Spotlight & Giveaway: Twelve Months and a Day by Louisa Young

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author Louisa Young to HJ!

Hi Louisa and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, Twelve Months and a Day!

 
Dear Reader,
 

Please summarize the book for the readers here:

People die, but Love doesn’t.
Two happy normal couples. Two deaths, too young. Two bereaved and broken hearts. And two — ghosts?
Rasmus and Roisin both lose their beloved partners; one suddenly and unexpectedly; one after a long and difficult illness. But then Nico and Justina (both of them medics) find that being dead isn’t quite what they expected. They seem to be … still here. Still full of opinions and feelings. And still just as much in love with their widowed true-loves.
Nico, who died suddenly, is furious, sad and jealous. Justina, who knew it was coming, is a bit more practical. And when she sees Nico’s widow Roisin, her first thought is: ‘Rasmus would like her.’
So the two ghosts become a pair of squabbling matchmakers, trying to protect and look out for the two survivors as they are thrown about by grief and loss. Everybody learns something about the cycles of life and death and love when a big surprise changes everything again.
Set in London, New York, the Scottish Highlands, Ghana and Greece and the South of France, flowing with songs and music, this is a funny, heartbreaking, redemptive book about what love is really for, and what we’re meant to do with it when someone we love dies..
 

Please share your favorite line(s) or quote from this book:

“Heya!” she called, her arm up in the air. Her smile was purely happy. It wasn’t that the grief wasn’t there. It’s just that space had been made for happiness.

Please share a few Fun facts about this book…

Even though it stars ghosts, this story was inspired by real life. My boyfriend and I both lost our partners too young; and got together initially as widow pals with a shared understanding of that loss.
The working title was Romance Is Dead.
Despite the subject matter, the book is actually quite funny. If you’ve seen the films Ghost, or Truly Madly Deeply, you’ll understand how that’s possible.
It’s really expensive to use quotes from pop lyrics, so as Rasmus is a rock star and I’m a songwriter I used my own songs: you can find them on Youtube and Soundcloud under Birds of Britain (the name of my band), Louisa Young, You Left Early.
I use old folk ballads too: look for The Unquiet Grave, Sweet William and Lady Margret, and the others. The title comes from a song:

The wind doth blow today my love
A few small drops of rain
I never had but one true love
In cold clay she is laid.

I’ll do as much For my true love
As any young girl may
I’ll sit and mourn all on his grave
For twelve months and a day

The twelve months and the day being gone
A voice spoke from the deep
‘Who is it sits all on my grave
And will not let me sleep?’

‘Tis I, ’tis I, Thine own true love
Who sits upon your grave,
For I crave one kiss from your sweet lips
And that is all I seek.’

‘You crave one kiss from my clay-cold lips
But my breath is earthy strong
Had you one kiss from my clay-cold lips
Your time would not be long…’

What first attracts your Hero to the Heroine and vice versa?

It wasn’t so much that Roisin and Rasmus were attracted to each other, it was that they had this huge thing in common of having lost their partner. At the beginning their relationship is mostly by email, which meant it could go really slowly and respectfully, and came to know each other properly. They were both mad with grief; so another partner was the last thing on their minds. A sympathetic friend going through a similar experience though was very welcome. It takes a long time for them to realise that new love is not only possible but a great idea. And they only have the opportunity because the ghosts are pushing them together – but of course they don’t know that. (Though from time to time they have their suspicions!)

Did any scene have you blushing, crying or laughing while writing it? And Why?

I cried most of the time writing this book! Because it took me back to losing my fiancé. I wished he could read it. The death scenes and the funerals made me cry. The ghosts made me laugh though, trying to find their way as spirits in the real world .
This bit made me laugh and cry:

Jay wondered how she was going to put this. She stood and stared out to sea. The waves lapped closer now; to and fro, to and fro, curling lace, the shifting skin of the world.
“Nico,” she said, in what she intended to be a mild and enquiring tone.
“What?” he said.
“I think they might really get on.”
Even as she said it, she heard it drop with a thud.
He said nothing.
“They have a lot in common. Not just being widows, but creativity, and commitment, and not being English, in Britain, and they’re both funny . . . I just feel they might . . . what if . . .” And she paused.
“No,” he said.
“No what?”
“What you were going to say.”
“What was I going to say?”
“You know what you were going to say.”
“I don’t know that you know what I was going to say.”
“I know that I know what you were going to say.”
“What was I going to say?”
“You were going to say, why don’t we get them together, it would all be so neat and nice.”
Silence.
“Weren’t you?” he said, leaning back, with a dangerous look in his eye.
“Yes.”
“Over my dead body,” he said.
“Well, actually,” she said. . . . but the pain on his face stopped her from pointing out the obvious. “I know it’s too soon for the,’ she said instead. ‘But they could take their time.”
“No,” he said. “Don’t even think about that.”

