Today I’m delighted to feature Deborah Klée. Deborah is an award-winning author of page-turning, uplifting stories about friendship, community, and emotional courage.

After a career in health and social care: an occupational therapist, health service manager, freelance journalist, and management consultant, she now enjoys writing happy endings for her protagonists.

Deborah lives on the Essex coast, where she loves to walk by the sea or the surrounding countryside filling her pockets with shells, and acorns, and her head with stories.

Over to Deborah :

Which five pieces of music/songs would you include in the soundtrack to your life and why?

Whatever will be, will be (Que Sera, sera) by Doris Day

My mother would sing this to us as children. She had an optimistic outlook on life, one that I have inherited from her. Doris Day was my father’s heart-throb as a teenager. So, this song reminds me of both parents. I had a happy, secure childhood and remember them every day with gratitude.

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The Year of the Cat by Al Stewart

I adored Al Stewart in my teens and twenties. I knew the lyrics to every song on his album Orange. The Year of the Cat was not my favourite song, but it was the one best known. The year we met, my husband created a book by hand with images, photos, and illustrations for each line of the song. He bound it in a tiger skin print fabric and inscribed it ‘For Deborah, for reminding me of a world I had forgotten.’ I was twenty-two, and he was thirty-four. We have been married now for thirty-nine years.

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There She Goes by The La’s

Our daughter was born in 1989. There She Goes was re-released in 1990. We rocked her to sleep to this song. Watched her dance to it as a three-year-old. And then, when she was a teenager, it became one of her favourite songs and would blare out from her bedroom. So, to me it is that gorgeous girl who is now thirty-three!

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Dancing in the Dark by Bruce Springsteen

Because whenever/wherever this is played, I jump up and dance like a muppet on speed.

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Summer Breeze by The Isley Brothers

This song reminds me of summers as a teen – falling in love, hanging out with friends. The LP playing in the front room of our family home, windows wide open, net curtains catching the breeze. I still swoon when I hear it and I am sixteen again.

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What five things (apart from family and friends) would you find it hard to live without.

Coffee

Writing

Meditation

Yoga

Travel

Give five pieces of advice to your younger self?

Enjoy every moment as time passes too quickly

Never stop dreaming because all of your dreams will come true – bigger and better than you can imagine.

Don’t try to run before you can walk – be patient and learn from where you are now instead of always trying to get ahead.

Try and let go a little – everything will happen in time, trust the journey

Life is not about what you achieve but who you become

Tell us five things that most people don’t know about you

I accidentally locked myself out of a hotel room in Morocco in the middle of the night completely naked.

I was once a keen Kung Fu student and achieved blue belt. I took part in sparring competitions until I was mid-thirties.

I was out running after a flood and stepped onto a flooded road not realising it was the trench around a field and disappeared under water (think Vicar of Dibley).

I was on breakfast TV and several national and local news TV and radio stations after writing a national report that led to a change in Government policy, and then as an ‘expert’ on older people and ageing.

I won Miss Pontins at Camber Sands in 1970

Tell us five things you’d still like to do or achieve.

Go on a Safari

Have a sleigh ride driven by Huskies in Antarctica

See the Northern Lights

Share the messages from The Mindful Writer podcast with all writers experiencing emotional angst.

See my WIP published and all the other ideas for books that are brewing in my head.

Many thanks for joining me today Deborah, lovely to learn more about you. Thanks for brining some great music choices today, we are clearly of a similar vintage as The Isley Brothers reminds me of my 15 year old self. I was a 15 year old who would have done well to heed your advice too, I particularly like ‘life is not about what you achieve but who you become’. I think more details about your Morocco ‘incident’ are definitely needed, or that might just be me being particularly nosey. Thinking of holiday incidents reminds me of the time my husband and I were on holiday in Cyprus. We’d had a heavy night sampling cocktails and managed to sleep through a fire alarm caused by a gas tank exploding and taking out the windows at our side of the hotel! Here’s hoping you get to achieve your dreams, I’m beginning to think we should get a group together for the Northern Lights as it’s very popular, it’s one of my dreams too. Fingers especially crossed for your current WIP!

Deborah’s Books

(NB This post features Affiliate links from which I earn a small commission on qualifying purchases)

The Forever Cruise

Lose yourself in a voyage to exotic lands in this feel good story about second chances and new beginnings.

When Halcyon Seas, a luxury alternative to retirement living, sets sail on her maiden voyage, three women on board dream of a better future.
Will Captain Marianne Moore prove herself capable in her new role? Her career depends on it.
Will Cabin maid Olivia Rose be able to keep her secret and her job? Her impoverished family relies on her wages.
And will pensioner Alice Wagstaff finally find the courage to live the life she wants?
When the cruise ship veers off course, the future is uncertain and dangerous.
Can the three women embrace this new direction, or will the journey of a lifetime turn into a living nightmare?

Just Bea

Sometimes you have to stop trying to be like everyone else and just be yourself Bea Stevens and Ryan O’Marley are in danger of falling through the cracks of their own lives; the only difference between them is that Bea doesn’t know it yet. When her world is shaken like a snow-globe, Bea has to do what she does best; adapt. Homeless man Ryan is the key to unlocking the mystery of her friend Declan’s disappearance but can she and Ryan trust one another enough to work together? As the pieces of her life settle in new and unexpected places, like the first fall of snow, Bea must make a choice: does she try to salvage who she was or embrace who she might become? Just Bea takes the reader on a heartwarming journey from the glamour of a West End store to the harsh reality of life on the streets and reminds us all that home really is where the heart is.

The Borrowed Boy

A borrowed boy, a borrowed name, and living on borrowed time.What do you put on a bucket list when you haven’t done anything with your life? No interesting job, no lovers, no family, no friends. Believing she has only weeks left to live, Angie Winkle vows to make the most of every minute.Going back to Jaywick Sands, is top of her bucket list. Experiencing life as a grandmother is not, but the universe has other plans and when four-year-old Danny is separated from his mum on the tube, Angie goes to his rescue. She tries to return him to his mum but things do not go exactly as planned and the two of them embark on a life-changing journey. Set in Jaywick Sands, once an idyllic Essex holiday village in the 70s, but now a shantytown of displaced Londoners, this is a story about hidden communities and our need to belong.

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