautifully written and immersive” – Jera’s Jamboree

“Emma’s Tapestry will make you think, reflect, and gain insight in ways you never expect.” – Tessa Talks

About Emma’s Tapestry

At the dawn of World War Two, German-born nurse Emma Taylor sits by the bedside of a Jewish heiress in London as she reminisces over her dear friend, Oscar Wilde.

As the story of Wilde unravels, so does Emma’s past. What really happened to her husband?

She’s taken back to her days in Singapore on the eve of World War One. To her disappointing marriage to a British export agent, her struggle to fit into colonial life and the need to hide her true identity.

Emma is caught up in history, the highs, the lows, the adventures. A deadly mutiny, terrifying rice riots and a confrontation with the Ku Klux Klan bring home, for all migrants, the fragility of belonging.

Estoy muy feliz de compartir esta entrevista del canal La Taberna de Rudolph Steiner. Hablo de la vida y las ideas de Alice Bailey.

Hace dos años Oscar Gonzalez me envió un correo con una solicitud. ¿Podría hablar de Alice Bailey en Español? Estaba viviendo en Australia y no tenía suficiente español para hacerlo. Ahora vivo en España y con mucho esfuerzo ahora puedo entender y hablar mucho mas que antes. Pero pensar en otro idioma sobre el tema de esoterismo no es nada. Espero haberlo hecho bien y haber dicho algo interesante.

Aquí está la enlace a la biografía de Alice Bailey en español https://books2read.com/u/4jP5XD

Ruth Finlay Mysteries Book 3 About A Cape, A Rock and A Murder

When Ruth lets her neighbour and sidekick Doris accompany her on a trip to Cape Bridgewater, an idyllic coastal location known for its pristine natural beauty, the last thing she expects to find is a body.

With a feature to write and the promise of romance in the air, Ruth is reluctant to investigate another mysterious death. But Doris has other ideas, and drags Ruth into the confusing world of a local family’s inheritance dispute over a rundown old farm.

With few clues and many culprits, their investigations seem to be going nowhere – until a shocking discovery turns the whole case on its head.

Set in southern Australia, A CAPE, A ROCK AND A MURDER is the third book in Isobel Blackthorn’s series of cozy mysteries.

You can find your copy here https://books2read.com/u/bzAlv2