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I’m approaching the final two chapters of the first revision of my first fiction novel in my island mystery series, and I’ve found myself reflecting on just how much this journey has changed me, not only as a writer but as a person. When I first began this book, I had an idea, a setting, fragments of characters, and a feeling I wanted to capture. I knew the atmosphere I wanted readers to step into. I knew I wanted mystery, depth, humanity, humour, and emotion woven through is

Today is World Fibromyalgia Awareness Day. And perhaps, more than awareness, what many of us need is self-kindness. Not productivity. Not pressure to push through. Not another explanation for our fatigue. Simply self-kindness. To the body that no longer behaves as it once did. To the mind clouded by fog, frustration, and overwhelm. To the version of ourselves we sometimes still grieve. Living with fibromyalgia is an invisible balancing act. A constant negotiation between pai

May- Poetic Prose for Mental Health Awareness Month You walk into a room and forget why you’re there. Again. Midlife, they say. Or… Your brain has finally unionised. New policy: “We will no longer store unnecessary information, emotional baggage, or other people’s life admin.” Fair enough. You try to override this. Make a list. Make two lists. A colour-coded spreadsheet. Your brain responds by forgetting where you put the pen. Iconic. So you pause. (Briefly. Let’s not get car

Sally Somerton-Island Writer There’s a moment, not long after arriving on an island, when something shifts. It’s subtle at first. You notice the light behaves differently, sharper in the morning and softening by late afternoon. The air carries weight. Salt, yes… but also something older. Something that doesn’t rush. And then there’s the quiet. Not the absence of sound, but the absence of distraction. No constant hum of urgency. No easy places to slip into the noise of everyda

By Sally Somerton It begins subtly. You forget why you walked into the room…but remember randomly, and with startling clarity, that you no longer wish to attend things you don’t enjoy. Curious. Your tolerance shifts: For noise. For nonsense. For underwire bras. Especially underwire bras. You start asking dangerous questions like, “Do I actually like this… or have I just always done it?” And suddenly, your calendar looks suspiciously negotiable. There is a shedding. Not dramat

Mother's Day In Portugal.. A little poetic prose for those without.. WITHOUT MOTHER Mother’s Day is not gentle for everyone. For some, it brings flowers. For others, it brings absence. A mother missed. A relationship that never felt safe. Distance. Silence. Complicated love. Not every story fits a card. So today, if your mother is missing, through death, estrangement, or something harder to name, Be gentle with yourself. You don’t have to celebrate. You don’t have to explain.

I am the flame that does not flicker,
when the wind whispers or roars. I am the quiet fire beneath your ribs,
that you have tried so carefully to contain. You call this night Beltane.
 You call it Full Flower Moon. I call it truth made visible, by light of sun and moon. The blossom does not ask if it is too much.
 The moon does not lessen herself to be loved. Why do you? Come nearer to me, listen well.. You have tended others’ fires long enough.
 Warmed their hands and lit th

By Sally Somerton There comes a season in a woman’s life when she stops folding herself small for other people’s comfort. Not with drama. Not with announcement. But with the quiet ferocity of a tide changing. She has smiled politely through enough nonsense. Swallowed enough opinions. Carried enough emotional furniture that did not belong to her. And one day, perhaps while stirring tea, walking the dog, or muttering at some fresh absurdity, she feels it. A spark. A delicious r

History often tells itself through generals, kings and guns. But sometimes, it is a woman with flowers who changes the world. Her name was Celeste Caeiro. Remember her. Not as myth, though myth now gathers around her, but as woman. A waitress. A worker. An ordinary daughter of Portugal. Walking through a city stirring awake. In her arms, red carnations. Intended for celebration. Destined for revolution. Who could have known that feminine instinct, that ancient gesture to offe

Sunset on the Cliffs of Faja (Sally Cross) HAPPY EARTH DAY TO YOU ALL! 🌿🏝️🌿 OF MEADOWS, OCEAN AND FLAME Sally Somerton She is not quiet, this Mother of earth, she hums through each meadow in blossom and birth. In wildflower fields bright colours run free, she dances through petal, through root, and through tree. The elders stand tall in their slow, steady grace, with branches that reach into light-filled space. Their roots w

