The Smorgasbord | origin story

Back in 2015 my husband fell off a roof. His injuries were catastrophic, including a shattered pelvis, broken ribs and a punctured lung. Luckily a coastguard helicopter on a training exercise nearby was able to fly him to hospital where was admitted to the ICU. It was touch and go but he pulled through and we nicknamed him Lazarus. Recovery took a long time. We're both self-employed and I had to act as his carer so we lost most of our income. Our two girls were still at school so it was pretty tough, plus because of his severe pain he was on a phenomenal amount of morphine. After a while he felt the drug was killing him so he went cold turkey. That was a laugh and a half and it didn't help that I'm not a natural born nurse. We muddled through but my head was mince. I couldn't concentrate on writing but I needed a creative outlet so I came up with the Thrillers with Attitude Literary Smorgasbord. I interviewed over 20 writers of all descriptions, including songwriters, novelists, poets and a stand-up comedian. My husband recovered enough to get a hip replacement then recovered enough from that to go back to work at sea and by 2016 I was writing The New Dark trilogy for Bastei Entertainment. I'd enjoyed the Smorgasbord and so I did two more sets of interviews in 2017 & 2018, this time with some artists thrown in for good measure. Five years on from the original interviews, I thought it would be cool to find out what had happened to some of the writers from 2015, plus I added a few more people into the mix. Now it's 5 years on from the 2017 interviews and I've done some more catching and lined up some new guests that I'm really hyped about. I don't know where this thing is going but the five year old/new thing is fun so I guess I'll keep going and see where it takes me. What began as a way to distract myself from our woes has turned into a pretty nice project. Smorgasbord 2022 coming soon...