Michelle Adams on how life can change in an instant

30 Apr

The Wintering Sessions with Katherine May:
Michelle Adams on how life can change in an instant

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Michelle Adams is best known as the author of Little Wishes, Between the Lies and My Sister. In this episode, she talks about a sudden and unexplained illness that disrupted everything she knew about herself, and how vital her support network became during that time.

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Please note the transcript is automatically generated and may not be completely accurate.
Katherine May:
Hello, I'm Katherine May and welcome to The Wintering Sessions, the podcast that sets out to learn from the times when life is frozen. This week, I'm talking to Michelle Adams, author of Little Wishes Between the Lies and My Sister who talks about the terrifying ways that life can suddenly change and how vital your support network becomes in those times.

Katherine May:
Right, shall we start we might as well just jump in?

Michelle Adams:
Great to talk with you, again

Katherine May:
Yeah great to talk to you. So we actually it's quite interesting, isn't it? Because we recorded your podcast the other way around last week. So now the tables are turned Michelle.

Michelle Adams:
I've become the interviewee,

Katherine May:
I know it's quite scary,

Michelle Adams:
It's actually a lot easier.

Katherine May:
Yeah it is isn't it

Michelle Adams:
I find it much easier to be the interviewee and I mean the sort of podcasts I did over publication week. It's just so easy. There's no preparation involved. You don't have to worry about post production. You just, again, have a chat. And that's it. But being the host is a lot more effort. So thank you very much for inviting me.

Katherine May:
I think podcasts are like my favourite kind of publicity to do. I've been doing loads from my book lately. And Don't you just love podcasts? They are so relaxing. You just have to chat.

Michelle Adams:
Yeah, it's really easy and you don't think over what you're saying in the same way. So like, if you're doing a written interview, you'll go over that paragraph, you know, maybe four or five tines, make sure that you've not written a typo or you've not said something incorrect, where it's just having a chat with someone it comes out so much more naturally. Somebody wanted to interview me last week and said, "should I send you the questions or do you want to just have a chat and video". Video video video all the way.

Katherine May:
I know I the way that I agonise over written interviews is just hilarious. You feel like you've got to say something profound.

Michelle Adams:
Absolutely and every every little paragraph has to sort of be introduced and surmised in sort of an appropriate little arc.

Katherine May:
It's actually it's just a special way of torturing writers. I think pushes all our buttons. Right, So Well, let's let's talk about the wintering period in your life that you propose to me, actually, because I thought that maybe we'd talking about the lovely essay, you wrote for the Best Most Awful Job, which was the anthology I had about motherhood last year, that you said, No, no, no, I've got something I really want to talk about. And I think probably it's quite relevant to what a lot of people have been going through this year. And it was a very sudden illness, wasn't it?

Michelle Adams:
It was, I mean, when we broached the idea of me talking about a wintering session in my life, I think a lot of people assume that the adoption process feels like that. And I suppose there are elements of it that are difficult, but I can I can't really describe it as a wintering period. It wasn't immensely difficult. It was challenging to wait. And it was difficult, but I wouldn't say that I found it painful. Whereas the topic that I suggested talking about when I was ill, very suddenly, that was absolutely how I would see a wintering period.

Katherine May:
That's really interesting. So like, set this up for me how, I mean, obviously, I was gonna say what happened, but actually, the What were you doing on the day that you suddenly fell ill?

Michelle Adams:
Well, what I was doing on the day was visiting a friend. But it's worth going back a few weeks before that, to start with, because I had been going through in Cyprus, there's ...when you move into a different place, you're suddenly exposed to all sorts of different things that you're not exposed to in your home country. And the one thing that really sort of struck me quite hard when I moved to Cyprus is the allergy season, because there was all sorts of things that I was exposed to that that I hadn't had a problem with before. So I was going through, I think was March time, a really bad allergy season where I had a lot of sinusitis, I couldn't breathe properly. And I'd been to see an ENT specialist and they prescribed some of the steroids as a sprain in my nose, which is a very standard thing. And it hadn't particularly helped I still had really bad sinusitis. I also have a broken nose, which I don't know how I did, but we discovered that at the time. There was some sort of theory that perhaps an operation to straighten it up would be a good idea. And so we were going through this sort of steroid treatment as a spray in order to try to get to the point where we could potentially operate. And three weeks after taking the steroids spread, I woke up very early one morning with intense pain in my head and in my eye, which I don't really know whether it was associated But in hindsight, I think that it was. And it was, I guess what a lot of people would describe as a cluster headache. I was on the floor. I've never really had migraines. I don't really know what that's like, but was on the floor, I couldn't move I was being sick. I had a pain in my eye. I ended up going to the hospital and having some morphine and that cleared it. They said, Okay, you've probably got really bad sinusitis still, and that's affected it. And we need to just sort of up the ante a little bit with what medication we're giving to you. And so they started me on a series of oral steroids, which I took for five days. And on day five, I was ill, I was going to a baby shower, along with my stepdaughter who was about, I think she was probably about seven at the time. And we travelled in the car for around about 45 minutes to an hour. And I dropped her off at my friend's house in order to go and then see another friend very briefly for a quick coffee because I hadn't seen her for a long time. And when I got out of the car at the cafe, my foot was numb. And it was it was sort of like, you know, if you've been driving on a motorway for a long time, and your foot goes to sleep,

