Summer Update

September already? Well, I hope you had a lovely summer! Here's what I've been up to ...   

Book Launch for Trust Me I Lie

My latest novel, Trust Me I Lie, came out at the end of June - and a huge thank you to everyone who bought it. I celebrated with Novelistas Ink in the usual way ...

There are more photos on the Novelistas' News Page.

And you can read an extract from Trust Me I Lie either on my website or on Wattpad.

Guest Blog Posts

Being Anne: The Enduring Appeal of Fairy Tales

My Reading Corner: Creating an 'Unlikeable' Heroine

Author Interviews

Becca's Books: Do I base my characters on anyone I know? Are there any particular themes I like to use? How do I choose my settings?

With Love For Books: Which of my own personal experiences end up in my book? If I could choose to be one of my characters, which one would I be? Where do my stories come from?

Simona's Corner of Dreams: What was the inspiration behind Trust Me I Lie? Did I always dream of being a writer? Which books have influenced my life most?

Upcoming Promotion

Finally, I'll be running a price promotion to celebrate my birthday at the end of September. Keep a look out for A Girl's Best Friend, which will be FREE to download from 20th September to the 24th, inclusive. All details/links here:

Never miss a post! See that little box in the left-hand column, near the top, that says 'Follow by Email'? If you add your email address, you'll receive my latest blog post almost as soon as I've written it.

Photos Copyright: 

Trust Me I Lie book launch: Cheryl Lang and Juliet Greenwood
Little Red Riding Hood: Fotolia

December Update

Here's what I've been up to this month ... 

Guest Blog Posts

A Christmas Gift

for Novelistas Ink

Which book would I give for Christmas?

A Very Marley Christmas

for Becca's Books

How my family and I spend Christmas Day - and how the worst Christmas ever turned into the best one!

Agi and Suze's Christmas Quiz

for Suze Likes, Loves, Finds and Dreams &
Agi's On My Bookshelf

Did you know I'm engaged to Santa Claus? What my favourite Christmas song is? Favourite Christmas movie? Favourite Christmas book?!! Obviously, I couldn't pick just one ...

Book Launch

and Novelistas Ink Christmas Party

The Novelistas had another double celebration this month - it was the book launch for Anne Bennett's family saga, Another Man's Child, and also our Christmas Party!

Anne Bennett with her new book
Another Man's Child

Valerie-Anne Baglietto (left!) and me!
(photo copyright: Trisha Ashley)

Free Books!

This month's book promotion is A Girl's Best Friend. It will be free to download from 27th December 2015 to 31st December 2015.

Amazon UK

Amazon USA

(Details of all current and upcoming book promotions are always listed on my Freebies and Price Promotions page).

Related Posts:

A Girl's Best Friend: How I became a writer and the inspiration behind the book
November Update

Never miss a post! See that little box in the left-hand column, near the top, that says 'Follow by Email'? If you add your email address, you'll receive my latest blog post almost as soon as I've written it.

How I Write (or, how I learnt to be a planner rather than a pantser)

I hadn't intended to write a blog post this weekend. I'm putting the finishing touches to my latest novel and I'd already skived off on Friday to meet up with Novelistas Ink for Trisha Ashley's and Annie Burrows' joint book launch. But when we did our usual 'round robin' where we talk about what we've been up to over the past month, I mentioned my writing method and the whole room went silent.

OK, to be a little more truthful, one Novelista interrupted me mid-flow (which is very hard to do) and said, 'Does anyone else write like that?' And then the room went silent.

So, how do I write?

Well, to backtrack a little, with my first novel, A Girl's Best Friend, I just sat down and wrote it from start to finish with no planning whatsoever. I had a full-time job, so I wrote it during my lunch break and at evenings and weekends. In fact, I still remember one of the guys at work leaning over my shoulder, reading what I'd written and saying, "That will never sell."

