Linda Collins's Blog: Loss Adjustment- the blog

Loss Adjustment readers are the best. You have been incredibly supportive over a difficult year of getting the book out in the world and accepting that it has its own life, independent of me.
Just received this on Goodreads from a Loss Adjustment reader:

from: José
to: Linda Collins
subject: re: I want to read your last book
message: Hi Linda, I forgot to be here but I am now (always here jeje, just kind of ghost). I read your book Loss Adjustment some months ago and I'm still speechless, I'm here for anything if you need it, I'll see how I can help.

How are you Linda?

I send you a hug in this side of the planet.

>>> Thanks, Jose...see what I mean? Hugs back, Linda
Loss Adjustment
Loss Adjustment

This is a cool way for book stores to utilise Goodreads reviews (see pic). I stumbled on this yesterday at Times Bookshop, Jelita, in Singapore. Times have put extracts of Goodreads reviews on the shelf underneath Loss Adjustment’s display at shops in their chain. The extract is from a review by Julie Vellacott Massey. So thoughtful to do this. The Jelita retail manager recognised me and gave me a hug. #lossadjustment #ethosbooks #awapress #booklove #mentalhealth #timesbookstore #goodreads

In Singapore, Michelle Martin of MONEY FM did this great interview with me. Here’s the link:

https://omny.fm/shows/money-fm-893/re...

Hi, some of you out there might be wondering, what sort of writer is she. What is her style? What topics does she write about it?
So I have put a link below to an essay I wrote, to give you a taster. The essay is titled, 'Departure from the motherland' and appeared on UK site tss earlier this year.
Hope you come to know me better.
- Linda
https://theshortstory.co.uk/departure...

I never knew, till I wrote my book ... Now I do.
https://lithub.com/writers-protect-yo...

You're wondering what this book is about, right? Here are several paragraphs - sorry, the middle one is a bit long - that gives a Mum perspective. It's not written in the tone of my book, I had better tell you.
I am sorry, but this blog will be a bit chatty. Some of you will understand. I feel more comfortable reaching out to you - as yet - unknown readers this way.

Here goes:
My daughter Victoria McLeod took her own life aged 17 on the first day of a new school term. She couldn’t face her exam results, she was confused by her friendship with a needy girl in her class who was, like her, self-harming. Vic was menstruating and it was a full-moon eclipse.

Leading up to that, I, her mum, was doing the martyr thing. I can see it now, but I didn't know it then. That last weekend of Vic’s life, an editor at my newspaper office overloaded me with a story that had to be cut by 200cm. I’d also rashly agreed to editing a book titled 50 Things to Love About Singapore. This was difficult to work on, as it involved difficult subject matter such as convincing readers to love high salaries for government ministers and the country’s electronic toll road system. I was ill with bronchitis. My husband, Malcolm was unusually irritable. He was concealing the fact he had a lump in his groin and thought he had cancer. It was the school holidays and Victoria just seemed to want to stay in her room with her headphones on. I thought that at last she was being a proper teenager. (The stupidity of that thought. The ignorance.) Actually she was suffering acute depression and had deliberately isolated herself from her friends so she could focus on ending it all.

Weird chanting by monks in their saffron robes kept happening from the apartment above us. We didn’t know it was for a neighbour, a believer in Taoism, who had died when he slipped on his brand-new marble floor and hit his head. That month, our condo kept being hit by lightning. A kingfisher bird that would always appear on my daily walk, vanished. Termites infested one of our rooms and erupted from the walls one night like a scene from the apocalypse. Oh, let me add that I - totally ignorant about building matters and the finances involved - was dealing online with insurers and their so-called “loss adjustors” in our home country of New Zealand where our house had been wrecked in an earthquake that killed nearly 200 people.

After Victoria died, Malcolm and I were so stunned that kind Singapore colleagues organised the funeral. They were well-meaning but it resulted in a three-day wake with an open coffin and a 24-hour vigil before the actual funeral and cremation. This was a new experience for uptight westerners, but it opened up a way of grieving that felt right and helped me let my girl go. I could stroke her hair and put polish on her nails. Asian mourners talked to her quite naturally as she lay there, dead.

I’m still coming to terms with what happened. But here, to the best of my recollection, is what did happen, and how I dealt with it.

My memoir is called Loss Adjustment. Yes, in some ways, I’ve “adjusted” to my loss. In other ways, I can’t accept that Victoria is lost to me. I want her back, and I want the world to want that, too.

Thanks for reading. - Linda