I’m pleased to announce that a new Sophie Sayers short story, Nowhere to Hide, will be published in a new charity anthology called The Little Shop of Murderson 1st April 2023. By chance, that date marks the sixth anniversary of the publication of my debut novel, Best Murder in Show, Sophie’s first adventure. so I’ll have two reasons to celebrate!
The ebook is now available to preorder, and the paperback will be available on the launch date. Read on to find out more about the project, to which 15 bestselling crime writers have contributed stories. All profits will be donated to support three excellent charities for children, including Read for Good, for which I worked for three very happy years.
Read on to find out more about the anthology, the authors, the stories, and the charities, and how to order your copies.
In the run-up to World Kindness Day(13th November), I fell to wondering exactly what the word “kindness” means – not in behavioural terms, but regarding its etymology.
The dictionary reveals that the noun “kindness” is related to kin, as in family (kith and kin) or race (mankind). As an adjective, it originally meant “with the feeling of relatives for each other” – all very well provided your family members had a high regard for each other. Not until the fourteenth century did “kindness” begin to be used more in the modern sense: “courtesy or noble deeds”, with “noble” indicating selflessness rather than a posh pedigree.
Fast forward to the twenty-first century, and scientists can prove that when we are kind to others, our brains release feel-good hormones such as dopamine, oxytocin and serotonin, bringing us physical and mental health benefits.
My grandma used to tell me “Virtue is its own reward”, but so, it seems, is kindness. Thus being kind to others is also an act of self-care – and a great way to make yourself feel better that is entirely free of calories and alcohol units.
The Random Acts of Kindness Foundation, created in 1995, promotes the idea of spontaneous generous gestures to strangers, such as leaving money behind the till of a coffee shop for the next homeless customer or letting someone go in front of you in a supermarket queue. Many such acts are done anonymously.
The phrase “anonymous benefactor” always makes me think of Magwitch in Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations, although most nameless donors will have only anonymity in common with Pip’s ex-convict associate.
Plot spoiler alert: Magwitch is Pip’s anonymous benefactor in Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations. Illustration by J Clayton Clarke (Kyd), public domain.
When making online donations I always hesitate before clicking the “show my name on the website” box in case it looks like virtue-signalling. I also wonder whether offering this option is just smart psychology on the part of fundraising sites. Do donors who make their name visible feel obliged to give more money than those who hide their identity? I’d love to know.
Now here’s an easy way to commit an act of kindness that will not only lift your spirits but include a reward in, er, kind: order a copy of Everyday Kindness, a new anthology of 55 short stories on the theme of kindness, each by a different author, one of whom is me. The anthology, launched on World Kindness Day, is the brainchild of its editor, bestselling novelist and philanthropist L J Ross. All the authors have donated their stories for free, and all profits will go to Shelter, the charity for the homeless and those in poor housing. The hardback and ebook may be ordered online via this link: linktr.ee/EverydayKindness, or you can order your copy from your favourite bookshop.
There, I feel better for that!
Click the image to order your copy now
This post was originally published in the November issue of the Tetbury Advertiser
A post to mark the launch of the new anthology, Everyday Kindness
When I was a little girl, the idea that your name suggested the kind of person you become seemed part of the natural order of things. Noddy was so-called because he nodded his head a lot, making the bell on his blue cap jingle, and Big Ears – well, you can work that one out for yourself.
To my amusement, I’ve just discovered that the name of this phenomenon, nominative determinism, was coined in 1994 by the magazine New Scientist after it had noticed certain researchers had appropriate names, such as Daniel Snowman, author of a book on polar exploration, and the duo Splatt and Weedon, who wrote a report about urology.
However, the name that has most resonated with me over the years is one I encountered in a primary school assembly, when our headmaster, Mr Bowering, introduced us to one Mrs Doasyouwouldbedoneby. In Charles Kingsley’sThe Water Babies, along with her counterpart Mrs Bedonebyasyoudid, she teaches the value of kindness to young Tom, after he has been transformed by drowning into a Water Baby. (My, those Victorian children’s stories were harsh.)
Lifelong I have borne her name in mind as a shorthand for kindness, and a secular, catchier equivalent of that bit from the Sermon on the Mount: “All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.” But until I looked her up the other day, I’d misremembered her as a character from John Bunyan’s A Pilgrim’s Progress, another of Mr Bowering’s favourites, in which the central character, Christian, undertakes a journey to the Celestial City guided by Evangelist, despite protests from grumpy neighbour Obstinate and accompanied by the flaky Pliable.
Title page of A Pilgrim’s Progress, 1678 (Public domain)
I was considering reacquainting myself with her by rereading the novel when I spotted reviews that in classic BBC style warn “it contains attitudes of its time” – as if the central premise of sending the children to watery graves wasn’t warning enough. But in the month that features World Kindness Day (13th November), I’d like to pay tribute to Mrs Doasyouwouldbedoneby’s principles and to her creator Charles Kingsley.
As a child, I wondered about the origin of such names.
Did Obstinate’s parents name him because he was a very stubborn baby? Did Noddy enter this world with an exceptionally weak neck, even by the standard of newborns? Did Big Ears’ poor mother require a Caesarean?
Of course, as I grew up, I realised all those characters, unlike the New Scientist’s researchers, are fictitious and their names are simply artistic devices. Even so, I wonder whether I missed a trick when naming my daughter Laura, when I could have chosen a virtue – Faith, Hope or Charity – or even plumped for Lottery Winner Young.
FOR WORLD KINDNESS DAY
World Kindness Day also saw the launch of Everyday Kindness, a new anthology of short stories on the theme of kindness, devised and edited by bestselling mystery writer L J Ross. The stories are written by 55 different authors, one of which is me. My story is Christmas Ginger, the Sophie Sayers prequel, about her Great Auntie May, spending a lonely Christmas in Wendlebury Barrow until an act of kindness by a villager transforms her festive season. This is the first time story has been published in book form.
All profits will go to Shelter, the charity for the homeless and those in poor housing. The book is available online in hardback and ebook via this link: https://linktr.ee/EverydayKindness, or you can order it from your favourite high street bookshop. A great Christmas present or an uplifting gift to self!
Click the image to order your copy now
This post was originally written for the November issue of the Hawkesbury Parish News
Each of the 50 contributors has their name on the spine of one of the books on the cover – mine is in the pile on the right.
I’m very excited today to see my name (in very small print!) on the front cover of the latest issue of the British book trade magazine The Bookseller.
The reason? I’m one of 50 contributors to a wonderful charity anthology, Everyday Kindness, edited by L J Ross, bestselling crime writer of the DCI Ryan mystery series. All proceeds will be donated to Shelter, the British charity for the homeless and those in poor housing.
The names of each of the 50 contributing authors are on the spines of the books in the cover image, a painting donated by the artist Andrew Davidson.
I’m honoured that Louise (LJ) loved the story I submitted and chose to include it in the anthology.
The story is a spin-off from my Sophie Sayers Village Mysteries. In Christmas Ginger, Sophie’s Great Auntie May anticipates spending Christmas alone. (Spoiler alert: as in all my stories, a happy ending is guaranteed, and I submitted this story because it includes a life-changing random act of kindness.)
Everyday Kindness will be launched on World Kindness Day (13th November 2021) and will be available for pre-order in October.
Much as I hate to mention Christmas in August, I do think this book would make a great Christmas present! I’ll share details of how to order your copy as soon as I have them.