Katherine May:
Yeah Sure

Michelle Adams:
I got out the car and laughted myself, like, Oh, my God, I got so pathetic since I've moved to Cyprus. You know, I used to be able to drive for 4 hours on the M6 and it was fine, I can't drive for an hour and my foots numb. Went to a cafe, ordered my drink and sat down at a table, and when I came to pick up my coffee, I realised that my fingers went numb as well. And I thought that wasn't doing very good. And slowly over sort of over, I think it was probably about 20-30 minutes, the numb foot began in my fingers, and then my arm. And slowly the whole right side of my body just became very numb. And I became very confused. And my friend said to me, You okay, you know, you don't look very well, you want me to call your husband? Hewas my fiance at the time. And I said, No, no, no, don't call him. And I don't know why in my head. I thought that this was a good idea. But I think I realised that there was something wrong with me. And I just said, No, I'm going to be okay, I'm just going to get home, which was a really bad idea, because it was like an hour's drive.

Katherine May:
Oh gosh, so you drove yourself home.

Michelle Adams:
In my head, I was thinking I just, I need to get home, because there's not right here. Within sort of, you know, a few more minutes, it became evident that was no chance of that happening. And she said, I'm going to call your husband. And by the time that I spoke to him on the telephone, he he asked me, you know, what's wrong with you? And I said, I don't know. And he said, Can you tell me where you live? And it was the first question where I, I realised I couldn't give the answer. I didn't know where I was. And I couldn't say what my name was.

Katherine May:
Oh, my goodness. Do you remember now him asking you that question? Or is that?

Michelle Adams:
I do I remember at that point, I and I remember also, it was it was a really weird thing, because I realised that I couldn't give the answer, but I was also conscious of the fact that I couldn't give the answer. So there wasn't, I wasn't confused about it, I realised I can't give him really simple information about myself. And that in itself was very scary. Because sort of internally, I still felt very conscious of what was going on. Although in hindsight, probably I wasn't, because I don't remember very much after it. But at that time, I remember him saying, Can you tell me your name and where you live? And I couldn't do that.

Katherine May:
Wow Wow. So what happened after that?

Michelle Adams:
Well, because I was in a different city. I went to the local hospital there with my friend and my husband started coming from the city that we live in. But in the meantime, he asked, he asked his brother who lives in that city where I was visiting to go to the hospital because I wasn't well. And I don't know when he arrived, but he must have arrived 15 or 20 minutes later, and I remember seeing his face and him looking at me, and I sort of realised, oh, I'm really like this, I don't look well. And then I became aware that there was sort of a heaviness on the right side of my face. And I I had been working in the NHS before that for about 12 years in cardiology, although I wasn't involved in directly with the sort of patients who had strokes and things. We did have like quite a close link with that ward. And I remember thinking my face has got a weakness to it. And that was the time that I thought I'm having a stroke. How old were you? I must have been 32/33.

Katherine May:
Yeah, so that's not the age you expect to be having a stroke in general.

