My new book, ‘Martine’, will be out on Kindle in just over two weeks, and it’s partly a tale of the triumph of new love over grief for love lost.  But it’s also a story of the pernicious futility of misogyny and homophobia.

Some of my readers will know that I write for a feminist, LGBTQ supportive, music website called ‘Hera Says’ and I’m very proud to do it.  It was founded by two friends of mine who are passionate music fans and were revolted by the constant sexism and abuse to which women in Rock music are still all too often exposed.  So the site was them doing their bit to combat it.  It began as a hobby site in Manchester (England), but they have built it into a service which gets many thousands of hits and now has readers in virtually every country on Earth.

Bad though things are, however, they were even worse in the past.  And ‘Martine’ is the story of guitarist Debbie Stewart’s rise to Rock legend status in the 1970s, despite rampant sexism, not least in her record company and even her own band.  Despite too, a dangerous stalker and a hostile media feeding-frenzy when the papers discover that she’s in a romantic relationship with a woman.

This is a prequel to the ‘Saltbury’ books you’re used to.  We know Deb and Martine as a devoted married couple and the doting (if sometimes long-suffering) mothers of Roisin, Hazel, Sofie and Danielle, with Martine herself an internationally known fashion designer.  But in 1975 they were just meeting.  Martine was an unknown design student and Deb was still a teenager, just breaking through to true fame, despite all those who want to stop her, mock her, dismiss her or in one case, even try to kill her.