A Girl's Best Friend took eighteen months to write. Books 2, 3 and 4 were written in  much the same way, but by then I was at home looking after my children and each book took a year to write.

With book 5 (Nemesis) I hit a snag. I'd always had trouble getting started on my novels and had lots of half-written stories in my drawer. From my second novel I'd got into the habit of writing a brief synopsis and writing from that, so I knew where I was going and what was happening, and who the bad guy was - although he/she often changed! But I wanted to speed up. It was still taking me over a year to write a novel and I wanted to write faster. I have a bad habit (I know it's bad, all the writing guides tell me so!) of writing each chapter, and polishing it BEFORE moving onto the next one. So I thought, 'I'll write a first draft, very quickly, without pausing, without looking back, until I'm finished.'

It was a disaster! I got halfway through (about 50,000 words) and it wasn't the story I'd envisaged at all. Because the heroine was fifteen when the story started, and I'd just written 50,000 words of her being fifteen, it was turning into a Young Adult. I had to scrap the whole lot and start again. 

OK, so when I say 'scrap' here's another tip for you. When I delete huge chunks of text I start a new file called 'outtakes' and paste them in there, in chronological order so I can find them again. (The 'find again' bit is important, because occasionally I change my mind and need to put some text back again.)

Nemesis was eventually re-written, in  much the same way as I'd written my previous books. The 50,000 words I'd cut out wasn't wasted, as about 20,000 of them made it back into the book as flashback scenes. And, despite all that angst, it remains one of my favourites!

Book 6 (Something Wicked) was going to be a novella, so I decided it was a perfect time to trial a new writing method. I knew I wanted the story to be 30,000 words long. I looked back at my previous books and checked how many words per chapter I usually wrote, and then worked out how many chapters I was going to need. I then wrote a very detailed synopsis, with a page outline per chapter, explaining exactly what was going to happen. And then I started writing.

It worked! It actually bloody worked! If I realised I'd become stuck on the same chapter, polishing and re-polishing, I just moved onto the next one. If I didn't feel like writing a particular scene, I moved on to one I did feel like writing. There was even one point where I wrote the last chapter and began working my way forward - which is why I call Something Wicked 'the book I wrote backwards'. Now I write all my books this way.

I have learned two things from this: 

(1) Ignore all the 'how to' books and write in the way which suits you best, which makes you happy and gets your story finished. 

(2) Don't tell your friends your weird and wonderful writing ways, because if they don't use the same method, they're liable to think you're crackers.

Oops... 

Never miss a post! See that little box in the left-hand column, near the top, that says 'Follow by Email'? If you add your email address, you'll receive my latest blog post almost as soon as I've written it.

Related posts:

A Room of One's Own

Where I Write (for Novelistas Ink)

Music: Wings to the Mind

Writers Write (Or, What I Really Do All Day)

Seeking Inspiration

My Writing Process

I Need a Heroine...

In which I talk about how I create my heroines ... 

In one of those weird coincidences, I'd planned a blog post about heroes - only to see three other posts pop up on exactly the same subject, including this one written by my friend, Valerie-Anne Baglietto. So I had to shelve it! But it got me thinking. A great hero is important to any story, but what about my heroine? Isn't she pretty essential too?!!

My novels are not usually written from a single point of view; I like to know what is going on inside my hero's head; it's even more fun when the heroine doesn't have a clue! But the main part of my story always belongs to my heroine. For me, her most important characteristic is that she's interesting. I don't care if she's not particularly lovable, or even likeable in the beginning, but I have to ensure my reader will understand her motivation. While a reader might be thinking, 'I can't believe she just did that', at least they should understand why she did it - and be rooting for her to succeed.