Michelle Adams:
It's no it's not the age you expect to have a stroke. And I said I had no risk factors for having a stroke. But I was aware that I'd seen people you know, all through my working life with these weak droopy faces, but never anticipated that that would be something that you could actually feel I could feel my face had sort of fallen, and I kept touching it. And I could feel that my lips had dropped and that my eye had dropped. And after that, I don't remember anything with much clarity. I remember my husband being there at some point and asking questions. I remember them being upset in the beginning, they tried to say that I was either having a panic attack, or that I have taken some sort of drug, which neither where true. And my, my husband's a doctor. And so when he arrived, he sort of, he immediately sort of tried to go into work mode, which is not very easy, I think when you're sort of emotionally very charged by somebody that you love being ill. But because they seem to be focused on the fact that I was just a, you know, silly young girl having a panic attack. And that didn't need to be taken very seriously. He found one of his colleagues, who then got neurology involved. And they very quickly sort of escalated things. And they made the decision that either I was having a stroke, or I had some sort of compression from a tumour that had happened very acutely, or there was some sort of haemorrhage or something going on. And they were planning to prep for surgery, that was sort of was the idea. And in the meantime, they needed to do things like a lumbar puncture, an MRI, I think I had a CT angiogram. And this is this is all across sort of, like, I think about 10 or 12 hours, until around midnight, and at midnight, the results all came back. And there was nothing wrong with me, I couldn't find anything wrong with me. So I ended up then, by that point, I sort of my heart rate had been dropping. And so they'd incubated me, and I was going to the intensive care unit on a ventilator. But nobody had any clue what was wrong with me, I just couldn't tell you who I was, I looked like I was having a stroke. But there was no evidence of anything.

Katherine May:
Gosh, that's just terrifying and like the speed at which that's all happening, and you're at the centre of this flurry of medical activity, you must have been so grateful for your husband and his knowledge. I mean, what would have happened to you without it?

Michelle Adams:
Well, I was I wasn't at the time, because obviously, I didn't really have much of a clue what was happening. But I do remember sort of flashes of the day, I remember my sister in law being there and her sort of trying to be really, really reassuring. I remember my friend being there, and being really upset. And I sort of remember my husband being there, on and off. And I remember at one point, being angry with him, like, Where is he like, What's he doing? But actually, you know, he was running around trying to get stuff organised and get things moving. But by the end of the day, you know, he was he was sort of in a bit of a mess, really, because, as a doctor, I think you always looking to answer a question. And the question was, what's happened to Michelle, and nobody knew what happened to me. And by that point, I exhibited really strange behaviours as well, you know, like that he had, I had tried to bite the doctor, at one point, they tried to, they tried to try to hold me down, in order to do CT and I fought like crazy. And the next day the doctor who had sort of taken charge said to me, 200 years ago, we would have been with the stake. You are not behaving the way that we wanted you to.

Katherine May:
But presumably, I mean, you know, even if you don't remember it, some kind of like survival instincts kicking in and you're fighting for your life, you know, you don't know what these people are up to.

Michelle Adams:
Yeah, I remember being I remember being intensely scared. And one of the thoughts that kept running through my head was, I'm having a stroke. And after this, I might not be able to walk again. And I'm getting married in three months, like, I'm not going to be able to walk down the aisle. And that became very important to me at the time. But there came a point, at some point during the evening before they anaesthetised me that I just, I had sort of given up, I was exhausted and I was flat. And I didn't have any energy left for anything.

Katherine May:
So it's I'm really fascinated by the state of mind that happens at those most desperate moments of ill health. I mean, because I collapsed with sunstroke once and I can really just I actually can remember the kind of clarity before I kind of lost consciousness. Yeah, I remember I remember like this moment of sinking towards the ground very slowly thinking,. Oh, I can't stay up, right. It's quite peculiar. And my husband was assaulted when he was 18, by a group of lads with fence posts hit him around the head Yeah, he was very badly beaten. And he remembers this moment, again, of consciousness, of kind of complete clarity of thinking, right? I've got to lay still, because then they'll think I'm dead. but he also remembers this moment of intense kind of regret for not having lived his life yet. And, you know, there's this kind of crystalline clarity there, even though there's a lack of command between your mind and your body. Almost. Yeah. It's really interesting to hear you talk about it too. There's some sort of common response there that is hard to understand from the outside, really, I think,

Michelle Adams:
Yeah, I think in a moment like that, irrespective of whatever illness it is, or whatever incident has happened, like your husband and and you experienced as well, I think sort of you just, it's almost like all of your other concerns just disappear. And the only thing that matters is the exact thing that's happening at that moment.

Katherine May:
Yeah.

Katherine May:
We'll be back with more from Michelle Adams in a moment. But I just wanted to let you know that I'll be releasing some new dates for my writing courses soon, as well as some brand new online workshops for people who want to explore the concept of wintering a little more, if you'd like to be the first to know, go to katherine-may.com/newsletters, and click the link that's right for you. I promise not to spam you, and I'll keep your information safe. And now back to Michelle Adams.

