Helen Brown – Memoirs & Magic

We're celebrating a milestone with this podcast, the 300th episode of The Joys of Binge Reading show. And it's wonderful to be able to share it with best-selling author Helen Brown. Helen is a good friend and a former colleague who is appearing on the show for the second time, so it's just like all the stars are aligned. She has a remarkable gift for creating stories readers love with a mix of memoir and imaginative fiction that crosses international boundaries. Hi, I'm your host, Jenny Wheeler, and this is the second to last episode of The Joys of Binge Reading, at least for the time being. We love having Helen here to share it with us. She talks about her latest book, Mickey, The Cat Who Helped Me Through Times Of Change. Those of you who know Helen's work, know that cats feature prominently. Her classic memoir Cleo, The Small Black Cat That Helped Heal A Family has sold over two million copies and been translated into 18 languages, sold in 42 countries. Mickey is another heart touching gem, a wistful coming of age true story about the transition from childhood to adolescence, and the small stray cat that helped guide the way. We'll get to Helen in just a moment. But before we do, I want to say a few words about the show. As I've indicated, both today and earlier I'm retiring it at least for a season, to pursue other things like writing my own books. Our Giveaway This Week With that in mind, our Giveaway this episode is Poppy's Dilemma, Book #1 in my latest series, The Sisters Of Barclay Square, set in Sydney in the late 1860s. Poppy Barclay's privileged life shatters when her father's investment company collapses amidst shocking allegations of fraud. Download for FREE DOWNLOAD E BOOK https://dl.bookfunnel.com/8qspkbukp3 Jilted by her fiancé, shunned by the elite, the beautiful heiress finds herself an outcast, her dreams of a perfect marriage in ruins. She's determined to fight back, but Poppy's quest for justice puts her up against tenacious journalists, Thomas Yates, who is bent on exposing the truth behind the Barclay’s disgrace. You can get a free copy of Poppy's Dilemma from the download link in the show notes for this episode on our website, the joys of binge reading.com. Here is the link to download: Alyssa Maxwell's Newport murder mysteries I'm halfway through the first draft of the second book, working title Posey’s Peril about Poppy's twin. And without the podcast to take up my time, I'm planning to finish it next month. As I foreshadowed, this will be our penultimate show. There will be one more episode, # 301, because I committed to featuring historical mystery author Alyssa Maxwell’s was latest book months ago, before I'd made the decision to give Binge Reading a rest, and we recorded the interview in April or May - quite some time ago. I'm going to stay true to that and do that last episode so it doesn't waste the effort of being interviewed on Alyssa's part. The show started in August, 2017, so we've been going for seven years straight, podcasting weekly for the first six years and fortnightly for nearly the last year. It's quite a load to carry, forever lining up new guests, reading their books, researching their careers, and then doing the technical work of sound and transcript editing for every episode. The technical side of it in particular has become tedious and time consuming, and ironically, I've had lots of problems getting this last show recorded. The reasons for that are too boring to go into, but suffice it to say that after 299 reasonably straightforward episodes, #300 has proven particularly difficult technically speaking. Technical issues sorted - at last! It's appropriate that I had to call in sound engineer Dan Cotton, who edited the show professionally for me for the first few years, to sort out the problems in this, our second to last show. There's a nice circularity about that for me.