Author: Miriam Drori

Author, editor, attempter of this thing called life. Social anxiety warrior. Re-Connections, a collection of short stories, published with Ocelot Press, 15/10/2025.

Social anxiety

Slogan Competition

I need a slogan.

Update for clarification. The slogan is supposed to say: you need to know about social anxiety.

I tried using a free slogan maker. It asked for a word and I gave it social-anxiety. It came back with slogans – lots of them. Slogans like these:

Get more from life with social-anxiety.
Make someone happy with social-anxiety.
Social-anxiety – empowering people.
Social-anxiety makes dreams come true.
Social-anxiety, try it you’ll like it!

I thought about these. For a second or two. Then I decided…

The Competition

I still need a slogan. Something that says that social anxiety is the next big thing. That everyone needs to know about social anxiety. That you should be on the social anxiety bandwagon, because you don’t want to get left behind. That soon only ignorant people won’t know what social anxiety is. That sort of thing.

That’s the competition. The person who thinks up the best slogan will win a signed copy of my romance with a difference, Neither Here Nor There. If the winner has read that book, I’ll think of a different prize.

How to Enter

Where should you send your competition entries? Write them here in the comments or send them privately, if you prefer, using the Contact me button at the top. I’ll announce the winner here, unless they don’t want to be announced, and will use the winning slogan for marketing my forthcoming book: Social Anxiety Revealed.

Tags competition, prize, slogan, Social Anxiety Revealed, winner

Uncategorized

What’s Your Warning Label?

Post author By Miriam Drori
Post date Jul 9, 2017
4 Comments on What’s Your Warning Label?

This is such an interesting question: If we were all forced to wear a warning label, what would yours say?

I think in the past mine would have said:

Warning: BORING AND HESITANT

Now it would say:

Warning: APPEARS HESITANT AND BORING AT FIRST, BUT ASK THE RIGHT QUESTIONS AND YOU WILL BE SURPRISED

What’s your warning label?

Tags interesting question, warning label

Everyday life Israel

The Memorial Mountain

Har Herzl (Mount Herzl) has been Israel’s official national cemetery since 1951. It is the final resting place of presidents, prime ministers and other leaders. It is also a military cemetery for many soldiers who gave their lives for the country.

I’ve visited Har Herzl many times over the past forty years, but never on a guided tour, and there were many things I didn’t know about it. So when I saw a request by Tali Tarlow for “test drivers” of this chapter of the book she’s been writing, I jumped at the chance. Tali is well known for her fun and informative scavenger hunts. I’ve been on three of them, all in Jerusalem: the Old City, Nachlaot and Yemin Moshe.

“We know how to do memorials,” said Erika, who joined me on Friday for the visit. It’s true. Unfortunately, this small, young country has had plenty of experience. And designers have created some innovative symbols. As well as the graves I mentioned above, we saw the memorials for passengers and crews of sunken ships and submarines, and for Ethiopian Jews who died trying to reach the Land of Israel. In Tali’s chapter, we read sad and uplifting stories, knowing that without the people buried in this place, we wouldn’t be living here.

HarHerzlMemorialToEthiopianJews30 — Memorial to Ethiopian Jews

At the top of a hill, we saw the tomb of Benjamin Ze’ev (Theodor) Herzl, the visionary of the State of Israel, after whom the place is named.

Har Herzl is also a lovely park, well laid out with trees, flowers and grass.

Although we enjoyed our morning on the mountain, Erika and I decided that next time we meet, it will be at a happier location.

Tags cemetery, memorial, Mount Herzl

Books

Double Anniversary

Sorry about the recent quiet from within the walls. I’ve been editing and writing and thinking about a new cover and…

But I couldn’t let yesterday’s double anniversary go unnoticed.

Three years ago, my first novel, NEITHER HERE NOR THERE, was published by Crooked Cat. Seven years ago, my metastory, called NO MIDDLE, was published online. Here it is:

No Middle

His eyes lit up. “You’ve made soup. And strawberries. Mmm. What’s the main course?”

“Sorry, I didn’t get round to making a main course.”

“No main course? You wouldn’t write a story like that, with a beginning and an end but no middle.”

When they finally broke in, the smell drew them to the kitchen. On the table, beside two empty soup bowls, lay two dishes of rotting strawberries.

***

The novel is here.

Neither Here Nor There

Tags anniversary, Crooked Cat Books, Neither Here Nor There, No Middle, strawberries

Books Social anxiety

Positive Passion

Following on from the news that my book, Social Anxiety Revealed will be published by Crooked Cat later this year, hence giving a big boost to my passion: raising awareness of social anxiety, I looked up quotes about passion and found these:

Passion is energy. Feel the power that comes from focusing on what excites you.

~Oprah Winfrey

If passion drives you, let reason hold the reins.

~Benjamin Franklin

We must act out passion before we can feel it.

~Jean-Paul Sartre

It is obvious that we can no more explain a passion to a person who has never experienced it than we can explain light to the blind.

~T. S. Eliot

Nothing is as important as passion. No matter what you want to do with your life, be passionate.