Katherine May:
So, wow. I mean, presumably you just woke up again, at some point.

Michelle Adams:
Yeah, I, I woke up the following day, seven or eight hours after I'd arrived on the intensive care unit. And I woke up with out much of a knowledge of where I was or what happened the day before. And so my first thought when I woke up, was, where am I and what's going on, and I started to sort of investigate, I very quickly realised that I was in a hospital. And I found that I've got wires on my chest from the ECG electrodes. And then I moved down further and further and further until the point when I realised I've been catheterized. And At which point, I just became absolutely livid. Because in my head, I was saying to myself, I'm 32/33 years old, and they catheterized me, that's like what you do for an old lady, and I flung the sheets off me, I tried to pull the catheter out, I tried to get out of bed, at which point, obviously, the nurses and obviously came back and settled me back down

Katherine May:
You had form by then.

Michelle Adams:
I had form! And so they settled me back down, and I went back to sleep. But this went on, and on and on all morning, every time I woke up, I was going through the same think oh my god i've been catheterized and I'd try and pull out. But at some point, I remember my husband arriving, and he said, my family are here and they want to see you. But Michelle, you're naked, you've got to stay under the sheets. And it was the first moment of clarity that I thought, right, this is my father in law coming in now I really need to like stay under the sheets. And that was a sort of reassuring moment that, okay, I'm sort of back a little bit now. I know that this is not appropriate, and I can start to sort of control my behaviour again. And after a time, they they sent me back to the ward. And I was in hospital for about five or six days, I think. And all through that period, they've been giving me intravenous antibiotics, because they still didn't really know what was wrong with me. And I think that they were concerned that I've had some sort of like viral meningitis. Yeah, they didn't really have a definitive diagnosis, other than, you know, sort of a presentation of what I had shown them, which was that for a time I had neurological symptoms, and it appeared psychotic. That was, that was all they could tell me. And they didn't know whether it was you know, a virus an encephalopathy they had no clue. But slowly over the five days, I sort of it was a slow process. But slowly by sort of five days I was, I could understand that I was myself again, I I wasn't confused in the way that I had been in the immediate days after the incident. And they let me go home.

Katherine May:
And that was that's the most you ever knew about it. So did you ever get to the bottom of what had happened?

Michelle Adams:
Well, we got to what is probably the most likely diagnosis is that I had a seizure as a result of a reaction to the medicine. That's that's what they think. And that that was shown by the one thing that seemed to be abnormal, after it all was that I had changes in my EEG, which was the scan that they do with a little electrodes on your head to get your brain waveforms. And they found some sort of change characteristic with like post seizure activity. And then I had a repeat test of that for I think, four weeks later, which showed that those changes were resolving. So something had happened and was going back to normal. , but it was more than about sort of how it had affected us both in sort of the recovery. We'd gone from both being sort of quite confident and easygoing people it to two completely different people that my husband was just sort of constantly alert to anything that I said if I said I had a headache, it was difficult. You know, he was sort of watching me with a Hawk's eye looking for changes, he was constantly looking at my eyes, whether one was drooping, whether one wasn't drooping, whether I was squinting, which I found very hard to deal with, because it was like I was under sort of surveillance all the time. And also my, my entire personality changed, I became very anxious and scared. We had an office that we worked from, which was about 10 minutes from the apartment where we used to live. And the normal state of affairs is that I just walked to work and walk back from work. And obviously, after this, once I ended up back at work, he was driving us there, and they're in bank and one day, he couldn't come back to pick me up, and I sort of burst into floods of tears, and I couldn't bring myself to go home, like what what's gonna happen? I was so scared that something was gonna happen to me, being on my own, that it was sort of, it really sort of rippled through our life for the next three or four months. And even after that in like a very sort of minor way, we still refer to it as sort of like the day that was really difficult.

Katherine May:
And so do you think there's been any kind of permanent effects of that? Did it change you in general? Or do you think actually, you, you sort of settled down after a while?

Michelle Adams:
I think for me, I don't think I have been permanently bothered by it, because I don't remember a lot of it in the first few months. I was very bothered by it. And I was aware that it had been a lot more stressful for me than perhaps even I anticipated, because when I went to get my hair cut, they found that a huge patch of the back of my head had fallen out. which must have happened on the day. But you know, I have no recollection of it. Obviously, it's just it happened through the stress of what was going on. But I think probably affected more the people around me, I think that my husband found it much harder to move on from the experience than I did.

