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#VSS365 ✨ From THE COMPASS: A #GenX, #NewAdult, #PsychologicalFiction #Novel. 🧭
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February 10, 2025 at 4:24 PM
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🥳 Happy 1-year Pubversary to The Compass! #KU • Paperback
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January 31, 2025 at 4:01 PM
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The father emits animal noises of such affliction, such heartbreak, sounds that seems to never end, sounds Helen has never heard before and hopes never to hear again. And a sight, a sight that will live etched on the back of her eyelids for all days, the blonde head tilting back and the viscous red fluid trailing onto the green cardigan. Rowan stands completely still in the middle of the field, staring at his sister’s body fallen on the grass, trying in his child’s mind to process what’s before him. He doesn’t scream, doesn’t blink, but watches his father run toward his sister, grab her head, and try to move her chin towards her chest to stop the bleeding, screaming her name over and over again.
August 27, 2025 at 7:52 AM
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Helen walks down the hallway past the his-and-her lounges into the kitchen. Rosie already has a mug ready for her on the table and a plate of biscuits. Helen asks Rosie, what have you heard? She thinks that perhaps hearing someone else start the tale might make it easier. That there was an accident with Chris’s daughter and a kite. That you were there. That she died. That Rowan stayed with you whilst Chris went to the hospital. That is all I know, Rosie outlines for her. Well, says Helen, that’s about it in broad strokes. Did you actually see it happen? Yes. In fact…Helen’s chin begins to tremble. She reminds herself of how she felt when she awoke, the peace, the serenity of that moment. Hold onto it. I am just now realising that had I not kept him chatting, perhaps this wouldn’t have happened at all. But of course, you couldn’t know. That’s what happens on the Hill. People talk. It’s such a freak thing to happen. And it has nothing to do with you. Helen nods. I know. Intellectually, I know. But that little girl. I’m realising I don’t even know her name. She reminded me so much of Claudia at that age. I couldn’t stop myself seeing Claudia, like that, bleeding. Rebecca, Rosie says. Rebecca, Helen repeats.
August 28, 2025 at 9:41 AM
brandyo71.bsky.social
Didn't have 'faith', so went with belief.

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As they approach, the people hush and watch them. Helen stands back a bit from the cluster, acknowledging but not wanting to enter it. Iris removes her hand and walks over to place her wildflowers with the other offerings. The scene reminds Helen of the yards of bouquets laid at Kensington and Buckingham Palace when Diana died. Hardly the same in scale, but resonating in a similar way, in the same lack of belief in what happened. People begin speaking to each other again. Many cry. The group reverts back to how they were before she and Iris arrived, and Helen eases her grip on the moment. She imagines Chris at the house across the street, looking at the people and the gifts. She can imagine it would anger him. It would anger her, if she were him. But maybe that’s just her. Maybe her need to keep everything so close, so private, eradicates the quieting power of a group who only wants to express love, to mourn together, to honour. Helen has always simply explained she is a private person, that she has a few close friends and gets overwhelmed in crowds, all of which is true. But the how. How did she become like this? Parental benign neglect, growing up with a feeling of oddness and displacement, betrayal of the worst kind. Something always felt off in her, shadowy, uncertain. The solid dependency of Ali shifted some of that; aging helped as well. There is something to be said for getting to the age where one just doesn’t give a shit anymore. Watching Claudia in her twenties regularly reminds Helen that having a wrinkle-less face and thighs without cellulite is simply not worth all the hassle of being young. There is a lesson here; she feels it. But she’s not sure she likes what she feels. It has something to do with being thrust into the community by virtue of what she witnessed, to being put in a place where people think she needs caring for. Suddenly a conversation she had with someone years ago about the word lonely. Helen tried to explain why she does not like that…
August 31, 2025 at 9:51 AM
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How about a drink? At mine or yours? At the Plough. The lack of an immediate response tells Helen all she needs to know about the impact of what she has suggested. Come by mine in ten and we’ll walk there together. Bless her, Helen thinks. Bless her for not making a fuss. Bless her for not making Helen feel like this is as big of a deal as she knows it to be. Helen cleans herself from the garden mess but doesn’t make more than her usual effort. She’s clean. She lets her hair down and brushes it, scrubs the dirt from her nails and checks there is none on her face. She smells her pits to make sure she’s not offensive. Slash of pink lip balm and she’s ready. Bingley has awoken from his drowse and senses something exciting his happening when Helen packs his dinner into a container to take with her. He wiggles his way over to the front door and looks up at his lead.