Sally Somerton, Island Writer I find myself wondering, not for the first time, and likely not the last, when exactly it was decided that the quiet tending of the porcelain throne would fall, as gently and persistently as limescale, into the hands of women. Not announced, of course. Nothing so dramatic. No ceremony. No ribbon-cutting. No ancient decree etched into stone beside laws of land and lineage. Just… a slow seep. A drip, perhaps. Like a tap not fully turned off. One da

Sally Somerton - Island Writer A fibro flare begins the day, deep joy… hip hip hooray. (We laugh, because truly, what else can we do?) I waddle, yes, waddle , down to garden and vine, chasing movement, in hope of loosening this reluctant spine. The air is kind, at least. The earth is steady beneath me. But my muscles protest regardless, a chorus of no, not today. Still… I try. Because stopping entirely feels far worse than moving slowly on. Back inside, the reality settles, a

A Dear Diary Ditty... Sally Somerton Ah… it must be 3am. Or edging closer to 4, I’m sure. Because there it is again, my mind, wide awake, knocking far too loudly at my door. Not a polite tap. No gentle suggestion. But an urgent insistence, Now. Write this now. So I fumble in the dark, pen scratching across paper balanced on the edge of sleep, trying to catch the thoughts before they scatter like startled birds. Ideas spill, half-formed, luminous, demanding, as if they’ve bee

Sally Somerton, Island Writer Wise-woman witterings on perfectionism, creative overwhelm, and working towards finishing what I started... There’s a quiet confession I’ve been sitting with lately. My perfectionism, which I thought I had dealt with long ago, has been slipping into my writing. Not loudly. Not dramatically. But in those subtle, almost convincing ways… Tweaking a paragraph again. Rethinking a character arc. Pausing a story because “it’s not quite right yet” And th

Anna Ashcott has always noticed what others miss. Not in an obvious way. Not with any desire to intrude. But in the slight pause before someone answers a question. The story that shifts, just enough, on its second telling. The silence that lingers a fraction too long. It made her good at her work. An investigative journalist with a reputation for patience rather than persistence. For listening, rather than pushing. But even she didn’t see it coming. The moment her own life wo

Sally Somerton, Island Writer of mysteries, midlife adventure and a sprinkle of psychological suspense. There’s something about the ocean that refuses to explain itself. It doesn’t rush to fill the silence. It doesn’t tidy the edges. It simply moves; steady, restless, ancient as it whispers secrets we feel, more than understand. And perhaps that’s why we’re drawn to it, especially when life unravels. Because the ocean doesn’t ask us to have it all figured out. It meets us exa

Sally Somerton, Island Writer. The page waits. It always does, Calm, composed, Slightly smug. Meanwhile, The writer does not. There are, at last count, seven books, maybe more. Seven Plus! Not written, you understand. Not finished. Not published. Oh no. Started. Each one is brilliant, obviously. Each one demands my attention. Each one arriving at precisely the moment Another was about to make progress. Because why finish a book When can I begin another? Outside, the pink moon

Sally Somerton, Island Writer. Island Mysteries, Midlife Adventures, with a touch of Psychological Suspense. 🐾Here I share a vignette, introducing you to Mabel, one of my characters, in my Island Mysteries series set in the Azores. The morning Anna Ashcott stopped pretending she was fine began with perfect weather. Sunlight poured generously across the terracotta roofs, as if nothing in the world had ever gone missing. The sea, just beyond the low hum of the town, gently met

Mature woman sat on balcony overlooking the ocean, notebook and pen poised.. I didn’t set out to write fiction. In fact, if you’d asked me a few years ago, I would have said, with great confidence, that I was a non-fiction writing woman . Thoughtful, grounded, sensible, even. But then… There has always been this niggle at the back of my head to write a book set in France. Not in a dramatic, whirlwind, cinematic sort of way. More of a quiet unfolding. Farmhouses and shuttered