Heather, engrossed in my Pocket Novel, totally unaware of the camera

Yes, you’ve seen this photo before.

Heather is mentioned in my blog today because last week she saved me from doing something stupid. That something stupid involved A Dangerous Heart, my People’s Friend Pocket Novel which was published in March. I’ve used again the photo of the two of them together that I already have, rather than thrusting the novella into her hand and snapping her from a different angle. I hope you’ll forgive me for that.

At the meeting of the Oxford Writers’ Group last week, Heather mentioned that she’d been about to delete her spam emails when she’d thought she’d better check them first. She did, and what do you know – she found an offer of work from a publisher!! We were thrilled for her and said so, and then we continued with the meeting, and I thought no more about what she’d said.

At the weekend, faced with the choice of throwing my infuriatingly slow laptop against the wall or clearing from the laptop some of the things I didn’t need, I decided upon the latter course of action and started on my spam emails, of which there were about 300. I thought I’d save time, delete them all in one go and move on.

All of a sudden, as my finger hovered above the delete button, I heard Heather’s words in my mind – looking back, it was rather like a heavenly chorus sent to save me from myself. Heeding the message of her words, I decided to take the time to check all of the spam before deleting it. And what did I find …

… I found an offer from Ulverscroft to buy the world large print rights of A Dangerous Heart. It had arrived four weeks earlier, and I hadn’t seen it. Had it not been for Heather, I might never have seen it.

Happily, the offer wasn’t past the sell-by date, and I’m now waiting for the contract to arrive for a large print edition, which will be published under the name of Liz Harris, not Elizabeth, as it had been as a People’s Friend Pocket Novel.

So the moral is, NEVER DELETE ANYTHING without making absolutely certain that you know what you’re deleting.

I don’t think there’s any point in my asking if any of you have come close to making such a mistake, as I’m sure you’re all far more sensible than I!!

Or have you?