Michele Gorman is the USA Today and Sunday Times bestselling author of 18 romcoms. She has sold over half a million copies and is also published under the pen-name Lilly Bartlett.

When we went into lockdown in early 2020, I never imagined it would set me off on a whole new path. But that’s what happened. It’s fair to say that my husband (HB) and I found ourselves with a lot of time on our hands. A Lot of Time together. Just us, all day, every day.

​​I started to occupy myself with crafty projects. I taught myself visible mending, darning all the socks and jumpers in the house (even those without holes). HB and I bought sewing machines and stitched reusable all-cotton face masks, which became a healthy business for
us. I even took up The Great Big Art Exhibition Challenge, making animals out of felt and rendering HB’s portrait from used coffee bags.

Meanwhile, my latest novel, The Staycation, published into the strongest headwinds of my career. In June 2020 the bookshops were closed, the supermarkets cleared their shelves to make room for essentials and there was no foot traffic at the airports to peruse WHSmith.
I didn’t write during this time. I found it hard to think about romcoms with Covid raging. Besides, I wasn’t sure when my books would start selling again, so it was hard to motivate myself.

HB and I had a think about how to make our living. We had loved working together making face masks. We especially enjoyed working with the fabrics and knowing that we were making something that was kind to the environment. What if we could find another handmade product that let us keep doing that?

Eventually we hit upon reusable beeswax food wraps. We’d used them for over a decade, so we knew how useful they were. The trick was figuring out how to make them really well. We did, and the result is our eco-friendly business, Honey Bee Good ( www.honeybeegood.co.uk). More than 250 independent shops now stock our wax wraps in the UK and US, and we’ve got a thriving online retail business, too.

We’re usually covered in wax, and sometimes achy – it’s a very physical job because every bit of it is handmade – but we couldn’t be happier. Hearing from so many customers that they’ve ditched the single-use plastics in their kitchens makes all the work worthwhile.

What about writing? Well, there are always ideas percolating, so I’ll never close that door (once an author, always an author)! And who knows: maybe there’ll be a new book about spouses that have to figure out how to work together without killing each other…