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Welcome to Three Questions with Van Heerling. This is where you get to meet authors, actors, painters and anyone else that is bent toward the arts, but on a more personal level. Today I have Penny Grubb author of Like False Money, The Jawbone Gang and The Doll Makers. VH: For what are you grateful? PG: I’m grateful for being born when I was and where I was. A generation earlier and I’d have been constrained by society’s views on women and not been able to have the family and working life I’ve enjoyed. I’m grateful, too, for living in a temperate climate, in an advanced society. I don’t have to worry about where my family’s next meal will come from or whether my home will be swept away in a hurricane. I live in a society where health care is free at the point of delivery and I’m grateful for that, too. My parents lived through ‘interesting times’. My father had travelled 1000s of miles as a refugee before he was five and when he was a young man – younger than my sons are now – he lost his family for two years when war swept through Europe, after which the new political boundaries stopped him ever seeing his mother again. If none of that had happened, I wouldn’t be here. But I don’t feel the need to feel grateful for that. That was just chance. What it comes down to is that I’m grateful to be here. VH: After a difficult day what do you do to recuperate? Does it work? PG: I come home. That often does the trick all on its own. If the difficult day means there is fallout to deal with I either deal with it, plan to deal with it or put the detail aside to look at when I need to. The thing I’ve learnt not to do is dwell on bad stuff. I know people who dwell to the extent they refuse to acknowledge happiness because there’s bound to be something bad on the way. I prefer the other side of that coin. Why dwell on bad stuff when there’s always something good on the way? Basically I just leave bad stuff behind me. If and when the time comes to have to face it again, a solution usually presents itself – that’s the magic of the subconscious. VH: If a zombie virus took over the world, how many days do you think you could last before you were infected? And what would you do to postpone the inevitable? PG: The way I see it, I can already operate as a zombie at the drop of a hat. When I’m focused on something I’m a bit too good at missing the obvious – the bus that I ought to board, the thug with the knife who I shouldn’t push past, the glass door that I ought to open not just walk right into... I had something else on my mind the time I downloaded One Day to my e-reader and started reading it to see what all the fuss was about. I registered that it was *nothing* like I’d expected, but I was several pages in before I realised the e-reader had done something odd and I was actually reading Treasure Island. I feel that anyone who can mistake Treasure Island for One Day has nothing to fear from a Zombie virus. VH: Thank you Penny.     Where There’s Smoke When Annie’s arch-critic, Barbara Thompson, goes to extraordinary lengths to get her help, Annie doesn’t have to play along, but curiosity wins and she has to know why. It’s when someone gets to Barbara first that Annie realises Barbara was playing a dangerous game. And now it’s too late to walk away. She’s left with guesswork, supposition and the knowledge that whoever silenced Barbara now thinks Annie herself knows too much. Pre-order for only £17.99 including FREE UK POSTAGE Co-authored with Danuta Reah The Writers’ Toolkit – http://www.thewriterstoolkit.blogspot.co.uk/ Both Where There’s Smoke and The Writers’ Toolkit are currently on offer with reduced international postage (and free UK postage) at the above links but can also be obtained through Amazon.  Penny Grubb is a novelist. She writes a contemporary crime fiction series set in England and Scotland, featuring Private Investigator, Annie Raymond. Penny won the Crime Writers' Association Debut Dagger for her novel, The Doll Makers, and was nominated for the CWA John Creasey Dagger for the first book in the series, Like False Money. The fourth book, Where There’s Smoke, came out in October 2012. A fifth is underway. Penny’s has had a day job in British universities since the 1980s, and has enjoyed a diverse academic career that started in a Science Faculty, moved through Social Science and Business and now lies in Health Care. She spent a decade at the leading edge of Health Informatics research, but now specializes in teaching and research in active-reading and critical-writing as well as teaching creative writing techniques. She has a second day job as Chair of the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society which is a multi-million pound not-for-profit organisation that collects secondary royalties for writers. With over 85,000 members and growing, it is the largest writers’ organisation in the world. A writer all her life, Penny wrote her first story at age 4 and won her first writing competition at age 9. She has published in many contexts: academic technical tomes, textbooks, non-fiction, poetry, radio features and newspaper articles as well as her crime novels. Need More Penny Grubb?
Website Penny’s books are available through bookstores, Amazon and all the usual channels. Signed copies can also be bought at discount through Penny’s publicist, Fantastic Books at; www.fantasticbookspublishing.com Twitter @Fantastic_Books Email: [email protected]
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"For me, writing is a joyful torture or sorts." ~vh~ “In this life, seek your own answers, and quote yourself for a change.” ~vh~
The muse has tapped my shoulder and my ear is turned toward her lips. I am waiting for her whisper. ~vh~
"The funny thing about life: more often than not it’s laughing at you rather than you laughing at it." ~vh~
"At some point there is a moment when you should give up. I’m here to tell you that today is not that day." ~vh~
“If you are afraid of the truth, never ask a young child a question.” ~vh~
“The frailty of life is most evident at its last breath.” vh
“Prove not to the world but to yourself that you are above your current circumstance.” ~vh~
"Don't be wishful when it comes to your dreams. Take aggressive action in your pursuit of them. Start now with a single step, no matter how insignificant it may feel." ~vh~
"Nothing is more powerful than an unwavering, unapologetic decision to BE." ~vh~
"Strive to be the light in an ever-darkening world. SHINE!" ~vh~
"Think big and then think small. That’s where the details live." ~vh~
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