Readers should read this book….

Because it’s:
‘A wonderful and inventive novel, sorrowful and hopeful in equal measure… a true pleasure’ Miranda Cowley Heller, author of The Paper Palace
‘One of the freshest love stories I’ve read in years’ Colleen Oakley, author of The Invisible Husband of Frick Island
‘Equal parts tender, sparkling and authentic.. like watching a flower open, each moment more beautiful, mesmerising and better than the last’ Amy E. Reichart, author of Once Upon a December
‘Sweetly comic yet deeply moving… Anybody who loves the film Ghost will feel the same way about this wonderful novel, which asks what happens when people cease to live – but love does not’ Daily Mail
‘A modern day Truly Madly Deeply… Rasmus and Roisin both lose their partners, but the ghosts of Nico and Jay stay, unable to leave their loved ones alone as the broken-hearted pair find comfort in each other. Beautifully written, this is a haunting love story – literally’ Best magazine, Must-Reads
‘A beautiful book. Insanely romantic and utterly convincing’ Julie Myerson
‘Heart-stoppingly romantic… A lovely, moving, ultimately hopeful read’ Mirror
‘Poignant and sad as well as funny and beautifully written and imagined… You will fall in love again as you read this clever book … Hugely engaging and readable. A bitter-sweet pang in my heart as it ended. A page-turner’ Monique Roffey, author of The Mermaid of Black Conch
‘A wonderful novel, charming and surprising, filled with loss and its triumphant opposites’ Susie Boyt
‘A skilfully calibrated love-after-death tale, it’s a four course feast of hearts broken, hearts mended, of songs, laughter, old regrets and fresh desire, that demands a major film deal’ Patrick Gale
‘Louisa Young is the great chronicler of romantic love and the pain of its loss’ Linda Grant
‘Thoughtful, philosophical and clever, it is also funny, and full of poetry, and powered by an unflagging and irresistible belief in the redemptive power of love’ Perspectives magazine
‘What a writer. A raw and beautiful exposition on grief and loss but so beautifully earthed in the everyday. Terrific’ Elizabeth Buchan
‘Beautifully written, this is a haunting love story – literally’ Best magazine

and because The Washington Post described Louisa Young as a ‘masterly storyteller ‘

What are you currently working on? What other releases do you have in the works?

I’m writing a musical based on the book! And a composer is working on an opera. So perhaps I should write a screenplay to complete the trio. It would make a great film.
I’m also working on another book in my series which opens in WW1 with My Dear I Wanted To Tell You, about Riley Purefoy and Nadine Waveney.
And writing songs of course —
 

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: A print copy of TWELVE MONTHS AND A DAY by Louisa Young. US only –

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Excerpt from Twelve Months and a Day:

March–April
London
Half a bottle of cooking brandy down, Róisín googled the bereavement support groups. A lot of old people. Hot Young Widows Club, online, and in Minneapolis. Jesus Christ, was that a niche porno thing? No, it was clever Americans. She didn’t know any other widows. Certainly not hot young ones. Not even old ones. And God forgive me, but it’s got to be different when you’re old.
She sat for a while and felt bad for the old ones.
Widowed And Young, groups everywhere. Facebook. There was one for widows with children and her heart started to burn. Lucky, lucky widows with children. To see your darling’s eyes in your little child.
Then she sat for a while feeling bad for the ones with children. To see your darling’s eyes in your little child! To see your child growing up fatherless. To have to find a way to be the both of you. I can’t even find a way to be the one of me.
And then sat feeling bad for the children.
She didn’t want to go anyway. Nico is dead and I’m going to be sad forever. Why go and talk to other sad people who are also going to be sad forever?
There was a meetup in a room above a pub in Camden. A mixer, they called it, as if it were a squirt of tonic. Well, maybe I could do with a squirt of tonic. She told Nell, who said, “Would you like for me to go along with you?”
“No,” Róisín said. “It’s me the widow. I’ve to go alone.”
*
She liked those tall first-floor rooms above Victorian pubs: the high windows with the yellowing gloss woodwork, and the curly plaster friezes round the ceiling. The foxed mirrors. This one looked more or less untouched since 1975, brown patterned carpet, Watneys ashtrays and all, but then maybe they’d had it done just so as a style statement. Who’d have an ashtray? There was a door with a push bar on it leading to an iron fire escape, for the smokers. She could hear them out there, guttering and lead tiles all around them, talking about pleurisy.
She wasn’t the youngest there. She saw an embarrassed-looking Indian woman; a long-haired man in cycling Lycra, looking oddly medieval—his leggings had a sort of codpiece and she thought his hair might be dyed; a plump blonde with very red eyes and a bag she kept digging around in. For none of them did she feel that instant pull like you had sometimes at primary school—I want to sit next to you; I want you for my friend. Rather she felt the great push—to go the fuck home and cry in peace. Why are you here with strangers?
Any minute now someone was going to come up and be kind to her.
They came up behind her. “I like your hair,” they said. “D’you want a gin and tonic?”
Yes, she did.
“Alex,” said the person, with a little gesture to their heart. “You’re new?”
“I am,” she said.
“Cherry’s about to start her little pep talk,” said Alex. “Then we mingle.”
A swishy-haired Pilates kind of a woman in her forties stood up. I’m leaving, Róisín thought, but she had the gin now and she didn’t want to be rude to Alex. A lot of the people seemed to know each other.
It’s too soon for me to be here, she was thinking. It’ll always be too soon. I don’t want new people anyway—they don’t know him. I’ll go when this one’s stopped talking.
“We all know that grief is the price we pay for love,” Cherry was saying. She was Canadian, by the sound of it.
It’s not that I hate you, Róisín was thinking, picking at her fingernails. How raggedy they were. Has grief destroyed my vitamins? The skull ring was heavy on her hand. The ashtrays had her thinking about cigarettes. She’d really like one. Great result—take up smoking again! There were some people out on the fire escape still. But I can do what I want now . . . I can do whatever the fuck I want . . .
But I don’t want anything.
I just want to talk to Nico.
“Everybody knows that,” Cherry went on, “since the queen quoted it. We’re all only in grief because we loved. No love, no grief. That’s the math. It’s that simple! But there’s another side to this, which it took me much longer to get my head around. And it’s this: no grief, no love. Let me enlighten you about this second meaning . . .”
You’re going to anyway . . .
“Grief is also the price we pay, in advance, for the love to come.” She paused, as if to see whether this idea was familiar to them. It didn’t seem to be. “If we don’t grieve and, in time, let them go, we’ll never be able to love again. We pay in solid grief and healthy mourning, we have to—we have to do that before we can move on and love again . . .”
Love again?
Róisín didn’t mean to let out the little snort of derision. She knew everyone had their own way through. She had been told, and no doubt it was true, that things would change. Yeah, yeah.
*
She drove home down South Terrace past the Alexandra Palace, rain glimmering, lights refracting, windscreen wipers splashing time with “If You Leave Me Now” by Chicago.
Well, thanks, radio, she thought. Though it wasn’t the radio, it was her phone. She and Nell used to play a thing they called iPod I-Ching—you ask a significant question, press shuffle, and see what the god of iPod gave you. “Should I go out with such and such who’s asked me?” and you’d get “Stop! In the Name of Love.” Or that Dusty Springfield one about wear your hair just for him . . .
Well, she certainly didn’t want to listen to bloody “If You Leave Me Now.”
She reached out to tap the phone in its little holder on the dash, peering still into the dark night ahead. Chicago’s mellow trumpets and maracas faded out and—
“Just because you’re strong don’t mean it’s easy . . .”
Róisín burst into tears. She slammed the brakes on, and the phone flew. With a muffled whump, the car behind slammed into her rear end. Without a thought she flung open the car door, jumped out, and ran to the curb, where she sat in the rain and cried while the car sat, lights on, engine running, doors open, George Vechten’s voice singing so beautifully, so tenderly, “Just because you cry don’t mean you’re weak,” carrying from within.
The other driver came over: a young man, perturbed. He’d been shouting, but now he said, “You all right, mate?”
“Not really,” said Róisín. “I’m sorry . . .” She fumbled for a tissue.
“You want a glass of water?” he said, absurdly.
“No thank you,” Róisín said. “I’m okay.” She smiled up at him, weakly, and rubbed the back of her head. There was a curious smell on the air, of lily of the valley and cigarette smoke. Reminded her of her mother. She hiccupped and stood up. “How’s your car?” she said.
“Was me rear-ended you, mate,” he said. “How’s yours?”
Their cars seemed fine. They were both really sorry. The boy made Róisín take his number, in case she felt bad later on, and needed his details.
“Well,” said Róisín. “If you’re okay—”
“Yeah,” the boy said. “Cheers.” He kind of smiled and went back to his car.
She sat, breathing, swallowing, allowing all the physicality of her human emotion, before driving off down the hill into the sliding colliding miasma of lights and rain and darkness.

