The Fear is now available to purchase from Amazon. It’s £1.99. 

Set in the late 90s, The Fear follows El, a record shop worker and aspiring author, as she tries to navigate life through a breakdown. Here’s the blurb…

El’s writing a book. She’s planned it for ages. Left uni, got a job in a record shop, assumed the position of starving artist and waited for something to happen.

However, there are signs that mental health problems El suffered as a teenager are returning. Instead of seeking help, she loses herself in rewriting the narratives of her life. In the revised story of El, she’s a supportive best friend to Maggie, respected by her peers and about to finish writing a critically acclaimed book. Her laptop is trying to kill her with a laser too but El isn’t one to let an inconvenient detail ruin an otherwise cracking yarn.

The comforting stories run out, though. El’s efforts to repair the damage are compromised by her increasing detachment and in crisis, she returns to the only comforting place she’s ever known. That’s easy.

Now all she has to do is get back.

I put a lot of personal experience in there. When I hit fourteen or fifteen, I struggled with extremes of emotion. I hadn’t found an outlet for it and ended up causing damage to my life, myself and worst of all, people I loved. Exploring it in a fictional context was both therapeutic and cathartic. The point, I suppose, is to let people know they’re not alone in feeling wrong, weird or ashamed of themselves. We all feel like that at some point or another and if someone reads this and feels seen, it’s done its work.

Did a Spotify playlist to capture the feels. That’s here.

Thanks for all your support over the years. xx