Lucy Robinson's Blog

It’s here! The Day We Disappeared didn’t disappear at all! Instead it arrived in great piles on bookshelves; it fell through letter boxes and downloaded into peoples’ e-readers and kept people up until the wee hours. (Which, as any writer will tell you, is a win.) IT HAS APPEARED EVERYWHERE. The wait is over!

BUT THE FUN TOTALLY DOES NOT END THERE.

I am thrilled – and I mean, SUPER-thrilled- to announce that we have paired up with the brilliant daily fashion and culture email, Emerald Street and the jaw-droppingly fabulous Lulu Guinness brand – home to unique and beautiful British handbags – to offer not only signed copies of my book but THE MOST STUNNING HANDBAG ON EARTH. A red polished calf leather Paula bag. *Faints*

Do not waste any further time on this website. Go straight to Emerald Street to enter the competition and spread the word. I will most certainly be entering, even though they’d never let me win. I want that handbag so bad. LOOK AT IT!!

COMPETITION HERE.

And if you’re still here, you can check out The Day We Disappeared right here. Thanks for your support, everyone. Your reviews – be they in newspapers or magazines, or on blogs, websites, social media, Goodreads or Amazon, have truly made it all worthwhile. You rule. x

Available April 9th! Click here to pre-order..

‘Awe-inspiring . . . enthralling from the get-go‘ Heat

‘A fabulous and original love story‘ Lucy Dillon

‘The perfect blend of wit, warmth and mystery, that will keep you hooked until the last page‘ Rowan Coleman

‘The Day We Disappeared is intriguing and upligting – a real page-turner‘ Julie Cohen

‘The finest example of a romantic mystery you’ll read all year‘ Victoria Fox

‘‘A novel that is as sad as it is funny as it is psychologically thrilling‘ Katy Regan

Six thirty a.m., a Tuesday in April. A lone girl walks through an empty landscape at daybreak. Around her is a web of fine white lace, a million tiny pearls of water scooped up from the English Channel and carried high over Exmoor before settling in the fields. Every few paces she turns and looks at the little footsteps she’s left, as if to check she is still alone. Sometimes I did that. Pictured myself as if I were in a film script: a lone woman picking her way through an empty landscape. It was the sort of thing that only the maddest article would do, probably, but it kept me on my toes. ‘Never forget the man in your shadow,’ I muttered to myself.

Annie has a secret. But if she’s not going to tell, we won’t either. It’s a heart-breaking secret she wishes she didn’t have – yet Annie isn’t broken, not quite yet. Especially now there’s someone out there who seems determined to fix her.

Kate has run away. But she’s not going to tell us why – that would defeat the point of running, wouldn’t it? It’s proving difficult to reinvent herself, however, with one person always on her mind.

Scratch beneath the surface and nobody is really who they seem. Even Annie and Kate, two old friends, aren’t entirely sure who they are any more. Perhaps you can work it out, before their pasts catch up with them for good . . .

A gripping and unpredictable story of two young women running from their pasts.

Dearest Readers,

Blimey. What a summer! I have been working like an absolute mad one, which is why you’ve not heard so much from me on the blog and interweb. But the end result is my new novel, about which I am incredibly excited to be – finally – sharing details.

It’s my most ambitious yet and at times drove me mad. But I’m very happy I ploughed on because the result is, hopefully, a big, brave, dark, funny and uplifting story. That was the plan, anyway.

It’s definitely a step forward for Lucy Robinson. You can expect the usual rudeness and love story (in fact there’s two love stories in this one) but there’s also some meatier things going on.

Details of how to win a limited edition neon pink signed copy of the proof are below!

So without further ado, I proudly present…

THE DAY WE DISAPPEARED

By Lucy Robinson

Publication day: April 9th 2015

Annie has a secret. But if she’s not going to tell, we won’t either. It’s a heart-breaking secret she wishes she didn’t have – yet Annie isn’t broken, not quite yet. Especially now there’s someone out there who seems determined to fix her.

Kate has run away. But she’s not going to tell us why – that would defeat the point of running, wouldn’t it? It’s proving difficult to reinvent herself, however, with one person always on her mind.

Scratch beneath the surface and nobody is really who they seem. Even Annie and Kate, two old friends, aren’t entirely sure who they are any more. Perhaps you can work it out, before their pasts catch up with them for good . . .

EXTRA-EXCITING BIT: Penguin have printed a rather fabulous limited edition of neon pink proof copies. To be in with a chance of winning one of these rare copies – signed by me, of course – simply tweet a picture of the book jacket, making sure @Lucy_Robinson and #TheDayWeDisappeared are included in your post! Or share on FB with the same hashtag. Good luck!

No blog for months! Hardly any tweets! Sub-standard facebooking!

Where the feck is Lucy Robinson?

She’s here, just. It’s been a mad few months, and the madness continues. It will continue until mid-November at which point I am going to sit on a Greek Island for several months and nobody will stop me. Not even The Man. He can come, if he likes (I hope he does) but if he doesn’t then I shall just have to get it on with Nykos or Stavros or basically anyone who will have me. (Nobody will have me. I’m wrecked.)

My lovely novel The Unfinished Symphony of You and Me came out in June* and, after my very enjoyable book launch, I realised that there was the small matter of my having to write about 70,000 words by the end of August. I’d actually been working very hard on novel 4 but had not quite done the maths. So I spent the entire summer locked in my writing room.

I sent off the manuscript for novel 4. ‘It’s awful,’ I told my agent. ‘No it’s not,’ she snapped. ‘Stop being a dick.’**

I decided I didn’t care if it was awful. I was now freeeee! Free to lie in! Free to paint my house! Free to hang out with The Man for the first time in months!