Katherine May:
Yeah, because he had been there and sort of watched it all unfold. And that's scary, isn't it? When you see someone you love being really ill,

Michelle Adams:
I think to witness it was much harder in the long term than it was to go through it.

Katherine May:
Did any useful things come out of it? You know, I talked to someone the other week who talked about an illness. And that gave them a kind of sense of resolve about how short life might be, did it have that effect on you?

Michelle Adams:
It didn't I don't think I don't think that I I took that away with me what I did do in the months afterwards, I found that I wanted to try to process it. And so I did then what I do for anything I want to process which is to write about it. And I wrote a book that was not published by a publisher, which was all about the experience of a person sort of losing their mind and and not knowing what happened to them. And having sort of blanks in there, almost like fugue states. And I put a lot of my feelings into that book. And that's certainly that's certainly really helped me process it and move on. And I think sort of finishing that book, really that was my, like, I'm drawing a line under this. Now it's happened, we've experienced it. And I I now can look back on it with with some degree of humour. For example, in the, I think it was the day after that I'd been taken out from the intensive care unit and put on the normal ward. I was in the side room with the little toilet. And in the middle of the night, I got up wheeled myself in there with my little drip stand. And a couple of minutes later, somebody is knocking on the door. And this is all obviously also in my second language, which is another thing I couldn't speak English when I came around, which is really bizarre, because at the time I couldn't speak greek that well either. This lady said to me, where are you? When I was in the bathroom? Where are you? And I thought what do you mean? Where are you? I mean, I'm in the I'm in the toilet? And she said, No, where are you? And I sat there on the toilet thinking What's wrong with her, like has she lost her mind. I just told here I am in the toilet.

Michelle Adams:
And obviously, like what she was asking was Do you know who you are? You know, you're in the hospital. It was sort of a moment of realisation oh yeah I'm the one that's psychotic here. They want to know that I'm OK. Not keep questioning whether they know what they are talking about. I look back on it on in a humorous way now that my husband even to his credit is later, he's still not there.

Katherine May:
No, no, which is really, really understandable. I think I mean, I would love to talk about the book that you wrote afterwards, just because I'm really fascinated by writers apprentice pieces that they write before they publish. I think that people who are trying to be writers don't realise how many of us have got 12345 books that we wrote before anyone agreed to publish us, and that was our training ground maybe?

Michelle Adams:
Yeah totally my my first book that was released by a publisher was called My Sister. But before that I'd written six other books. My Sister was the first one that got picked up by an agent. The first one I've written was about five years before I got an agent, I think. And I had soft of written it, it was I think, was about 75,000 words, I was very happy that I'd written a book very celebratory, and had no idea what it meant to edit a book, and so I very happily finished my draft and send it off to agents and was rejected, you know, 1000 times, and couldn't understand why, you know, I thought all you need to do is write a book, of course, you know, I finished it, Why don't they want it. You know, it's ridiculous.

Katherine May:
It's like guys, I have written a book

Michelle Adams:
It's taken me 4 months to write a book. I realised, you know, after that, but you know, you did more work. And so, I just focused on writing another book and trying to sort of hone my craft. And I didn't try to get an agent after that. I don't know whether that was because I was burnt from the experience of not getting one the first time, or whether it was because I'd emigrated. And back then it was sort of must have been 2011, it wasn't quite as easy to submit by email, everything was letter. And I thought it may be too difficult from here, maybe that, you know, maybe that ship has sailed. But I had written another... well after that I'd written the six books in before My Sister. And it wasn't until I'd written My Sister that I sort of looked at it. I was ready to go self publishing all of my books were self published until then. So I was ready to go with it. Again, I had a cover written. A cover made up, it was called First Born, I was ready to hit Publish. And I happen to have a conversation with another aspiring writer for want of a better word. And said I'm going to start looking for an agent. And I sort of sat back and thought, Why Why am I not trying anymore? And so then I set about trying to find an agent and was very fortunate to find representation and a subsequent deal.

Katherine May:
That's really it's I think it's just such a good story to tell, because I think very few people realise the sheer length of time that loads of us work on being writers before, like, anything happens at all, you know, and how, like, what resilience, you need to keep going because you want to write and not for, you know, because anyone's paying you any damned attention.

