STORIES FROM MY DESK | April 2025: A Monthly Update on Writing, Reading & Watching

What I've been creating and consuming in the past month

Oof. That’s pretty much all I can say right now. I spent most of yesterday simply reading fiction because, for just over a week, I’ve been working on the re-edit of my non-fiction book proposal.

Procrastinating Helen, Fearful Helen, Unconfident Helen had all disappeared, and I was On. A. Mission to get it finished and ready to send out to agents once more.

I worked on it so consistently that I didn’t have the bandwidth for my Substack as well. Which is a bit concerning, how I can’t work on two projects at once, but once it comes to writing the book, I’m sure I’ll figure it all out. Here are some of the Substack Notes I wrote whilst editing:

CREATIVE UPDATE (online stuff)

Last month, in my March update, I wrote the following:

“The platform I’m now consciously making more effort on is Substack Notes and Chat. I’m using Notes for three reasons. 1) to communicate smaller thoughts, observations and things that interest me with you. 2) to grow my audience - Notes seems to help. 3) to experiment. Sometimes, a small thought that I share on Notes might attract a lot of interest and is, therefore, worth exploring in more detail within an essay.”

Me being the way I am, I looked around to see if there was a way of being ‘encouraged’ to be more consistent on Notes. And happened upon a challenge run by another Substacker. Now, I had my doubts, but thought it worth giving it a go - because even if it didn’t work, I’d have something to write about and share with you.

Every day for a few weeks, at a certain time of day, you shared a Note you’d written with other writers in the challenge, and if they related to it, they would like it, comment or restack it. The idea is that the initial flurry of engagement on your Note will boost it in the algorithm. More eyes on your Note would help you grow your subscribers for your Substack newsletter.

So, out of curiosity, I gave it a go. At the very least, it would help me become more consistent.

But almost immediately, I knew it wasn’t for me.

On the positive side, I did come across a few new-to-me writers whose writing I enjoyed, so I began to follow with interest.

On the negative side: I cannot, just cannot, write something that feels forced (to me). And even though I could’ve just ignored the fact that I was now writing for a new audience within the challenge (after all, it had to be ‘enough’ so that they engaged with it) and just focused on what I wanted to write, it was still there in my head. I just couldn’t ignore it.

One of the things I try to do is be as honest and authentic in my writing as I can. And this just didn’t feel like me. No disrespect at all to the people taking part, or to the person running it. It was my issue that I just couldn’t stop second-guessing myself with my Notes, and that I was writing with the challenge in mind.

It was an interesting experiment, and I’ll discuss it in more detail on my podcast for paid subscribers within the next week.

WRITING UPDATE

It took me a few weeks after realising that I needed to change aspects of my non-fiction book proposal to actually make the changes. The usual suspects were to blame: fear and a massive dollop of self-doubt. But once I decided to tackle it, I couldn’t rest until it was finished. And, in fact, the thought of sending it out to agents no longer terrified me. I wanted to get it sent out. I wanted that thrill. I wanted that purpose. In my piece behind the paywall (I put my more vulnerable pieces behind a paywall) called A Very Positive Rejection, I share how a rejection from an agent gave me encouragement, which massively helped. Plus, I also mentioned that I’d like to start resubmitting the proposal in May.

Well, reader, I only went and resubmitted this re-edited proposal to the next agent on my list a few days ago - in April! I don’t think I’ve ever finished anything before a self-imposed deadline before.

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The second thing I did in April that meant taking steps out of my comfort zone was writing my big essay about Agatha Christie.

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I had so much fun writing this essay. Don’t get me wrong, there was a lot of self-doubt there as well (I wrote about how it felt to write it in this separate piece), but it felt good to go from having that initial spark of an idea to doing so much research, then writing almost 3000 words and publishing it. I had a real sense of accomplishment. Which boosts your creative confidence.

READING UPDATE

My Agatha Christie obsession continues to grow. After reading about the story behind The Big Four and discovering that the novel was based on several short stories published in a magazine some years earlier, I needed to know what the names of those short stories were and how they were originally published. Reading between the lines in Agatha’s autobiography and various biographies, Agatha was in such a bad place after the death of her mother and the collapse of her marriage that it was her brother-in-law who pulled all the short stories together to become a novel that she was contracted to write.

In 2016, these short stories were published as they were originally in a special edition. Could I find this edition anywhere on the internet? Only in one place, in the USA, on eBay. So I purchased it and am so glad I now have this in my collection. The video above is of me unboxing it.

The books I read during April were:

• Killing Joy by Holly Jackson, a prequel to the A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder trilogy.

• Agatha Christie: A Very Elusive Woman by Lucy Worsley, a biography.

• Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry

Kill Joy by Holly Jackson is a very short book. Not much happens, as it’s centred around a themed murder mystery party. But we do get to understand why Pip, the protagonist of A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder, is so interested in murder mysteries. I gave it three stars. I enjoyed it, but definitely for hardcore fans of the trilogy only.

Agatha Christie: A Very Elusive Woman by Lucy Worsley was simply brilliant. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Sometimes, biographies are not exciting to read, but this one was just so good, so addictive, and it threw me into the period. Lucy writes with empathy when exploring Agatha’s mental breakdown and with disappointment when addressing her stereotypes of Jewish characters. All human beings are flawed, there are layers, and good and bad bits to all of us, and I loved how Lucy acknowledges this. There were times when I thought, I don’t know if I’d like Agatha were I to know her in real life. Maybe I would, maybe I wouldn’t, and it could simply be that we live in different time periods. But I still love her stories and admire her skill, her writing abilities, her imagination and her productivity. I give it five stars.

Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry was the palate cleanser I needed after reading a huge biography and dipping into many others about Agatha and Poirot. So when I went into my local supermarket for dog food the other day, I accidentally purchased Emily’s latest hardback. Once more, the love story revolves around two writers (which I LOVE). Alice and Hayden are both auditioning for the job of writing a biography of a famous heiress, Margaret Ives, who is now in her eighties. We get to see how Alice and Hayden’s relationship plays out, and we also, through Alice’s interviews with Margaret, get the story of Margaret’s past. It’s a story within a story if you like. Again, another five stars from me.

WATCHING UPDATE

Because I haven’t been reading as much, I watched a few more films this month, so I wasn’t spending all my time scrolling.

The Residence on Netflix. A murder mystery in the White House. I thought was brilliant. Maybe a little slow at times, but I’d look forward to watching an episode every evening. I loved Uzo Aduba, who played the bird-watching detective Cordelia Cupp. In fact, all the actors were great. I didn’t even recognise Bronson Pinchot, who was playing the Swiss chef.

Anyway, it’s really good; there were at least two references to Agatha Christie in there. There’s humour, it’s what I would call a ‘cosy murder’, so it’s not gruesome and there’s no horrible psychological tension. It’s eight episodes and I miss it now we’ve finished.

The Rewrite (written and directed by Marc Lawrence, 2014), which I rented on Amazon for about £3-something, is a film I’ve watched before, but then recently caught a few clips on TikTok, so I just had to return to it. It’s a film about a screenwriter, played by Hugh Grant, who is struggling to sell any of his work, so he goes to a university near New York to teach a class about screenwriting. Here, he acts inappropriately until he realises that you can actually teach people how to write, and things start to get better for him. It’s not a brilliant film. I’d give it a solid three stars. However, it’s a film about a writer and was something I could sink into on a Sunday afternoon.

Easy A (starring Emma Stone and Stanley Tucci) is a teen movie inspired by The Scarlet Letter, a novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Again, I saw clips on TikTok (mainly of Stanley Tucci, I have to admit), and I’d never seen it before, and it’s currently available on Prime Video. The story revolves around a seventeen-year-old high school student who, after a lie to her best mate about a pretend boyfriend, then pretends she has slept with various students to make their lives more bearable. It was enjoyable, though a little annoying at times, again a Sunday afternoon film with little to stress me out, and I give it three stars.

The Chelsea Detective (starring Adrian Scarborough) is my new favourite TV murder mystery. Highly recommended.

I also finally finished watching Rivals (Disney+), which I enjoyed and, as part of my Agatha Christie research, watched Agatha, a 1979 film (rented from Amazon) starring Vanessa Redgrave, Dustin Hoffman and fellow Derbyshiran (as in, we are both from Derbyshire!), Timothy Dalton. I believe the Christie family were not happy about the film, and it took liberties with the truth, but it was okay.

Incidentally, I was raving about the second season of The Marlow Murder Club in last month’s Stories From My Desk, and I read somewhere that the second season is coming to PBS very soon, if not already.

WHAT YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED FROM ME

• Did I mention that I’ve written a massive essay about Agatha Christie and what was going on in her life whilst writing The Mystery of the Blue Train? THE STORY BEHIND THE BOOK: Agatha Christie and The Mystery of the Blue Train

• I also wrote an essay about how it felt to be writing something out of my comfort zone. What was the initial spark, and what did my research and writing process look like? The Story Behind the Agatha Christie Essay

• I chatted about my goals for Q1 of 2025 and discussed how reality lived up to my plans in the return of my podcast (for paid subscribers). Chatting about my goals for Q1 of 2025: How did reality live up to my plans?

• I wrote about the latest from my book proposal project. A very positive rejection

• And, I went down an Agatha Christie rabbit hole. Fascinating stuff. Down an Agatha Christie rabbit hole

Some of the above is for paid subscribers. You can upgrade your subscription for £4 a month or £20 for a whole year, here: