This book is not just funny (or sad) stories of campervan trips in Scotland; it is not just 'Zen and the art of campervan maintenance' (with stories of sweetness and light that will entertain or make you cry); and it is not just nature writing (with observations of wildlife in the western Scottish Highlands). But if you enjoy reading about how books are written and about recovery stories from relationship breakdowns, and if you like reading about women travelling alone and all the things that can go wrong (and right), about strategies for facing fear, dealing with creepy crawlies and noises in the night, and about surviving all that life throws at you (especially when you are over a certain age), then you will probably enjoy this book. Writing on the Road is by Sue Reid Sexton, who, while writing two novels (Mavis's Shoe and Rue End Street) over the past six years, needed to escape from her hectic household to create some space to write them. As the mother of two and a step-mum of four, Sue realised her only real option was to get into her campervan and have it function as a mobile office. Whether she camped by a beach overlooking the Atlantic in the Kintyre peninsula with buzzards, golden eagles, deer, seals, surfers, other campervanners and dead fish for company, or in the hills around Glasgow, or on Skye, Morvern, the Cowal peninsula or even in southern France, her main aim was to switch off her phone, get out her laptop and write. Sue has made countless journeys in campervans in the last few years and thanks to her practice of taking notes as she travels, we, too, can enjoy her campervan experiences. In Writing on the Road Sue also writes about the many and varied practical difficulties of campervan life that she has had to overcome. They include locking herself out of the campervan at night miles from home; coping with local byelaws and negative attitudes to campervans and to women travelling solo; driving a hundred miles with a window open before she could empty a cracked toilet; and finding out the wrong (and the right) way to buy a campervan. We hope this book will inspire anyone looking for encouragement in the expressive arts to get creative and persuade any would-be campervanners to get out there and enjoy the campervan life.

Set in Greenock, Helensburgh and Clydebank, this sequel to Mavis's Shoe is a wartime family story. Lenny Gillespie sets off in search of her father in Greenock, west of Scotland, which is the No 1 Port for the UK for the movement of troops. Lenny is threatened once again with trouble when all she seeks is her family to be united. It is September 1943, more than two years since Lenny's world was devastated by the Clydebank Blitz and she and her family are safe in the beautiful green hut community of Carbeth, Scotland. But as the tides of war turn and Italy joins the Allies to fight the Nazis, the fists of war and fear are set to grab Lenny once more. Adversity threatens each moment, and Lenny is about to lose her closest ally. Told the family must move back to Clydebank with its smoke and factories and now overcrowded, teeming dwellings, Lenny refuses to give up her rural sanctuary. When her mother Peggy returns to Clydebank for a job, leaving Lenny to become a little mother to her siblings, Lenny lies about her age to look for work locally. But this new turn is bewildering. Exhausted, Lenny seizes on news of her father, convinced that if only she can discover the truth about where he is, if only she can find him, she can make their family complete again. But no-one will meet her eye.Desperate, and in need of a happy ending, Lenny sets out, but all is not as she hopes - Her steps take her the length of the great Clyde estuary, and into new dangers in the vast, dark, threatening and adult war-time ports of Helensburgh and Greenock...Enjoy this new book, the sequel to Mavis's Shoe , a harrowing account of the bombing of Clydebank in March 1941.