Lucky Chance VBT

Blurb:

Golf, love, life—Jack Weatherlow is more than familiar with all three. Is life a series of coincidences or is it linked by a greater thread? Returning from the brink of destruction, Jack lets his participation in recovery, his work at the hotel, and his close relationship with his wife, Samantha, guide him through some of life's most important questions and lessons. What do we do when opportunity knocks at our door? Is it fate that brings us together with those we love most? What constitutes a family and what obligations do we have to those around us? Through his relationships and experiences on and off the green, Jack discovers many of life's lucky chances.

Excerpt:

I often wondered about the finer details which shaped my mother’s journey in life. I imagine that she began her role as a parent as one person, possibly a reluctant person, but still more whole than not and rightly directed for the most part. At some point in time, I presume that she met with an irresolvable division in her conception of that original role or her identity in general. I suspect that the horrific accident that killed my dad’s parents inspired the initial separation. However, I wonder if the imports of that tragedy were simply the last drops of a sinister reagent which had long been burning away the reigns that held her in the middle of the road.

         

Regardless of the cause, my mother salved her injuries with an anesthetic rather than an antiseptic. She chose relief rather than cure. I don’t suppose that she ever realized there was a difference. Nevertheless, the relief became the food or fuel which energized and promoted the process of her separation. She grew ever closer and more identified with her torment, and she grew evermore distant from her peace. I watched the transformation occur across my young life, such that I found myself more often despised and attacked by the tortured and tormented monster of trauma and tragedy, and less and less nurtured or treasured by the compassionate and caring mother of my imagination.

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Author Bio and Links:

Summer is in full swing - folks are hitting the golf course by day, and reflecting on life as the sunsets go later into the evening. In the spirit of golf and life, Charlotte-based Warren Publishing has released Lucky Chance, a thoughtful and moving novel by businessman, golfer and public speaker, R.C. Welch.

Lucky Chance is a 346-page soft cover book that addresses some of life’s most thought-provoking and insightful dilemmas and lessons through the lens of Jack Weatherlow. A golfer, husband, and alcoholic in recovery, Jack returns from the brink of destruction, and through his recovery, work, and relationship with his wife, Samantha, he attempts to find the answers to some of life’s most important questions. What do we do when opportunity knocks at our door? Is it fate that brings us together with those we love most? What constitutes a family and what obligations do we have to those around us? Through his relationships and experiences on and off the green, Jack discovers many of life’s lucky chances.

Inspired by his love of golf, business, and storytelling, Welch wrote Lucky Chance to give readers insight into a character he loves, and connect certain apparent similarities in life between obviously different circumstances.

“Lucky Chance is a wonderfully crafted novel, rich with narrative originality, and emotional and philosophical depth,” added Mindy Kuhn, President of Warren Publishing. “It’s a fantastic, unique read for anyone who enjoys reading about sports or love, but also for those looking to delve into the truly intricate and complicated questions of life.”

R.C. Welch holds graduate and post graduate degrees from two universities, and is honorably recognized in various circles of the business world. He is also an accomplished golfer, storyteller and public speaker. Lucky Chance is an expression of his innate and unique gifts. He currently resides in Winston Salem, NC.

Amazon Link: https://www.amazon.com/Lucky-Chance-R-C-Welch/dp/1733615849/

Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/warrenpublishinginc/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/warrenpublish/

Website: Warrenpublishing.net

Goodreads:  https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/19145308.R_C_Welch

A Sickness in the Soul VBT

Blurb:

“Many people wear masks. Some to hide their feelings; some to conceal their identity; and some to hide that most hideous plague of mankind: a sickness in the soul.”

Ashmole Foxe, Norwich bookseller, man-about-town and solver of mysteries will encounter all of these in this tangled drama of hatred, obsession and redemption.

This is a story set in the England of the 1760s, a time of rigid class distinctions, where the rich idle their days away in magnificent mansions, while hungry children beg, steal and prostitute themselves on the streets. An era on the cusp of revolution in America and France; a land where outward wealth and display hide simmering political and social tensions; a country which had faced intermittent war for the past fifty years and would need to survive a series of world-wide conflicts in the fifty years ahead.

Faced with no less than three murders, occurring from the aristocracy to the seeming senseless professional assassination of a homeless vagrant, Ashmole Foxe must call on all his skill and intelligence to uncover the sickness which appears to be infecting his city’s very soul.

Can Foxe uncover the truth which lies behind a series of baffling deaths, from an aristocrat attending a ball to a vagrant murdered where he slept in a filthy back-alley?