August 29, 2025 at 8:08 AM
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Helen flicks a small piece of chicken to Bingley who catches it midair with the accuracy of an Arsenal goalie. Arsenal. She sees Rowan’s red shirt in her mind and feels the weight of her experience and the two, or was it three, glasses of wine she has had today. The chair on which she sits feels as if it might dissolve beneath her and her body releases its vigilant hold, morphing her from a human shape to a blob before Claudia’s eyes. Okay, mum. You’re tired. Let’s get you upstairs. I’m going to draw you a bath and then Brian and I will clean up down here. Helen wants to argue with her daughter. I am supposed to be the one drawing you a bath, putting in bubbles and toys and sitting next to you singing Wheels on the Bus or Row Row Row Your Boat. But she can’t. She hasn’t the energy to move her mouth to form the words, I am the mother.
September 2, 2025 at 8:19 AM
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Helen gently sets Rowan down on the grass next to Bingley, who immediately begins licking the snot off his face. The boy makes a sound resembling a laugh. Astonishing in the midst of all this. Helen has always disliked when people say children are resilient. The comment feels like an excuse for parents to deny the damage that can be done to a child, usually by them and their own choices. But maybe they are. Maybe humans simply just are. She tells him to sit there for a moment and keep Bingley company. Bingley, he says. Yes, Bingley. Now hold his leash and don’t let him run away, okay? She knows there is little chance of this.
September 1, 2025 at 7:39 AM
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In the cubicle next to hers, she met Graham. An Irishman, new to the city, transferred from the Dublin office as part of a yearlong global exchange program for high-potential employees. He had the accent. Not quite like Ali’s. But with that seductive sound of the Irish lilt, he almost fit in the Ali shaped space in her heart. Not educated like Ali. Couldn’t see much point in books. Didn’t like the dust and the smell. What Graham did have was the Irish ability to find fun in everything. In addition to business at Dublin City University, he had majored in having a good time. He showed Helen one as well. A North Shore girl, Helen had never been south of the Field Museum. On their first date, they started with dinner at August Moon in Chinatown. Sitting at the table, the server laid on the table a basket of something that looked like puffy white chips. What are these, Helen asked. Prawn crackers. You’ve never had prawn crackers? Helen shook her head. Oh, this will be fun! Graham said, rubbing his hands together.
September 8, 2025 at 9:42 AM
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In the cubicle next to hers, she met Graham. An Irishman, new to the city, transferred from the Dublin office as part of a yearlong global exchange program for high-potential employees. He had the accent. Not quite like Ali’s. But with that seductive sound of the Irish lilt, he almost fit in the Ali shaped space in her heart. Not educated like Ali. Couldn’t see much point in books. Didn’t like the dust and the smell. What Graham did have was the Irish ability to find fun in everything. In addition to business at Dublin City University, he had majored in having a good time. He showed Helen one as well. A North Shore girl, Helen had never been south of the Field Museum. On their first date, they started with dinner at August Moon in Chinatown. Sitting at the table, the server laid on the table a basket of something that looked like puffy white chips. What are these, Helen asked. Prawn crackers. You’ve never had prawn crackers? Helen shook her head. Oh, this will be fun! Graham said, rubbing his hands together.
September 8, 2025 at 9:44 AM
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She leans her head back on the green cushion of the deck chair and closes her eyes, unwilling to let the memory go. Sometimes the presence of Ali, or the lack of rather, grabs her from out of nowhere and squeezes her heart until it feels it might burst and drown her in a tidal wave of remembering. A tickle on her hand causes her to lift her head and open her eyes to see a small white feather resting on it. She searches back, trying to remember what a white feather means. In a conversation with a friend years ago, she had confessed she never liked feathers, the way they felt on the skin. And also, probably because her mother would never let her hold ones that she found, saying they were filthy and diseased. Her friend had said that was too bad. A feather landing on you usually means someone is looking out for your from another realm. At the time, Helen smiled politely and turned the conversation in another direction. Never one to engage in hoodoo voodoo magical thinking. But now, with this gentle soft presence on her hand, she felt Ali. She felt Ali letting her know it would be all right. That it absolutely would all be all right. And to say hi to Percy. A heaviness wraps itself around her, a regret at spending her life closed off, certain that nothing existed beyond this world. What might she have missed.
September 7, 2025 at 10:51 AM
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No coffee, so went for tea.
