The release of Overflowing Nothings and Threadbare Everythings!

Hi, friend!

(TW: Domestic abuse)
What would you do if you were torn between love and hate? If you feared the person you shared a home with, whom you slept beside every night? If you knew, deep down (or even right there on the surface) that the person you once fell in love with, married, perhaps had children with was the same person who had you treading on eggshells, reading their moods, and hiding in bathrooms?

Now imagine not having anywhere to go. Literally. Imagine being trapped in your house with them while the world burned outside. Imagine being told to stay home, where it was supposedly safest, but for you that couldn't be further from the truth. Yet, still... a part of you hoped and believed they might change. That they might come to their senses. That things would go back to how they used to be.

What would you do? If the line between love and hate proved needle-thin?

This is the world in which my debut novel Overflowing Nothings and Threadbare Everythings lives. It asks you to arrive with the open mind, empathy, and nuance required to fully understand the effects of domestic abuse across genders--especially when layered with the isolation and complexities of a COVID-19 lockdown. We all remember that time, don't we? Now, it feels like just a blip in time, but this novel invites you to revisit this strange era through a lens that is (hopefully) unfamiliar to you.

In the first chapter, we meet Naomi: A devoted wife and mother to Jasmine. From the very first line, however, we know there is something deeply wrong:

"Naomi leant on the kitchen sink, gazing out at the rain-peppered garden, her focus flitting from the damp, forgotten washing to the reflection of her left eye and its crescent-shaped bruise. She winced as she rolled her fingers over the grazed and swollen skin. The ceiling light tossed shadows over her pale complexion, mottled with continents of dark magenta.

Turning to get frozen peas for the swelling, she knocked a large plum from the fruit bowl. It landed with a violent thud, as if the fruit—identical in colour to her ripening wound—was mocking her, its fall a cruel reenactment of the previous evening. She stared at it until the sound of upstairs movement jolted her from her daydream, then she scolded herself for being ridiculous. The plum was just a plum.

She glanced up at the clock.

Her chest tightened.

Six-fifteen.

He wasn’t supposed to be up yet. 

Her eyes darted to the sodden clothes on the line. Realisation dawning there was no time to fetch them.

Dropping the plum in the bowl, Naomi grabbed a scourer and washing-up liquid, and scrubbed Sunday roast from dinner plates to busy her quaking hands.

Footsteps thudded down the stairs, then a shadowed figure appeared at the edge of her vision. Swallowing, she slowly turned to face it, and almost choked at the blue eyes staring back at her, wide and haunted."

Overflowing Nothings and Threadbare Everythings is released in both eBook and paperback on Monday 18th May. But would you like to read the rest of chapter one absolutely free of charge? Because you're about to meet Jasmine--Naomi's smart, sassy, loveable seven-year-old--and the mother-daughter bond between them is one of my favourite parts of the novel. Simply click this link, scroll to the bottom where it says 'Read the first chapter for free', and viola!

After reading, please do email me and let me know what you think. There's a whole spectrum of emotions in just that first chapter, and I wrote them for curious readers like you: to spark important conversations, and to explore the extremes of cruelty and compassion. I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Happy reading!

Carly x