This might have something to do with the kind of heroines I like reading about. I love tricky, difficult, awkward heroines, such as Katniss from The Hunger Games (Suzanne Collins), who has no desire to be the heroine everyone wants her to be. Or Scarlett O'Hara, from Gone With the Wind (Margaret Mitchell), who is horribly selfish, always wanting what she can't have and completely unable to appreciate what she does have until she loses it. Or Perdita in Polo (Jilly Cooper), a spoilt brat who has to grow up fast. These heroines are far more interesting than the ones I used to read about in fairy tales - who slaved away for wicked stepmothers, waited for someone else to solve their problems (fairy godmother and/or handsome prince), and who couldn't even leave the house without losing a slipper!

This brings me to one of my favourite quotes, which is often attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt:*
 

Women are like tea bags.

You never know how strong they are

until you put them in hot water.

And that's how I think of my heroines! They might start off being a bit 'Someday my prince will come', (Caitlin, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes) but by the end of my story they should be quite capable of saving themselves - and anyone else who needs it. This doesn't necessarily mean they're warrior princesses! Kat, in Something Wicked, runs a coffee shop and bakes cupcakes - but it's amazing how motivated she can be when she learns someone wants her dead!

I suppose my heroines are also the kind of woman I'd like to be. Strong, resourceful, brave - definitely not the type to refuse to leave the house at the first sign of snow (um, like me). Career-wise, I usually give them a job I have some knowledge of - but please don't ask me to bake you a cupcake or dive on a centuries-old wreck! Although my novels have a large chunk of romance in them, my heroines don't go looking for love; they usually find it by accident - right about the same time they trip over a dead body. And they are far too busy staying alive to worry about whether their bum looks big while they're doing it.

When I begin work on a novel, I always start with a subject that interests me and then create my heroine as someone who is either inside or outside that world. For example, Breathless was about marine archaeology. I could have written about someone who worked inside that world but instead chose to have a heroine on the periphery, meaning the reader learns about archaeology at the same time she does. Lainey takes visiting divers out to visit the famous shipwrecks in the bay but she is obsessed with trying to find one particular wreck, the one her father lost his life searching for. That's her dream. That's also her flaw. How far will she go to find that wreck? Her redeeming feature is her love for her adopted family, the rather eccentric Halfpennys, who took her in when her father died. So over the course of the story I ensure Lainey is forced to choose between them and chasing her dream, at the risk of her own life.

Do I put myself into any of my heroines? Very sparingly! As much as  I love fashion, I prefer to love it from a distance, so my heroines tend to be tomboys like me. Danielle, from A Girl's Best Friend, is very task-orientated, also like me. And I can be a teeny, tiny bit manipulative, like Kat from Something Wicked, or Marina from Smoke Gets in Your Eyes - who believes in giving fate a helping hand, if not a downright shove.

But all writers need to be  manipulative! We know our story is going well when our characters take on their own lives and have their own opinions about how they want their story to play out, and it's up to the writer to ensure they do exactly what we want.

Most of the time!

Related Posts:

How I Create Characters
I Need a Hero

*Although this saying dates right back to the mid-nineteenth century, and isn't always about tea bags - or women!


Top photo credit: Shutterstock

A Girl's Best Friend

I've written stories for as long as I can remember. The earliest were children's stories, as I was heavily influenced by what I had read - Enid Blyton and CS Lewis. As I moved into my teens I began reading fantasy, particularly Terry Pratchett, and I wrote my first - and last! - fantasy. It was called The Dreamscape and I still have a soft spot for it.

By now I was becoming more serious about my writing, reading lots of 'how to' books and attending writers' conferences, and it was then I had that lightbulb moment, realising I should really be writing what I was reading. I was in my early twenties and, while I still loved reading Terry Pratchett, I was increasingly reading big glitzy novels with glamorous characters and locations. So I thought, 'OK, what can I write about that's glitzy?' And the answer was diamonds.

Bishop's Palace, Wells

I failed to take into consideration what writers call their 'voice'. I might have loved reading glitzy books and I certainly enjoyed writing what I thought was a glitzy book, but by the time I'd finished it was something else entirely. In other words, the story grew into a typical Louise Marley mix of romantic suspense with a dash of humour.

