Guest Blogger - Miranda Ramphul

A very warm welcome to my guest blogger, Miranda Ramphul talking about her new book Silent Truths, Spoken Lies and the inspiration behind it. Miranda, please tell us a bit about you. Hi,I'm a retired lawyer. I was a Partner in an international law firm based in the City of London and specialised in construction law. On retirement, I moved to Stratford upon Avon and became a trustee of a couple of charities, including a hospice. Twoyears ago, I moved to Devon with my husband Rob tolive by the sea – and write. Silent Truths, Spoken Lies is my debut novel.

It sounds like you've led an interesting life. What is your book about? The purple-black bruises around the back of her neck reminded Poppy of ink fingerprints. It is the summer of 2003. Poppy lives inside her head and notices everything. She sees that her parents seem to have it all: country house, Notting Hill flat and a tight circle of friends. She witnesses her brother call Kiran, the stepson of one ofthose friends, weird. And when Kiran is accused of attacking her, she observes how the accusation sparks a series of uncontrollable events. Kiran is adamant he didn’t hurt her. Her mother has no doubt he did and is determined to ensure he is punished. Twenty years later, Poppy’s story is told to a hospice patient, and the unspeakable truth is finally revealed. Silent Truths, Spoken Lies, told through the eyes of Poppy, is a compelling psychological novel. It explores complicated family relationships and the nature of lies. Independent reviewers have called it: “A great debut novel that keeps you guessing! Impactful and thought-provoking.” ***** “A gripping read” **** Sounds great! What inspired the book? I wrote Silent Truths, Spoken Lies as I’m curious how people sometimes make assumptions of others based on their own prejudices, and how they mayunconsciously lie to affirm those assumptions – lie to others, lie to themselves. Often the reason is because they may feel unheard and ignored so they look for scapegoats – we see it all the time. In this book, each member of a seemingly perfect family has reason to lie. Oooh, sounds good. Where can readers get hold of a copy of Silent Truths, Spoken Lies? It's on Amazon or through Waterstones in the UK or HERE Fabulous, thank you so much, and readers can follow Miranda or get in touch with her on her Website or on Instagram

Here, there and everywhere

It's a busy old time at the minute. In addition to writing Murder at Highcliffe Hall, which will be the February release for Kitty and Matt I'm editing book 2 in the new series. Lot's of work to do there and about to start writing book 3 in that series. Hopefully I'll have some news soon on when book 1 of the Secret Detective agency will be releasing. For those of you in the UK I have several things coming up. Tomorrow evening I'm reading in Bovey Tracey at the Devon Anthology event. This is now sold out. You can also catch me at Churston Library on Tuesday 22nd October - tickets from the library and they include coffee and cake! Bargain. November 2nd, I'm at Clevedon lit fest near Yatton just outside Bristol where I'm on a panel. Finally on the 17th of November i'm at Crime at the Coast at Torquay Museum. Please get your tickets early for any of these events if you don't want to be disappointed. For those of you outside the UK I've been on several podcasts this year. If you google my name and podcast you should be able to find them. I know some are on spotify. In personal news, I'm going to become a Nonna again in February as my middle daughter is expecting their second little boy! We have lots of family visiting this month as well as work being done to the house! eek! Busy times.