When she came downstairs after the bath to make a cup of tea, Helen found an immaculate kitchen with a candle burning on the island, a well-known sign in their family that the kitchen was shut down for the night. Helen remembers the first time Ali did this for her and wonders if someday a grandchild or a great grandchild of hers would light a candle after cleaning the kitchen and what it would take, how many years, for that to become not just nurture, but nature. Could these small moments, habits, family eccentricities find their way into the DNA to affect generations? Helen knew that Claudia did the same thing at the end of an evening in her little kitchen down the hill and wondered if Brian had caught on yet. He would, if not. Helen never tires of candles as gifts. She knows people wish she would ask for something else so they could have the pleasure of giving a new type of gift. Candles are her little luxury. She always wants plenty around so that she never has to think about whether or not to light one. She wonders at the staying power of those kind of small things. The big things are forgotten, the magnanimous gestures, the diamond earrings on an anniversary, the surprise trip to Rome. What stays: coming home to a made bed after a long day in London, flowers on a random Thursday, never leaving the house without a goodbye kiss, I love you at the end of a phone call or even, sometimes, a text.
September 4, 2025 at 7:54 AM
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Helen walks down the hallway past the his-and-her lounges into the kitchen. Rosie already has a mug ready for her on the table and a plate of biscuits. Helen asks Rosie, what have you heard? She thinks that perhaps hearing someone else start the tale might make it easier. That there was an accident with Chris’s daughter and a kite. That you were there. That she died. That Rowan stayed with you whilst Chris went to the hospital. That is all I know, Rosie outlines for her. Well, says Helen, that’s about it in broad strokes. Did you actually see it happen? Yes. In fact…Helen’s chin begins to tremble. She reminds herself of how she felt when she awoke, the peace, the serenity of that moment. Hold onto it. I am just now realising that had I not kept him chatting, perhaps this wouldn’t have happened at all. But of course, you couldn’t know. That’s what happens on the Hill. People talk. It’s such a freak thing to happen. And it has nothing to do with you. Helen nods. I know. Intellectually, I know. But that little girl. I’m realising I don’t even know her name. She reminded me so much of Claudia at that age. I couldn’t stop myself seeing Claudia, like that, bleeding. Rebecca, Rosie says. Rebecca, Helen repeats.
August 28, 2025 at 9:41 AM
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Come with me, Rowan. I think Bingley wants his treat. Would you like to give it to him? Rowan nods. She hands him a short green stick that looks like a bunch of sawdust glued together. She points to Bingley. You may give it to him, she says. Rowan says, this? What is it? Helen tells him it’s for the dog’s teeth. It’s his toothbrush and Rowan giggles. He takes the stick and makes a brushing motion over his lips. He hands it to the dog and smiles as Bingley licks his hand after, sopping up all the snot. Bingley is a weird name for a dog, the boy says. It’s from my favourite book, Helen tells him. Pride and Prejudice. Weird name for a book too.
September 6, 2025 at 11:22 AM
judithlindbergh.bsky.social
Waiting for book cover art from my publisher. So anxious! Cover art can make or break a novel. Do you agree?

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June 28, 2023 at 3:13 PM
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Bingley, happy to be back at the pub again, lies down on his belly and splays out his legs behind him. They all call him the spatchcock beagle. Jack laughs but doesn’t say that it’s been too long since he’s seen the dog do that. Rosie puts a blanket on the ground for Dolly to curl up in and then pours them both a healthy dose of the pink wine. Iris, who sits at table across the room, comes over and stands by them. She puts her hand over Helen’s. Helen catches Rosie giving her a stern look. Oh stop it, Rosie, I’m not going to say anything about Helen finally being back in the pub. For fuck sake, what do you take me for? I’m the bloody soul of discretion. Iris’s cerulean eyes glint and sparkle at her own cleverness. Helen bursts out laughing. Thank God some things never change.
September 3, 2025 at 9:40 AM
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Bingley, happy to be back at the pub again, lies down on his belly and splays out his legs behind him. They all call him the spatchcock beagle. Jack laughs but doesn’t say that it’s been too long since he’s seen the dog do that. Rosie puts a blanket on the ground for Dolly to curl up in and then pours them both a healthy dose of the pink wine. Iris, who sits at table across the room, comes over and stands by them. She puts her hand over Helen’s. Helen catches Rosie giving her a stern look. Oh stop it, Rosie, I’m not going to say anything about Helen finally being back in the pub. For fuck sake, what do you take me for? I’m the bloody soul of discretion. Iris’s cerulean eyes glint and sparkle at her own cleverness. Helen bursts out laughing. Thank God some things never change.
September 3, 2025 at 9:36 AM
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As they walk away from The Plough, both relaxed from the wine and biscuits, Helen finds she does not want to go home. She feels compelled to walk back towards the Hill, to walk past Chris and Rowan’s house. How will they continue to live there with the site of the accident visible from their front window? A shiny Jeff Koons balloon dog sculpture sits in the bay window, all the shutters behind it closed, as if the house itself were dead. She should have brought something, she thinks. She should have something in hand to give her a reason to ring the bell, something to offer to the father and son. She should have showered after her swim; her frizzy hair and red face must be a sight. She rings the bell anyway, but there is no answer. She rings again. The weight of an insistent urge pressures her to connect with them. They are not alone in the catastrophe. She begins to realise herself a participant, not just an observer. She too has been affected. Not like Chris. Not like Rowan. But in her own way, she will never be the same again either. She has been altered, a thought that had not occurred to her before now, a thought that had not had time to occur to her, as she so forcibly kept to the pattern of her life. But now, now. What to do now with herself now? The now before her is an unknown, a sense that well-worn neural pathways are closed to her, safe escape routes boarded up, and she must take a step into what has yet to be charted. She feels desperate to connect with the other participants of this experience, for they are the only ones who might also understand, but they are not there. She feels a certain umbrage, almost taking offense at being left behind. The wine at the pub cracked open a hatch to what lies beneath, giving her a peek at her emotions, allowing her feelings about the event begin to foment and make themselves known.
September 5, 2025 at 8:11 AM
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How about a drink? At mine or yours? At the Plough. The lack of an immediate response tells Helen all she needs to know about the impact of what she has suggested. Come by mine in ten and we’ll walk there together. Bless her, Helen thinks. Bless her for not making a fuss. Bless her for not making Helen feel like this is as big of a deal as she knows it to be. Helen cleans herself from the garden mess but doesn’t make more than her usual effort. She’s clean. She lets her hair down and brushes it, scrubs the dirt from her nails and checks there is none on her face. She smells her pits to make sure she’s not offensive. Slash of pink lip balm and she’s ready. Bingley has awoken from his drowse and senses something exciting his happening when Helen packs his dinner into a container to take with her. He wiggles his way over to the front door and looks up at his lead.
August 29, 2025 at 8:07 AM
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As they walk away from The Plough, both relaxed from the wine and biscuits, Helen finds she does not want to go home. She feels compelled to walk back towards the Hill, to walk past Chris and Rowan’s house. How will they continue to live there with the site of the accident visible from their front window? A shiny Jeff Koons balloon dog sculpture sits in the bay window, all the shutters behind it closed, as if the house itself were dead. She should have brought something, she thinks. She should have something in hand to give her a reason to ring the bell, something to offer to the father and son. She should have showered after her swim; her frizzy hair and red face must be a sight. She rings the bell anyway, but there is no answer. She rings again. The weight of an insistent urge pressures her to connect with them. They are not alone in the catastrophe. She begins to realise herself a participant, not just an observer. She too has been affected. Not like Chris. Not like Rowan. But in her own way, she will never be the same again either. She has been altered, a thought that had not occurred to her before now, a thought that had not had time to occur to her, as she so forcibly kept to the pattern of her life. But now, now. What to do now with herself now? The now before her is an unknown, a sense that well-worn neural pathways are closed to her, safe escape routes boarded up, and she must take a step into what has yet to be charted. She feels desperate to connect with the other participants of this experience, for they are the only ones who might also understand, but they are not there. She feels a certain umbrage, almost taking offense at being left behind. The wine at the pub cracked open a hatch to what lies beneath, giving her a peek at her emotions, allowing her feelings about the event begin to foment and make themselves known.
September 5, 2025 at 8:12 AM
brandyo71.bsky.social
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Helen flicks a small piece of chicken to Bingley who catches it midair with the accuracy of an Arsenal goalie. Arsenal. She sees Rowan’s red shirt in her mind and feels the weight of her experience and the two, or was it three, glasses of wine she has had today. The chair on which she sits feels as if it might dissolve beneath her and her body releases its vigilant hold, morphing her from a human shape to a blob before Claudia’s eyes. Okay, mum. You’re tired. Let’s get you upstairs. I’m going to draw you a bath and then Brian and I will clean up down here. Helen wants to argue with her daughter. I am supposed to be the one drawing you a bath, putting in bubbles and toys and sitting next to you singing Wheels on the Bus or Row Row Row Your Boat. But she can’t. She hasn’t the energy to move her mouth to form the words, I am the mother.
