Blue Tide Rising

Nobody has listened to Amy Blue in years. Then she meets Jay, who listens to everything, and that's how she ends up on an eco-farm by the Welsh sea, owing him a favour.

"Somewhere in me a scream is rising, but I contain it. Just."

Diazepam-fogged Amy isn't the best person to investigate an unexplained death, but she's the only one Jay can get through to.

On the run from her troubled past and controlling older (ex) lover, she winds up on a Welsh eco farm where she starts to rebuild her life, grounded by the earth and healed by the salt air.

But it isn't just her inner self that she manages to uncover. There are living ghosts at Môr Tawel, and they're as loud as the waters crashing over the shingle on the beach.

Amy's new life has just started, and she's already running out of time.

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Readers of Blue Tide Rising can expect found family on a coastal smallholding, a slow burn romance with the son who rarely comes home, and a death the Lloyds have never accepted. Strange things happen at Môr Tawel, and nobody makes much fuss about them; there are hens to feed and a campsite to run. If you loved Jess Kidd's Himself or Ruth Hogan's The Keeper of Lost Things, or you've simply ever daydreamed about swapping the city for a farm by the sea, Amy is your kind of heroine. It gets dark before it gets better. But it does get better.

"A debut novel that deftly steps between gritty reality and magic realism with an agility that many more seasoned writers would envy, this is a book that has a beating heart within its fascinating central character." - Matt Turpin, Nottingham UNESCO City of Literature

"It feels novel to imagine that lives like Amy's are getting redeemed somewhere out there. That voices like hers are being heard. That experiences like hers are being counted." - The Hindu

"Quirky characters, with lovely descriptions of the two main settings, urban grit and rural idyll ... Blue Tide Rising perfectly balances light and dark." - Anne Goodwin, author of Matilda Windsor Is Coming Home

Please note: this novel includes depictions of substance dependency, rape and suicide.

Clare grew up in the wilds of Somerset where she was fed a daily diet of ghost stories cooked up in her older sister's imagination. This fostered a love of storytelling long before she could read or write.She has lived most of her adult life in Nottingham, which features in both her novels.She began her career as a journalist, before working for many years in government communications. She then switched from spin-doctor to story spinner and embarked on an MA in Creative Writing, which she passed with distinction. Clare wrote her first novel Blue Tide Rising (2019) while on the course.Her second novel, Heartsound, was published in 2024 and became a no 1 best seller at various bookshops in the Midlands that same year.She runs Creative Writing workshops across Nottinghamshire and, for six years, facilitated Creative Writing sessions at the Maggie's Centre for people affected by cancer.Alongside her own creative work, she is a freelance writer and editor and has had articles published in Writing Magazine, LeftLion, The Ecologist, and other media.Clare's favourite writing time is first thing in the morning when she's still half in dreamland. She also writes in cafes and other public spaces, drawing inspiration from the unlimited supply of human interest she finds to observe.When not writing or working, she can be found heading off for weekends in Whitby - her spiritual home - for coastal walks and dips in the north sea. She runs a half-marathon once a decade.