Jay, in the back, flexed. The collision, George’s voice. Rasmus’s words and guitar; her own harmonies, all those years ago. Though she thought often about that period of her life, it had been a long time since she’d listened to that album. Too much of what went wrong for Ras, and for her, was caught up in it. The chords it struck in her . . .
She saw the phone, on Nico’s seat where it had fallen. Stop that. To her surprise, it did. The silence rang for a moment, and she wondered.
She drifted out of the car.
The other driver came over: a young man, perturbed. “You all right, mate?” he said.
Nico sat invisibly by Róisín now, his hand on her arm, trying to bring her back to earth, to stop her shaking.
He glanced up at Jay. “Are you okay?” he asked.
“Were you afraid I might have been killed?” she asked. He did laugh.
“It’s one of her favorite songs,” he said. “I never thought . . .”
“Mine too,” she murmured.
Jay came and squatted on the other side of Róisín, the three of them in a row between rain-slicked car bumpers, a bin, and the speckly concrete base of a bus stop. Above them the new leaves of ash trees waved acid green against the night sky; beyond, traffic lights changing inexorably: crimson, amber, petrol green, reflecting on the black road and dripping rain. Jay leaned against her. Beyond the grief, inside it, behind it, was strength, humor, a possibility of joy. There will be sunshine after this storm, she thought. In the midst of all this cold and dark, there’s an indomitable spring . . .
“What would comfort her?” she asked.
“Me not being dead,” he said.
“What achievable thing?”
Nico didn’t answer. Just laid his arm round Róisín’s shoulder, an invisible blanket. “I don’t know—her mum?”
After a moment, Róisín hiccupped and took some long, shuddering breaths. She gave a soft small smile. She stood up and asked the other driver if his car was okay, and took his number when he offered it. Jay liked how she was being: undramatic, straight, kind.
Nico’s face had gone a little tight. Jay couldn’t tell if it was anger or pain. “Bloody ambulance-chaser,” he said. “Hitting on her when he’s just driven into her.”
“He didn’t mean to,” said Jay. “Poor boy.”
The poor boy was smiling politely at Róisín. “Better get on then,” she was saying.
“You keep away from her,” Nico was muttering.
“But really,” Jay said, “it’s good of him. He’s not filled with road rage. And he’s not being nice just because she’s good-looking. I mean, she’s also bright red and covered in snot.”
“She’s beautiful,” Nico said. “She’s always beautiful.” He stopped wanting to hit the boy.
“Yes, she is,” said Jay.
“I can’t bear it,” Nico said.
“Not being able to help her?” said Jay.
“Not being able to do anything.”
“We can help them,” Jay said. They both smiled at the word “we.”
“No I can’t. Don’t think I haven’t tried.”
They slipped back into the car. Róisín spent a moment breathing, swallowing, before driving off down the hill.
Jay whispered: “Why’s it so hard to talk in front of her, when she can’t hear us?”
Nico glanced up at her, a funny look on his face: part gratitude, part relief. “That’s yet another thing,” he said, “that I have had nobody to talk to about.”

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Book Info:

Rasmus and Jay, Róisín and Nico: two couples, strangers to each other. Two beautiful, ordinary love stories, cut short. Both in their thirties and too young to be widowed, Róisín swears she still feels Nico beside her in bed and Rasmus hears Jay as he writes songs at the piano.

Jay and Nico don’t even believe in ghosts, yet here they still are. Still in love with Rasmus and Róisín. And maddeningly powerless. Until Jay has an idea that Nico wants no part of—bringing Róisín and Rasmus together. It’s crazy enough that it just might work, but playing matchmaker to the living is no easy feat and one that will require all four of them to discover the meaning of love after loss, and the importance of fighting for happiness against all odds.

Moving and thought-provoking, playful and bittersweet, Twelve Months and a Day asks what is love? And what are we to do with it?
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Meet the Author:

Louisa Young was born and lives in London. She’s been a journalist, a busker, a waitress and a cartoon animal character in a New York department store; she has a degree in history from Cambridge University; she’s owned a Harley Davidson and a 1973 Oldsmobile; she’s published 15 books, fiction and non-fiction, some in 36 languages. She’s half the children’s author Zizou Corder (Lionboy). She’s also writes songs. Johnny Cash kissed her once (June didn’t mind; it was on the cheek), and Tammy Wynette gave her some pie. Stephen Spielberg bought her film rights twice. She has a daughter and wishes she could play the piano.
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