September 2, 2025 at 8:20 AM
brandyo71.bsky.social
Didn't have 'faith', so went with belief.

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As they approach, the people hush and watch them. Helen stands back a bit from the cluster, acknowledging but not wanting to enter it. Iris removes her hand and walks over to place her wildflowers with the other offerings. The scene reminds Helen of the yards of bouquets laid at Kensington and Buckingham Palace when Diana died. Hardly the same in scale, but resonating in a similar way, in the same lack of belief in what happened. People begin speaking to each other again. Many cry. The group reverts back to how they were before she and Iris arrived, and Helen eases her grip on the moment. She imagines Chris at the house across the street, looking at the people and the gifts. She can imagine it would anger him. It would anger her, if she were him. But maybe that’s just her. Maybe her need to keep everything so close, so private, eradicates the quieting power of a group who only wants to express love, to mourn together, to honour. Helen has always simply explained she is a private person, that she has a few close friends and gets overwhelmed in crowds, all of which is true. But the how. How did she become like this? Parental benign neglect, growing up with a feeling of oddness and displacement, betrayal of the worst kind. Something always felt off in her, shadowy, uncertain. The solid dependency of Ali shifted some of that; aging helped as well. There is something to be said for getting to the age where one just doesn’t give a shit anymore. Watching Claudia in her twenties regularly reminds Helen that having a wrinkle-less face and thighs without cellulite is simply not worth all the hassle of being young. There is a lesson here; she feels it. But she’s not sure she likes what she feels. It has something to do with being thrust into the community by virtue of what she witnessed, to being put in a place where people think she needs caring for. Suddenly a conversation she had with someone years ago about the word lonely. Helen tried to explain why she does not like that…
August 31, 2025 at 9:51 AM
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Come with me, Rowan. I think Bingley wants his treat. Would you like to give it to him? Rowan nods. She hands him a short green stick that looks like a bunch of sawdust glued together. She points to Bingley. You may give it to him, she says. Rowan says, this? What is it? Helen tells him it’s for the dog’s teeth. It’s his toothbrush and Rowan giggles. He takes the stick and makes a brushing motion over his lips. He hands it to the dog and smiles as Bingley licks his hand after, sopping up all the snot. Bingley is a weird name for a dog, the boy says. It’s from my favourite book, Helen tells him. Pride and Prejudice. Weird name for a book too.
September 6, 2025 at 11:21 AM
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No coffee, so went for tea.
When she came downstairs after the bath to make a cup of tea, Helen found an immaculate kitchen with a candle burning on the island, a well-known sign in their family that the kitchen was shut down for the night. Helen remembers the first time Ali did this for her and wonders if someday a grandchild or a great grandchild of hers would light a candle after cleaning the kitchen and what it would take, how many years, for that to become not just nurture, but nature. Could these small moments, habits, family eccentricities find their way into the DNA to affect generations? Helen knew that Claudia did the same thing at the end of an evening in her little kitchen down the hill and wondered if Brian had caught on yet. He would, if not. Helen never tires of candles as gifts. She knows people wish she would ask for something else so they could have the pleasure of giving a new type of gift. Candles are her little luxury. She always wants plenty around so that she never has to think about whether or not to light one. She wonders at the staying power of those kind of small things. The big things are forgotten, the magnanimous gestures, the diamond earrings on an anniversary, the surprise trip to Rome. What stays: coming home to a made bed after a long day in London, flowers on a random Thursday, never leaving the house without a goodbye kiss, I love you at the end of a phone call or even, sometimes, a text.
September 4, 2025 at 7:53 AM
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Helen gently sets Rowan down on the grass next to Bingley, who immediately begins licking the snot off his face. The boy makes a sound resembling a laugh. Astonishing in the midst of all this. Helen has always disliked when people say children are resilient. The comment feels like an excuse for parents to deny the damage that can be done to a child, usually by them and their own choices. But maybe they are. Maybe humans simply just are. She tells him to sit there for a moment and keep Bingley company. Bingley, he says. Yes, Bingley. Now hold his leash and don’t let him run away, okay? She knows there is little chance of this.
September 1, 2025 at 7:38 AM