~Jon Bon Jovi

I started posting one a day on Facebook. In fact I was ready to post the last one when tragedy struck in Manchester, UK, making me think again. Whatever you want to do, be passionate? I think the perpetrator of that horrendous crime was passionate, but he was passionate about the wrong thing. Considering the beliefs he held, I think it would have been better if he hadn’t been passionate about them.

So instead of posting that last quote, I wrote one of my own:

Your passion should stimulate you to help fellow humans – not harm them.

I added: “Over the last few days, I’ve been posting quotes about passion. This one is mine, inspired by Manchester and similar atrocities, perpetrated by people with the wrong sort of passion.”

Promote Positive Passion

Tags Benjamin Franklin, Crooked Cat, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jon Bon Jovi, Manchester, Oprah Winfrey, passion, T. S. Eliot

Books

The Allure of Secrets

I’m delighted to be visited today by Katharine Johnson, author of Lies, Mistakes and Misunderstandings, and now of The Silence. She’s going to talk about her fascination with secrets, so, over to her.

KatyJohnson I know publishers and bookshops like books that have clearly defined genres. It makes them easier to market and display which in turn makes them easier to sell. The trouble is not all readers are as easy to categorise. I’m sure there are people who only buy romance or historical novels or detective stories but I’m not one of these. I like books from lots of different genres. You’re as likely to find me reading a family saga as a thriller and some of my favourite books don’t fall into any genre that I can identify. But I suppose if I had to find a common thread to the novels I love it would be secrets. I’m drawn to stories where things are not as they first appear, and where a long-held secret is threatened with exposure and the effect it has on people when it is revealed.

Secrets I hadn’t really noticed that this was the case until someone recently pointed it out. My favourite book about a long-held secret is Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. To me secrets are what make people interesting. We all have them to some extent but I’m curious about how people deal with having a big secret in their life, how they feel about it and to what lengths they will go to hide it. Perhaps it’s because I’m so bad at keeping secrets myself – I’ve come to the sad conclusion that I’d make a terrible spy – that I’m fascinated by people who can do so successfully for years.

I suppose the first person you need to convince is yourself. George Orwell said in 1984 “If you want to keep a secret you must also hide it from yourself.”

In my novel The Silence which is being published on 8th June the main character Abby has a secret that goes back 25 years to a summer she spent in Tuscany as a teenager. Now in her thirties, she loves her job and is happily married with two lovely little girls – but she knows that if her secret gets out her perfect life will implode.

She has driven the details of what happened during her last day at the villa to the very back of her mind and has done this so successfully that she has almost convinced herself it never happened. How else could she have got on with her life, got a degree, got a job, married – all the things normal people do? But when human remains are discovered at the villa she realises her secret is no longer safe.

The other thing about having a secret is that you can only be sure of keeping it if you are the only person to know about it. But Abby wasn’t the only person at the villa that day and now someone else wants the truth to be told.

Special Offer

The Silence will be published on June 8th in eBook and paperback versions and is available on this link Amazon – The Silence.

Grab the eBook at the special pre-order price of 99p (after publication it goes up to £1.99).

Message me (or email katy@espressomedia.net) with proof of order and you will be entered into a goodybag prize draw which includes prosecco and chocolates, an Amazon gift card and a signed paperback of my first novel Lies, Mistakes and Misunderstandings.

Come to the Party

I’m having an online book launch for The Silence on 8th-9th June. There will be fun and games, information about the book, visiting authors and prizes to be won. Please come along! Click on this link for more details: The Silence launch Party.

About the Author

Katharine Johnson is a journalist with a passion for old houses and all things Italian (except tiramisu). She grew up in Bristol and has lived in Italy. She currently lives in Berkshire with her husband, three children and madcap spaniel.

Tags Crooked Cat, Katharine Johnson, secrets

Holidays The writing process

Sounds Like a Riddle

I think this was the first riddle I ever heard of the type I’m thinking of:

Brothers and sisters have I none, but that man’s father is my father’s son.

Something David (other half) said recently reminded me of that. We were walking through the village of Aldbury at the start of a circular walk in the Chilterns. He said:

I know this place, but I’ve never been here.

The riddle was soon solved. The village was the setting for an episode of The Avengers, a weird crime series from the 1960s. The stories in this series couldn’t possibly have happened in real life, and that’s the charm of it. I’m not totally hooked, but I think I get it.

We looked up Aldbury, of course, and immediately discovered the episode in question: Murdersville, in which all the village residents are involved in regular murders. For this episode, the village was renamed Little Storping in the Swuff and The Greyhound Inn became The Happy Ploughman. This might make me think differently about ploughman’s lunches!

We watched the episode after returning home. As I said: weird. But well done, David, for recognising the village!

***

The latest meeting of my writing group involved homemade Sachertorte. Obviously, I had to take photos. Sachertorte… Vienna… The Women Friends: Selina.

Tags Aldbury, Avengers, Klimt, Murdersville, Sachertorte, The Women Friends, Vienna