Sadly, my bank balance said otherwise. My bank balance said, ‘go back to TV, please. You need to get me some pounds, ho.’

So I did. I worked on a lot of arts and history telly in my day and found it to be incredibly satisfying, intellectually. And thus when I was offered a ten week contract working in just that area, I was thrilled. I started a little over three weeks ago and have been pumping my brain full of academic superfood. Has been such a delight to engage with the stuff that makes me feel alive.

But then my cocking rewrites came in. With a month deadline! A month! ARGH! Even without another full time job that’d be hard!

But Penguin are working their asses off for me at the moment, so I am working my ass off for them. I get up at 5am and work on my novel until 9. Then I shove breakfast into my mouth and go and spend eight hours writing about intellectual things. Then I come home and carry on with my novel.

Which is why you have not seen me much of late. And why you will continue not to see much of me. But I’m still here. And I’m sending love.

When I’m back, I’ll tell you all about my summer. About the bit where I went raw and vegan (I KNOW. I KNOW. THE WORST MIDDLE-CLASS CLICHE OF ALL TIME.) And the bit where I took my own advice and did something reeeeeally brave. And the bit where The Man and I were attacked by a plague of man-eating beasts. It’s all to come. As, most excitingly of all, is BIG NEWS about novel 4. Not just that it’s coming, because that’s fairly average news. No, this feels like bigger news than that. But I can’t tell you anything yet. This one’s a top secret book. Haha!

Right, well at the end of the worst blog I’ve ever written, which I’m too tired even to proof-read, I’m off to write some book. And then go to bed at 9.

Amazing scenes!

Love, gropes and manuscripts,

Robinson x

*Yep, I’m still praising my own novel. But so are you guys too! I’m SO EFFING THRILLED that so many of you have loved it! Those amazon reviews! Holy cack! Much love and thanks.

** She didn’t really snap, it just sounds better.

HI THERE.

An explanation of what’s going on with my blog at the moment can be found here.

Today’s episode follows on from my attempted date with Paul in Buenos Aires. Poor, hopeless me.

http://lucy-robinson.co.uk/brinkmanship/

Morning all! HAPPY MONDAY.

So, I explained here why I’m not doing my Life I Love blog for a short while.

Here, following on from where I left off on Friday, is my third Argentina blog. It’s the one where I sort of got a date with a bloke called Paul.

http://lucy-robinson.co.uk/romance-fewer-options/

I explained here why I’m not able to write my Life I Love blog at the moment. (TEMPORARILY!)

So to continue where I left off yesterday, here is blog two from my life in Argentina all those years ago…

http://lucy-robinson.co.uk/romance-four-options/

I’m struggling to find time to upload my daily Life I Love blog at the moment. I’m still making sure I take note of all the things that make me smile, but the small matter of having, erm, FIFTY THOUSAND WORDS TO WRITE IN SIX WEEKS, plus a fuck-load of quite serious plot wrangling, is impeding my ability to share such moments with you. Sorry.

So, in the interim, I have decided to introduce you (or re-introduce the die-hards amongst you) to my early blogs from Argentina. I lived there for a year starting June 2010 and had the very best time of my life. On my second day there I watched Argentina crash out of the World Cup semi-final (to Germany!) and so when I saw my poor beloved friends being bumped out once again last Sunday, I was prompted to go and explore those old blogs again. Oh, how I laughed! Brave yet frightened Robinson, starting out completely on her own South America, knowing not a soul. Single (it was pre-The Man), newly signed to Penguin, trying to write her first novel while learning Spanish and training to be an English teacher. Falling in lust with guitar-playing hippies and eating the finest steak on earth. Mad as a bloody BADGER.

Such nostalgia! Lovely.

So I thought I’d share these early blogs with you. Back then they appeared on Marieclaire.co.uk but when I set up on my own I brought them over here.

Enjoy!

ARGENTINA BLOG ONE: ‘Well, hola innit!’

http://lucy-robinson.co.uk/well-hola-innit/

Look who The Man and I are looking after this week, at our friends’ beautiful farm! NICE PIGGIES!

A cafe opened at the end of my road recently. I knew I was going to like it. Possibly because it’s an unpretentious looking place with not a stupid cupcake in site, possibly because when I finally made it there the other day they were closed for a week because they’d gone to Glastonbury.

My kind of girls. There was a huge picture of the two of them in the window, loaded up and ready to go to the festival, one wearing knickers and sturdy boots. Even better. These are not the kind of ladies to be found standing at a pink magimix wearing tea dresses and vintage-inspired hairstyles, baking pretty chocolate cakes and ‘luscious treats for girly nights in!!!’

And thank bollocks for that.

Katie and Kim seem far more likely to be pulling mint out of the ground, sizzling free-range chorizo and cultivating their sourdough starter. Everything about their cafe is a delight, from the long uneven table of reclaimed wood that runs down the centre to their Eccles cakes which are unparalleled. In fact so good I nearly wept. Squidgy; rich; perfectly balanced.

I had a courgette, mint and ewe’s curd thing on sourdough and also ate more than my fair share of The Man’s chorizo thing; a gloriously colourful (not to mention feckin’ delicious) concoction served on a milk bun. Oh and I also tried our friend’s toasted cheese scone with perfect eggs trembling on top, which was as close to sex as a cheese scone could get. (As you might have noted by now, I am no food reviewer.)

And that is all I have to say. Katie and Kim’s Kitchen is so good you may want to consider taking a train to Bristol just for some lunch.