Excerpt:

Naturally, all this affability ended the moment Foxe stepped into the Great Hall itself. Sir Samuel would have used this as the meeting place to impress his influence and social status on all his visitors, and on Mr Foxe most of all. Now he received Foxe standing, his back to a large fireplace with an elaborate alabaster surround. Above him could be seen the coat of arms of the Valmar family. I may be a man like you, all this seemed to proclaim, but I am not just your social superior. I am a Valmar too. Remember that.

The baronet had dressed himself in a suit of fine brown wool embroidered in gold, over a pale cream waistcoat sprigged with tiny flowers. From his leather shoes with their golden buckles and his spotless white silk stockings up to his freshly powdered wig, he was the embodiment of the rich landowner suffering the attentions of some troublesome tenant. He was also in a combative mood. He launched his attack at once and without preliminaries.

‘Say what you have to say, sir, then get out!’ the baronet barked. ‘I am only suffering your presence because my wife begged me to do so. According to her, you have some important information affecting the Valmar family. My family heritage is everything to me. We Valmars came over with the Conqueror and have been here ever since. In all that time, no one has dishonoured the family name. No one ever shall, while I live and breathe. Now, get on with it — and be brief!’

When Foxe had stood before this man the last time, Sir Samuel had affected an air of complete indifference. Now all was different. What he wanted was to send this meddlesome tradesman about his business; preferably with his tail between his legs. By the end of his opening speech, his face was suffused with red and purple from the effort of holding his temper in check. Foxe noted how the other man’s breathing was shallow, his fists clenched tight and his eyes narrowed with fury. He had expected some such display of temper, but even he was taken aback by the vehemence of Sir Samuel’s attack. Still, he had determined in advance nothing would shake his calmness. He therefore replied in a quiet voice, his words measured and his tone mild and reasonable. To his quiet satisfaction, he observed immediately how much this gentle manner seemed to inflame Sir Samuel even more.

Do you ever wish you were someone else? Who?

No, I don’t think I do. Sometimes I like to imagine myself living in a different time from now: a time when life was simpler, manners were better and the world in general was less full of strife. The sad fact is that no such time ever existed. I write about England in the 18th century. What we tend to see today are grand mansions full of fine art, huge estates and parks laid out with no regard for cost and the beautiful dresses and fine manners of TV and film adaptations of Jane Austen novels. None of that represents the experience of the vast majority of people at the time. Life was hard, food often scarce, and the politics of the day just as riven with factional strife as it is today.

What did you do on your last birthday?

Nothing special, beyond going out for a nice meal with my wife. At my age, birthdays are more to be ignored than celebrated!

What part of the writing process do you dread?

Getting started! I sometimes begin the same book four or five times from different angles, searching for the right way into the story; the way that will catch the reader’s imagination and make her or him want to read further.

Do you ever suffer from writer’s block? If so, what do you do about it?

No, I don’t think I ever have done. My trouble is verbosity, not the inability to write at all.

Tell us about your latest release.

It's the sixth story in the Ashmole Foxe series, featuring a wealthy young bookseller with time on his hands, who has become the person to whom the city authorities turn to clear up all the more complex and messy crimes in the city. This is a time before police forces and public prosecutors, so all detection and prosecution of crimes is down to interested individuals.

“A Sickness in the Soul” is a story set in the England of the 1760s; a time of rigid class distinctions, where the rich idle their days away in magnificent mansions, while hungry children beg, steal and prostitute themselves on the streets; an era on the cusp of revolution in America and France. The England of the time is a land where outward wealth and display hide simmering political and social tensions. The country had faced intermittent wars with several continental countries for the past fifty years and would need to survive a further series of world-wide conflicts in the fifty years ahead.

Into this comes a series of murders in Norwich, which was still the second or third largest city in England at the time. At the outset, all appear straightforward to unravel. An aristocrat is killed after a public row at a masked ball; an elderly, reclusive scholar with a young wife is murdered in his own library; and there is a seemingly senseless professional assassination of a homeless vagrant. In each case, everyone looks to Ashmole Foxe to unravel the answers and bring the killer or killers to justice. Yet, because this is the real world, those answers turn out to be far messier and more complex than anyone imagines.

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Author Bio and Links:

I started to write fiction as a way of keeping my mind active in retirement. Throughout my life, I have read and enjoyed hundreds of detective stories and mystery novels. One of my other loves is history, so it seemed natural to put the two together. Thus began two series of murder mystery books set in Norfolk, England.

         

All my books are set between 1760 and around 1800, a period of turmoil in Britain, with constant wars, revolutions in America and France and finally the titanic, 22-year struggle with Napoleon.