I think if I were writing the story now, I wouldn’t have characters who are identical twins, because that has become such a cliché. At the time I wanted to write about two sisters and their love/hate relationship. Danielle and Isabel are two of my favourite heroines and I love the contrast in their personalities. Danielle is so obsessed by her work that she’s forgotten how to have fun. Isabel, who does nothing but have fun, needs to become more responsible.

The mysterious Nico is one of my favourite heroes. In the original paperback version he was a lot meaner, but while I was revising the story for the ebook version I had a change of heart and made him kinder. This was the first and last time I ever based the appearance of a character on a real person. Who? I'm not telling, but if you read the book you'll spot the clues!

St Bartholomew's, Botley, Hampshire

I used Bishop's Palace in Wells as Nico's family home and St Batholomew's Church in Botley for St Mary's Church (even though there's no crypt or cliff!). The exterior of Stortford House, where the twins live, is based on Highgrove in Gloucestershire, although the garden, with its topiary, is Levens Hall in Cumbria. I did so much research about diamonds that I swore I'd never write anything requiring that amount ever again! Something I also swore after writing Why Do Fools Fall in Love (film industry) and Breathless (marine archaeology) and - well, you get the idea!

I nearly gave the story the title of Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend, but decided it was just too long. This is the title of a famous song, sung by Marilyn Monroe in the movie Gentlemen Prefer Blondes - a movie based on a book by the famous author Anita Loos. I've referenced one of her quotes within my story. I wonder if you can spot it?

I had great fun writing A Girl's Best Friend - I hope you enjoy reading it!

Amazon UK

Amazon USA

A Girl's Best Friend

Are diamonds really a girl’s best friend? Danielle van der Straaten thinks so. Her boyfriends cheat on her, her sister drives her mad and her father only wants to see her married with children - despite all the work she’s put into the family jewellery business. Diamonds are the only thing she can rely on.

Her sister, Isabel, doesn’t care about diamonds, provided she has something sparkly to wear to a party and a gorgeous man to dance with. Life is for living and having fun. And if their money disappeared tomorrow? She’d be in serious trouble.

Jemma Stortford finds it hard seeing Danielle and Isabel living the life that should have been hers. But when she wakes up one morning to find the handsome Nico Morales in her bed, it appears her luck has finally changed. But is Nico who he claims to be? And why is he so interested in the van der Straatens?

As the three women are about to find out, sometimes diamonds aren’t a girl’s best friend at all!

To read an extract, click here

A Girl's Best Friend: Behind the Scenes

A Room of One's Own

One of my more eccentric 'quirks' is that I have trouble telling people what I do for a living. When cornered, I try to get away with saying, "I work from home" - and hope they'll assume I'm mass knitting tea cosies or something similar. Well, that comment came back to bite me last month; I moved to a new house and found it had no landline and therefore no Internet. How have I managed to stay online? With a mobile Wi-Fi, Internet cafés and the generosity of friends; now I was working anywhere but home!

Ironically, it was at this point Sophie Claire asked if I would contribute to a series of blog posts she was collating for Novelistas Ink, entitled Where I Write. My first thought was wondering whether I could get away with writing a post about the local Waterstones café, which had become my new 'office'. But while writing that post, it got me thinking about where I write and how much writers rely on the Internet for their work - research, keeping in touch with other authors and readers, as well as promotion. The flipside is that the Internet is a huge distraction - which is why writing retreats are so popular. Now I had my own Internet-free writer's retreat - only without the retreat bit!

So, does it really matter whether I work in a café, a spare room or my own study?

