No longer ‘Goodbye Ruby Tuesday’, more ‘Hiya younger Ruby!’. Courtesy of A.L.Michael.

Seeing as A.L.Michael and I enjoy bringing something different to TWG, we obviously need to keep that momentum going. Obviously! The last blog post we had, featured a wonderful cake recipe. Any of you made it yet? If you don’t know what I’m on about, take a nosy here —> Love cake, ‘Ruby Tuesday’, cake, A.L.Michael and…cake? <— and go into the kitchen and make cake!

I hope the title of the blog, or part of it, sounds a bit familiar to you. Author A.L.Michael released the first book in a series back in April, called ‘Goodbye Ruby Tuesday’.
Goodbye Ruby Tuesday by A.L.Michael. Book Tour!
The second book in the series is released in August, and I am already very impatient because I want to read it yesterday! A.L.Michael has put together these posts for me so I can get my fix of her amazing book whilst I’m pacing the floor waiting for the next one. Well, she didn’t know that bit, but she does now. Hiya!!!!

Today’s post is yet again something different. A character from the book,  Ruby Tuesday has written a letter to her younger self, and it certainly isn’t one to be missed. Powerful words. Enjoy.

What I would tell my younger self

by Ruby Tuesday

This feels kind of like a school report, one of the ones I would have bunked off doing, and somehow managed to get away with, instead of an article for a magazine. It’s funny how

things end up seeming the same.
I loved being young, there was nothing better than being seventeen and in love with every

boy who jutted his lip and looked at you like you were a delicious piece of pie, or the most

glorious ice cream sundae. I loved the power I had then, people just seemed to do what I

want without me even really trying. I know that sounds stuck up, and no doubt there’ll be a headline in a tabloid newspaper tomorrow saying ‘Ruby Tuesday thinks people love her’,

but it was true. Something about having nothing to lose, I guess.

I was never mean, I don’t think, and I can be proud of that, but I had to be in control.

I loved my friends, like, my school friends, more than anything. I had moved so many times by that point, foster home to foster home, and I knew none of them would ever stick, because I always caused trouble. I just couldn’t help it, it was my way. But I wouldn’t tell myself to cause less trouble, because that’s how I found my friends. In detentions and after school sessions, random and peculiar punishments (are they still getting kids to scrape chewing gum off desks and put dots in every corner on a page of squared paper, because that’s a real fucking waste of time – give them a newspaper and tell them about the world, would you?) is how I made friends. And enemies. Maybe that should be my advice, to have made fewer enemies, been nicer about everything.

I had a certain thing I liked to do, and I thought I was being good, a vigilante for justice, and female empowerment, as much as anyone knows what they’re doing at seventeen. I used to test their boyfriends, used to see if they’d cave and fall for flattery and flirtation. The boys who fell for it were publicly shamed and their girlfriends were told. They were found unworthy, and it proved to me just how fickle men were. Yes, I know, I shouldn’t have based my opinion of all men on the pricks of horny teenage boys, but I did. And the weirdest thing happened – the girls stayed with them. They blamed me, and they stayed with the boyfriend, convinced it was my evil feminine wiles, and not their less than significant others. And that was the way of the world then, and it’s the same now.

So I play the part a little more. I put on my make up and I curl my hair and I sing to the world that the boy is treating you bad, and I want to be your friend and I wish you would listen. I want to save every one of those women from throwing themselves away on someone who’s unworthy. But…it made me a bitch, obviously, so maybe I should tell my younger self to stop all that shit. Maybe I should have told her to chill with the drinking and the need for drama, to stop acting like every day was her last on earth and just do her fucking maths homework. No wonder I got screwed in my first contract – could they add that to the syllabus as well?

Learning about percentages would be so much better in context! I think I would tell Ruby to wait, not to run whenever things got hard, not to be so eager to dish out the advice and so unwilling to take it. I loved people and I still held them away from me, never letting them see the whole. And now everyone sees Ruby Tuesday, and Ruby Montgomery, that poor little girl with no parents and no lunchbox, who grinned and caused trouble, well, there’s only three people in the world who still remember her.
And maybe I’ll get really lucky, and they’ll read this, and know how much I miss them.

The next book in the House On Camden Square series, is available to pre-order right now via Amazon UK.
Big thank you to A.L.Michael for yet another wonderful post. If you wish to keep up to date with the latest from her then you can do so via Twitter.