Michelle Adams:
But the attention also, is really nice. Like when you're first writing and someone says something nice about your work it feels really good. And that's so sort of inspiring. It was to me anyway, I started self publishing, because I thought, if I can't get an agent, then that's fair enough. But that doesn't mean that what I'm writing is necessarily rubbish. And maybe somebody would enjoy it. So I started putting them on Amazon. And I took it very seriously. I mean, at one point, I had no intention of trying to find an agent, I was I had a designer, she did my covers, for me, found an editor and was working to try to make my work better. And I was really enjoying the whole process of like, trying to sort of do it myself. So I think the whole area of self publishing, like it used to have sort of a bad name. I don't think that's the case anymore. And I, I really think anyone who's writing, even if you want to find an agent, at some point, even if you haven't found an agent at the stage that you're at, and the joy of having your book out there and in people's hands, is really something that's really inspiring It's valuable. And it's encouraging is what i'm looking for. Afirming. someone, I read your book, and I really liked it. Thanks very much. And that felt really, really good for me. That book that I'm referring to about his experience, it was called Psychophilia. My Husband came up with that. Somebody, he ropedme off to that thing, that it had literally sort of described their experiences with mental health. And that felt really good as well. But like I'd connected with somebody else who'd been through something.

Katherine May:
Yeah, that's that connection is amazing. And I do think that actually, so much of like mainstream traditional publishing, is almost designed to have the writer in a passive state. It used to be that we're being coddled by the publishing industry. And I don't think that's true anymore. I don't think we're kind of coddled, but I think that there's like a passivity that remains. And I I've always found that quite odd. comfortable, you know, like, you cannot take control of your own destiny. And I, I totally respect and admire the people that managed to self publish, because I think it's a, it takes a particular skill set to get it right and to actually sell books in that environment. But I think like, why wouldn't you? You know.

Michelle Adams:
I think so. And I think when when people start, they don't necessarily know what they're doing with any great sort of clarity. And I think that's the same as I wrote my first book. And I sent it to an agent. And it wasn't good enough. But it didn't mean that I couldn't, I could do something with it. And I use that book as a learning curve. There's no doubt that the books that I self published towards the end of my self publishing period, they looked better, they were more professionally finished, the stories were better told. The something to be said for that in the terms of becoming a good writer.

Katherine May:
And I think, actually that readers often demand different things from books than publishing professionals do. In fact, I think that's an insight that the huge success of self publishing has given us is like how much readers love just being able to immerse themselves in genre and having a steady supply of the kind of books that they like, they're not picking up on the same stuff, as people within the publishing industry are I don't think.

Michelle Adams:
And there's also a very fast route to market. So if you're a fast writer, and you've written, you know, I, I know a lot of people who traditionally publish and they've written a book in 28 days, but yeah, it's the editing. But if you can write your book in 28 days, and you're committed to editing that book, from like, the conception of the idea that having the book on Amazon and available to readers, you can have sort of three or four months. And that's it. Yeah. And if you're doing that all the time, then you've got a high turnover rate, and you get good visibility on the platform. And people have access to your work

Katherine May:
And a direct route to those readers, you know, who talked to you and say lovely things.

Michelle Adams:
Yeah, absolutely. Which is very encouraging when you're actually trying to find a reason to keep writing in the face of rejection.

Katherine May:
Absolutely. Amazing. Oh, well, look, I just have loved talking to you today. That was such a fascinating story. I'm so glad you're so well now. And I hope it never happens again. But I thought it was just wonderful. delving into that mind state that you were in at that time. I think that's just brilliant.

Michelle Adams:
Thank you.

Katherine May:
Thank you. And yeah, so your most recent book, tell me about it, because I was just about to summarise it. And that would be a bad thing to do. So tell us all about your most recent book.

Michelle Adams:
Well, my most recent book, I have verged away from thrillers at the moment, and I wrote a women's fiction thriller, a women's fiction thriller?, a women's fiction novel, which is about a young couple in the late 60s in a small village in Cornwall, where Elizabeth is a daughter of the local doctor and her family have a lot of aspirations for her future, who she's going to marry and what kind of life she's going to lead. But she happens to fall in love with a local boy who doesn't have the same aspirations and who doesn't come from the kind of family that they would have hoped her future husband came from. And irrespective of their family's feelings about this, they do fall in love and are seriously committed to forging a life together, then at the last minute, when they're set to tell their families that they're together, there's a tragedy in that Elizabeth's mother dies in a horrible accident. And there are a lot of things said, at the time between the two families, which drive a wedge between the two young lovers. And they then end up on trajectories where their life takes different courses. Irrespective of that, though, their love doesn't ever die. And Tom, every year returns to deliver a small gift in the shape of a blue flower, which is what he did for her on the day when they first kissed and declared their love to each other. And every year this flower has a wish attached to it. And it's a wish for what they would be doing if they were together. And on the 50th year, Elizabeth opens the door expecting to find this little wish on her doorstep and realises that it's not there. And in a panic about what might have happened to Tom, now that they're elderly, she searches for him knowing where he was all along. And it's about their reunion and the secrets that kept them apart and about trying to have a second chance at first love.