I wrote my first book, A Girl's Best Friend at my desk at work during my lunch break. Smoke Gets in Your Eyes was written in the sitting room of our first house (a tiny bungalow) with the computer monitor wedged inside a cupboard, the keyboard on my lap and dance music bouncing off the walls. Why Do Fools Fall in Love was written in several spare rooms, as we moved around the country, from Hampshire to Bath and back again. Breathless was started in Hampshire and finished via another spare room in Wales and then -

And then I claimed my first 'study'! We had moved to a rambling Victorian house, where the dining room was at one end of the building and the kitchen at the other. So I claimed the redundant dining room for my study. I had an entire wall of shelving so, for the first time ever, I could get all my books out of their boxes. Heaven! It had a huge bay window, with a beautiful view of Snowdonia, and I positioned a sofa there - with the idea I could recline and daydream about my plots while I admired the scenery. Of course I never had the time to do that! Incidentally, this was the first time I put a room from my own house into one of my books - my study also became Alicia's in Nemesis. The castle you might just be able to see to the left of this picture is Penrhyn Castle and it became the model for Hurst Castle in the same book.

Then we moved again. My books went back in their boxes and I ended up with another dining room for a study, which was probably the prettiest I've had, with views across the Menai Straits to Mount Snowdon itself.

What have I learned from these upheavals over the years? Well, despite my whinging, it turns out I can write anywhere. It doesn't matter if I'm in a spare room or a café. I don't need a study and I don't need an Internet connection - in fact, as any author will tell you, we get more writing done without it!

It turns out that all I really need to write is ... my laptop and me. 

Read More

Writers Write - What I Really Do All Day

My Writing Process

Keeping it (Un)real - why the best part of being a writer is making stuff up

You Know You're a Writer When ... (for Novelistas Ink)
Where I Write (for Novelistas Ink)

Writing What You Don't Know: Researching Locations

 The first time I heard 'write what you know', I was a teenager working as a typist for the local council. Did that mean I could only write about typists? How incredibly boring! But as it turned out, I 'knew' quite a lot. I knew what it felt like to fall in love, to be dumped, to lose a much loved member of my family - all those life experiences authors recycle into their books. When I crashed my car, I wrote about it in A Girl's Best Friend, along with my own experiences of what it felt like to be betrayed by a friend. When I lived in Bath I wrote about that too (along with all those movies and TV dramas I had seen filmed there), in Why Do Fools Fall in Love. And, being a writer, what I didn't know I made up.

So far, so good. But what happens when you have to write about something you don't know? When you have to do some actual *whisper it* research?

When I was asked to contribute to the Sunlounger anthologies (along with my fellow Novelista, Valerie-Anne Baglietto), the brief was to write a story set in a holiday destination. No problem, I'd just come back from a holiday in Sorrento, I'd write about that (The Indecent Proposal). Well, as it turned out, it's one thing going on holiday somewhere, quite another to have to write a story about it. I dug out my holiday photos and wrote notes about everything I remembered, but it wasn't enough. I had to do some research.

In the old days I'd have headed for the library; nowadays everything is easily available online. Maybe a little too easily, because there is one huge problem with information on the Internet. It's not always accurate. (Shocker!) So I have a rule of three - check facts three times from three different sources.

When it came to writing my story for Sunlounger 2 (The Accidental Proposal) I approached it differently. I'd have my characters arrive in New Orleans as tourists and I worked out an itinerary for them. (You can see my original notes for that here). Of course, that threw up a whole load of new problems. In my original story I had them visiting one of the famous cemeteries at night - it turns out they shut at night! There was a scene where the characters are standing in the street drinking cocktails. In some States that's illegal but fortunately (at the time of writing) it wasn't illegal in New Orleans. There was another scene I'd set beside the tomb of the famous Marie Laveau but vandals had just painted it pink! So, should I make the tomb pink in my story - to prove I'd done my research and show how clever I was? In the end, I decided the authorities were just as likely to repaint it white, and even mentioning the fact that it had ever been pink (no matter how deliciously quirky) it was likely to detract from the story.

So the moral is, always check your facts. It's no good assuming an editor will spot any mistakes in your research - it's not their job! If you're not careful, the first person to spot them will be your reader - and they won't hesitate in pointing them out to you - usually in a one star review.

