Nikki and Kirsty are sisters from Tauranga New Zealand, approaching middle age gracelessly. We are best friends, avid readers, writers, foodies and travel enthusiasts who have a small obsession with Harry Styles. Old enough to write from experience but young enough to still believe in love, we write quirky, light- hearted stories that we feel are a welcome escape in this current world climate. Neither of us can do a cartwheel.
We began writing in lockdown after we found ourselves always looking and never finding books for older women like us. We got tired of the billionaires with six packs and all their own hair, dating sweet, skinny college girls and living happily ever after. Where were the real people? The ones with exes, kids and baggage? The women who still wanted love past their forties..
So we wrote a book together, with no idea what we were doing. Now, we’ve taken courses, learnt about publishing and proven to ourselves that you can teach an old dog new tricks. We published five books, How to Marry Harry, The Missing Wife Life, Pinot and Puha, Given a Buckley’s Chance and Bringing Home Mr Bacon.
Our sixth book, Mary and Bright, has just launched and although it’s Christmas themed, this time we’ve tackled a serious issue, but we hope we have done it with enough humour that it will still leave the reader smiling.
Almost 70,000 New Zealanders and 410,000 Austrlaians live with Alzheimer’s or dementia. Which means most of us know someone affected by this awful disease.
When our father was diagnosed, it was devastating. Slowly we lost the dad we had known and he was replaced by a baffled, confused old man. It’s an undignified end, and we know he would have hated forgetting us and his grandchildren. For them, Pop had been the man who took them for walks with the dog, let them help mow the lawn sitting on his lap on his ride-on mower, and gave them all funny nicknames. For us he was the hard working dad who read Agatha Christie and Dick Francis novels and loved to jokingly ask us when we were going home – five minutes after we arrived to visit. Watching him slowly lose his functions, and his personality, was painful and cruel.
To cope, we tried to find the funny side. Like the time he sat back at the wrong table in a restaurant after using the restrooms and didn’t notice the people there weren’t us, or when he thought he was taking Nikki for a driving lesson, long after he could no longer drive. But it was an incident where he thought the postman was Santa that sparked the idea for our latest rom-com novel ‘Mary and Bright’.
Dad passed away on 26 October 2020, but we like to think he might have enjoyed this book. It was the most joyous one to write.
For every book sold we intend to make a $1 donation to Alzheimer’s New Zealand as a way of saying thank you for the support and advice they give.
Set in a retirement village, ‘Mary and Bright’ is a grumpy/sunshine Christmas romance. It’s light, fun and the perfect gift for any book lovers in your life.
We hope the book will make people laugh and find their Christmas spirit, even if they are dealing with dementia in some way.
Albright Nicols is not a fan of Christmas.
He’s too busy running his business and worrying about his increasingly oddly behaved father to deal with the festive season.
That is until he meets Mary – an infuriatingly joyful and sparkling woman who loves her job at the retirement village and is determined to help Bright find his holiday spirit.
The book will be available through supporting independent bookstores as well as Amazon, or direct from us. And as always, if you enjoy it, please leave us a review!
For more about us and our books www.nikkiperryandkirstyroby.com and Instagram @write_doozy
For more information on Alzheimers visit www.alzheimers.org.nz