When Gabi and Jay first fell passionately in love, they lived on different continents. Separated for nine years by circumstances and distance, they eventually found a way to marry. Over three decades though, alcoholism tore them apart, and Gabi moved on.
Then a fatal diagnosis forced them both to make decisions. Without love, Jay’s final journey would be lonely and hard, and Gabi knew she had to return to care for him.But she never expected to fall in love again.
This moving memoir doesn’t shy away from the realities of life, but the relationship between these two lovers, tested by separations, alcoholism, and to its ultimate limit by pancreatic cancer, proves that love—and a sense of humor—can conquer anything, even death.
Reviews~
Takeaway: A beautifully told true-life love story, facing addiction and death with candor and wisdom. - BookLife
This memoir is hauntingly beautiful. The images, the language, the storytelling—gorgeous. The author grabs our hand and takes us with her on a journey through love and other emotional worlds—the parts of ourselves we see when we take the time to be with ourselves. She lets us look under the band-aids at wounds as they're healing. Perhaps it's ample evidence to say I read the book in two sittings; I didn't want to put it down." Colleen Alles, author Skinny Vanilla Crisis
This memoir is full of fast-paced dialog and vivid stories of two lives at its center. It moves from romance to the reality of daily living with another person, and ultimately to the struggle to deal with sickness and death. Touching and beautifully written, it strikes so many chords about love, marriage, and family. - C. Lee Mackenzie, author of Shattered
Author interview with Gabi ~
Tell us a little about yourself and how you started writing.
I’m British by birth, though I’ve lived in America for over half my
life. Work brought me here, and love was why I stayed. I always liked reading
and writing. Beginning in elementary school I had to write weekly short
stories, and that was my favorite subject. Later, as a working single mom, I
had no time for writing, so I started again once I had time to take a class,
and never looked back. This book took me five years to finish, because it
needed so much polishing and I wasn’t writing every day. But the pandemic
changed that, so now I join daily Zoom write-ins with fellow members of the
Women’s Fiction Writers Association, which has saved my sanity!
What are some things you enjoy when not writing?
If I’m not reading, writing,
or traveling, you’ll find me in my flower garden, wondering whether to weed,
and holding a cup of my preferred beverage, strong English tea. The rest of the
time she’s working on her next novel.
How do you start your day (a routine of sorts?)
I
do yoga every morning and have done since my twenties. It keeps me limber and
ready to go. Yoga, followed by a cup of tea, and I’m ready to head for my desk.
Finish this: “I can’t write without…”
Apart from tea, of
course, I need a window in front of me, so I can look out and daydream a
little.
What career did you think you’d have as an adult?
I thought I’d be a newsreader on the television, which was odd, since
there were no women newscasters (as they called them in England, at the time).
I guess, as one of five sisters, I just wanted to be seen.
What is something about you that people would surprise people?
They might be surprised to know that I speak several languages,
including, French, Spanish, some Russian, and fluent Polish. (My father was
Polish and I studied it in college.)
Do you have a ‘day
job’ as well?
Who has time for a
day job?
Where do you get your
ideas?
With a memoir, life
gives you the story, of course. When I’m writing a novel, I’ll use something
I’ve heard or seen as a starting point, and set the book in a place I know –
even if it’s an imaginary town made up of several real ones.
Do you have a
manuscript(s) in your drawer? If so, will it ever see the light of day?
I have at least two
novels in a drawer, and I may get back to them one day, though I’d probably
have to rewrite them completely!
If I wasn’t an
author, I might be…?
Incredibly bored!
Do you have a go-to
first reader after you feel your manuscript is ready?
I have a group of
writing friends who read every single word and explain to me why I need to make
it better before it is good enough to send to my agent. 😊
Is there a particular
author or book that influenced or inspired your writing or decision to write?
I love a good
storyteller above all. The classics, like Austen and Dickens, fall into that
category for me, though my writing is nothing like theirs, of course.
Can you tell us about
your challenges in getting your first book published (or this book?)
This is my first
book, and although I already had an agent for my novel, I knew she wouldn’t be
able to make enough money on it to make it worth her while to take this on.
After all, I haven’t been abducted by aliens, and I’m not a celebrity – not
yet, though you never know. So I shopped it to small indie publishers, and got
offers from two of them. I went with Atmosphere Press in Texas.
If you had to go back
and do it all over, is there any aspect of your memoir or getting it published
that you’d change?
I think I needed all
the writing and publishing experiences I had along the way to help me build my
writing and marketing skills. Plus the resilience and perseverance that any
writer needs if they’re going to succeed in this world of books
How do you market
your work?
Largely through
social media, and through online interviews, (like this one, or on podcasts). I
have videos of me reading extracts from the book on YouTube, giveaways on
Goodreads, and I publish extracts on my blog, so a reader can get some idea of
how I write and what the book’s about. I think that’s helped readers to get to
know me, and perhaps to want to find out more by reading Love’s Journey Home.
What are you working
on now?
My first novel is
doing the rounds of traditional publishers via my agent, so I’m working on the
sequel.
Do you have a
favorite chapter or scene?
That’s a tricky
question, because my memoir is a mixture of romance - when I first fell in love
with my American husband – reality, when marriage to him didn’t turn out to be
a happy-ever-after as I hoped—and then a return to loving him when he was
diagnosed with a terminal illness. So the tone of the book varies, but there’s
humor threaded through all of it.
Do you have any advice for aspiring writers? I always advise any writer to begin by writing badly. What I mean by that is: if you aim to write badly, you’ll succeed! A lot of writers get stuck and don’t write because they think it won’t be good enough, which it probably won’t – to start with. But at least you’ll have something on paper that you can fix!
What are the
downfalls of your writing career? The best parts?
The hardest thing to
do for me is to send my work out – in case someone doesn’t like it! But I’ve
gotten used to not worrying when my work is rejected, because I realize that
not everyone will ’get’ it. I remind myself that it only takes one person who
believes in it to make things happen.
Favorite book and/or movie?
I’m loving Ted Lasso
on Apple TV right now, because there’s so much kindness in it, and from a
writer’s point of view, the character development is as good as the storyline.
As for a favorite book…I love books by Kate Atkinson, and my go-to comfort
reading is anything by the queen of Regency romance, Georgette Heyer, for her
elegant writing and sense of humor.
Place you’d like to
travel?
I’d like to go back
to Egypt to the Valley of the Kings. I visited Alexandria, Cairo, and the
pyramids on a school trip when I was seventeen and would love to go back.
Is there anything
you’d like to say to your readers and fans?
Without readers, a
book is not a book. And there are a lot of wonderful books out there, I know.
Which is why I appreciate so much anyone who wants to read my memoir, and even
more when they let me know what they think of it (good or bad).
To connect with Gabi or to purchase the ebook or audiobook https://linktr.ee/GabiCoatsworth
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