But no matter how brilliant your research, nothing compares to visiting a location yourself! If you do get that chance, then I recommend taking lots of photos and making lots of notes - and it is the perfect excuse for a holiday!

Online Resources

Google Earth - Perfect for 3D images of locations. Many of cities also have 'street view' allowing you to 'walk' about. Bear in mind the images are often a few years old - if you look for my house, all you'll see is a field!

Pinterest - A great resource for images and you can create mood boards (I've blogged about Pinterest here). The photos often link to blogs.

Travel blogs - A brilliant resource but remember they are opinion pieces, read more than one if you want to view your location through your character's eyes, not the blogger's!

Travel agent websites - for hotels and tourists' itineraries (if you're writing about tourists!)

Tourist Board websites - Obviously!

Something Wicked

OK, first let me apologise for the blog posts slipping back to once a fortnight but I am in the middle of moving house (being me, I've blogged about that here!). Something had to give and I'm afraid it was the blog - I'm assuming you'd all rather read new books than blog posts?!! Normal service will be resumed in November.

So today's post is going to be a little bit different - a cover reveal for my next book, Something Wicked. Isn't it great? It was designed for me by the brilliantly talented Ravven.

SOMETHING WICKED

Evil can be tempting …

Ten years ago Katrina Davenport washed up on a beach, with no memory of how she got there. Now she’s returned to find out the truth.

She’s taken over her aunt’s coffee shop at the notorious Raven’s Cottage – once the home of a 17th century witch. Some locals believe the cottage is haunted by Magik Meg and her demon lover, but Kat doesn’t believe in witches, or ghosts, or anything that goes bump in the dead of night. Every strange occurrence must have a perfectly logical explanation.

Unfortunately it doesn’t matter what Kat believes, because something wicked has returned to Raven’s Cottage.

And this time it’s come for Kat.

(Winter 2014)

INSPIRATION

I've been working on the novel after this one (Trust Me, I Lie) which is set in a new village called Buckley. Those of you who've read Breathless, will know about the legend of the smuggler Black Jack. So I thought Buckley should have its own legend too - a witch known as Magik Meg. There wasn't room in Trust Me, I Lie to tell her tale, and if I tell you any more I'll be giving away spoilers - but one of the characters from Breathless does make an appearance.

Something Wicked is romantic suspense, with a bit of humour and a hint of the paranormal. It is set in the middle of winter, although it's not a Christmas book - I just wanted to write about snow! But if you're the kind of person who likes to peek at your Christmas presents early, head over to my website where you can read the first chapter.

More:

Keeping it (Un)real - my blog post about how I created the locations I use in my stories

Keeping It (Un)real

Confession time. The places I write about in my books are not real, although I do occasionally take inspiration from an actual place or building. Hurst Castle in Nemesis, for example, is very loosely based on Penrhyn Castle in North Wales, but I often change elements to suit my plot.

It was never my intention to create my own world and I have written about real places in the past. Why Do Fools Fall in Love is set in Bath, and I've used Sorrento and New Orleans as settings in my Proposal stories.

From a writer's point of view, there is something very satisfying about creating a world of your own. You start off with a character or two. Your characters need friends, lovers, enemies - and somewhere to live. As soon as you've created (and decorated!) their homes, the neighbours will be popping round. So then you have to create places for all these people to visit to stop them getting into trouble - or perhaps, if you're that way inclined, encourage them into it! So that means pubs, clubs, schools, theatres - and before you know it, you've created an entire village and it's all got slightly out of control.

My first book to use an entirely made-up setting was Smoke Gets In Your Eyes. *Spoiler alert*. In it was a sub-plot about corruption in the police force. At the time I was working for the police and I didn't want anyone assuming I was writing about real people and real events. So I created Calahurst. I picked the name because every day on the way to work I passed a road called Cala-something-or-other and I added 'hurst' because I wanted to set my book someplace pretty, and I thought of the New Forest and places like Lyndhurst and Brockenhurst.