Katherine May:
And who would have known you're such a romantic soul given the darkness of your previous work! I love that.

Michelle Adams:
It's quite a shift in genre It really is.

Katherine May:
And how did it I mean, how does it feel to shift genre like that? Is there one that you prefer writing now or do you feel like you're indulging both sides of your character?

Michelle Adams:
I think I'm definitely indulging both sides of my character. I decided that I'd like to write this book. write. Even before one of my first thrillers had been published my thrillers, my first two thrillers had been sold. And then we had a sort of a family thing where my father was diagnosed with lung cancer, and he died. I think it was no more than sort of seven or eight weeks after his diagnosis. Yeah, it was a bit of a, it was a bit of a sort of shocking time for us because it had been completely unanticipated. But my experience af that sight, and watching him with his partner, and sort of how they loved each other, even like right up until the last moment, his life she was just there all the time. looking after him and caring for him, it really sort of inspired me that I had a story that I wanted to tell in that. And it wasn't necessarily just about the sort of the bleakness of having somebody die in your family who has cancer, but more about focusing on the fact that even when there's no hope for anything more, you can still love somebody. And that's perhaps sort of the most pure form of love that there is when there is nothing to gain from it. But you'd love somebody anyway. So I approached Madeleine, our agent, and said that I have this idea for a love story. I'm sorry that my thrillers haven't been published yet. But what do you think? And she was really positive about it, I think that's one of the things that we're really lucky about with the person that represents us, is that she's very keen to represent your entirety as a writer rather than just sort of follow you for one book and hope that it does well. And so I was very supported by her in in writing this book, that I finished my contracts with the thrillers. And when I had a period of time when I had the space to do so I then explored this women's fiction book, which has been a real joy Actually, I mean, it was a joy because it it sort of involved my father, who we'd lost very suddenly. And it was a nice opportunity to sort of explore my feelings about him and the thing that we've been through as a family. But also It was just really nice to write this really. I mean, it is it is a sad story. But I think where it's hopeful, and the focus is more on the fact that people love each other when they're trying to solve their problems rather than the dark elements. We so associate with thrillers. Yeah. Yeah, it was a really nice experience, actually.

Michelle Adams:
And of course, with you know, we writers are not really just one personality, you know, like, the idea that there's one kind of genre that we can only write is a complete fallacy. Really, I think we're all passionate, about loads of different things. And sometimes it's hard to break out. And it's lovely to see that you have, you know, been able to expand out into more options.

Michelle Adams:
Also, one of the really positive things about if you don't have an agent trying, self publishing, because you get to do anything, and you get to explore different genres and what you like. And one of the few things I hadn't explored as a self publishing was women's fiction. So yeah, it was really nice to explore that with my agent.

Katherine May:
Yeah. Fantastic. Well, Michelle, it's been an absolute joy to speak to you. Thank you so much. And I will make sure that all the links to your books and contacts are in the show notes so that people can look you up.

Michelle Adams:
Thank you so much, Katherine, it's lovely to talk to you.

Katherine May:
And that's all from us today. Thank you so much to Michelle Adams for sharing such a vulnerable moment with us. Little wishes is available in all good bookstores, and you can keep up with Michelle's news on Instagram or Twitter. Links are in the show notes. I'll be back next week with another brilliant writer who is intimate with winter. Thanks for listening.

Katherine May:
The Wintering Sessions is produced by Buddy Peace, who also composed the original title music. You can buy Wintering - The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times. In all good bookshops.

Show Notes

In other areas of this open and honest chat, Michelle also expands on her love of podcasting over the written interview, allergy season in Cyprus where she and her family make their home, the whole process of her life being shaken up through her experience, reflections with the clarity of time and so much more which will give you a glorious insight into her character.