I drew a map of my imaginary village. This might sound self-indulgent but when you're writing about a place, real or made up, you really have to get it straight in your head where everything is or, before you know it, coffee shops start moving about. And I did come a cropper in A Girl's Best Friend, when I wanted my heroine to drive down a road which wasn't 'there', and I had to quickly 'build' one!

I've used Calahurst as a setting for my first three books and while I have recycled elements - one house in Smoke Gets in Your Eyes got a new owner in Breathless - I created another village (Port Rell) for my fourth book. And then I got very ambitious and added 'historical' legends - Civil War battles and sieges, and a notorious smuggler who turns up out of nowhere and then vanishes one day in much the same way. I had so much fun with that, I'm doing it all over again for my next two books. I have a new village, Buckley - previously mentioned in Nemesis, and a whole lot of new characters to get into trouble.

It really is the best part of being a writer.

More:

My Pinterest board for Breathless has more photos of Lymington in the New Forest, which helped to inspire Port Rell (along with a few other places!)

My Pinterest board for Nemesis has more photos of Penrhyn Castle


Writing What You Don't Know - Researching Locations - a blog post for Novelistas Ink

The Appeal of an Imperfect Hero

A tongue-in-cheek look at the heroes of my ‘Proposal’  short story series…

It’s hard to create the perfect romantic hero. He has to have faults and flaws, like any real person, but also have a wide appeal. Now I’ve created heroes who have been detectives, actors, journalists and even a landscape gardener once, but the character I get the most mail about is Taz, the Australian rock star from A Girl’s Best Friend. So why do rock stars make such great heroes?

Well, first there’s all the obvious stuff:

They have talent. Never underestimate the allure of having a song written about you or, better still, sung specifically to you—even if it is on the back of a tour bus somewhere on the M25.

They are hot. Yep, he’s sexy and he knows it.

They know all about having a good time. And we’ve all had that urge to trash a hotel room.

They’re unobtainable. OK, that’s a slight fib. Given the right circumstances, or even the wrong ones, rock stars are not remotely unobtainable.

Everyone else wants them. This, of course, makes us want them even more.

Heroes are supposed to be likeable, preferably lovable and definitely lust-after-able. But despite their apparent good fortune, your average rock star will have a whole host of problems magnified by fame and wealth, many of them self-inflicted, and all of them widely (and gleefully) reported in the media.

In my short story The Indecent Proposal Ryan has been caught cuddling up to a pretty singer at an award ceremony. The photos have been published all over the Internet, so how is he going to get his girlfriend back? In The Accidental Proposal Luca has abandoned his band while on tour—but he’s got a very good reason. Ryan and Luca are both suffering setbacks, not entirely of their own making, but which wouldn’t have happened if they hadn’t been famous.

Musicians work hard but if they’re successful they can have the most amazing, glamorous existence. The Indecent Proposal is set in Sorrento, while The Accidental Proposal takes place in New Orleans. We first meet Ryan at a party, whereas in one of Luca’s early scenes he’s scrabbling about in the gutter. It’s certainly a life of extremes!

Sometimes it’s all too easy to see rock stars exist purely for our entertainment and forget they have their hopes and fears just like the rest of us—albeit on a much larger-than-life scale. They might not be perfect, and I wouldn’t want to date one in real life, but they certainly make fascinating romantic heroes.

Perfectly imperfect, in fact!

Freebie!

You can currently download The Indecent Proposal free of charge from Amazon UK or Amazon USA, as well as other ebook retailers such as Kobo and iTunes, although I can't guarantee it will be free on all sites, as it is up to each company to decide how  much they will charge.

If you have signed up with Amazon for Kindle Unlimited, you can download most of my books as part of your subscription.

The Indecent Proposal (UK)
The Indecent Proposal (USA)
The Accidental Proposal (UK)
The Accidental Proposal (USA)

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