         

The Ashmole Foxe series takes place at the start of this time and is located in Norwich. Mr Foxe is a dandy, a bookseller and, unknown to most around him, the mayor’s immediate choice to deal with anything likely to upset the peace or economic security of the city.

         

The series featuring Dr Adam Bascom, a young gentleman physician caught up in the beginning of the Napoleonic wars, takes place in a variety of locations near the North Norfolk coast. Adam builds a successful medical practice, but his insatiable curiosity and knack for unravelling intrigue constantly involve him in mysteries large and small.

         

I have spent a good deal of my life travelling in Britain and overseas. Now I am more than content to write stories and run a blog devoted to the world of Georgian England, which you can find at http://www.penandpension.com. You can also follow me on Twitter as @penandpension.

The Ashmole Foxe Mysteries Buy Links:

The Ashmole Foxe Mysteries

The Fabric of Murder

Dark Threads of Vengeance

This Parody of Death

Bad Blood Will Out

Black as She’s Painted

A Sickness in the Soul

The Dr Adam Bascom Mysteries Buy Links:

The Dr Adam Bascom Mysteries

An Unlamented Death

The Code for Killing

A Shortcut to Murder

A Tincture of Secrets and Lies

Death of a Good Samaritan

Blog - Pen and Pension    |    Amazon Author Page

New Beginnings at Promise Lodge VBT

Blurb:
Recently widowed after twenty years of marriage, Frances Lehman is only just tasting the freedom and opportunity that her Promise Lodge friends enjoy. So she's not about to be pressured into marriage by her widowed brother-in-law, even if she and her daughter have no real means of support. Much more promising is her new friendship with Preacher Marlin Kurtz, though their respective families don't see their relationship as proper . . .

When Frances suffers a serious injury, she's determined to prove she can recover—and remain independent—without burdening Marlin. Now, with his steadfast belief in real love tested, Marlin's hope is that Promise Lodge's irrepressible residents can help him restore Frances's joy—and that faith will show them a way to turn their fragile second chance into a blessed and abiding future together.


And don't miss the first three books in the Promise Lodge series!

Excerpt:
Frances shaded her eyes with her hand, enthralled with what she saw. “It doesn’t seem like you and I have walked such a long distance, yet from here, the lodge and our homes look like part of a toy village.”

“We’ve come a long way,” Marlin remarked softly. “I’m glad you’ve walked with me, Frances. Our community has taken on even more of a glow because I’m seeing it through your eyes.”

The tone of his voice made Frances’s pulse thrum with an unusual sense of energy, as though the preacher had something on his mind besides the view.

We’ve come a long way.

# # #

Allen treasured Phoebe’s rapt expression and the closeness of her slender body as she leaned against him. He’d given her a gift by showing her Promise Lodge from this hilltop vantage point.

“What about that parcel of land behind the Lehman places?” she asked dreamily. “We’d have a beautiful view of the lake. What do you think, Allen? Should I ask Mamm if I can have it?”

Allen’s throat closed with a sudden case of nerves. He eased away from her, pretending to look at something near the lodge so she wouldn’t see how she’d startled him. Their relationship, which had felt so comfortable over the past week, now gave him the sensation that an invisible halter had been fastened around his head—and that Phoebe was holding the lead rope.

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About the Author: 
In 1983, Charlotte Hubbard sold her first story to True Story. She wrote around 70 of those confession stories, and she’s sold more than 50 books to traditional or online publishers. A longtime resident of Missouri, she’s currently writing Amish romances set in imaginary Missouri towns for Kensington. She now lives in St. Paul, MN with her husband of 40+ years and their Border collie, Vera.

Website: http://www.charlottehubbard.com
FB: https://www.facebook.com/charlotte.hubbard1

Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07MKX3NTT/
Kindle UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07MKX3NTT/
Kindle Canada: http://www.amazon.ca/dp/B07MKX3NTT/
Kindle Australia: http://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B07MKX3NTT/
iBooks: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/new-beginnings-at-promise-lodge/id1448128057?mt=11
iBooks UK: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/book/new-beginnings-at-promise-lodge/id1448128057?mt=11
iBooks Canada: https://itunes.apple.com/ca/book/new-beginnings-at-promise-lodge/id1448128057?mt=11
iBooks Australia: https://itunes.apple.com/au/book/new-beginnings-at-promise-lodge/id1448128057?mt=11
iBooks New Zealand: https://itunes.apple.com/nz/book/new-beginnings-at-promise-lodge/id1448128057?mt=11
Nook: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/new-beginnings-at-promise-lodge-charlotte-hubbard/1130055278?ean=9781420145137
Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/new-beginnings-at-promise-lodge
Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Charlotte_Hubbard_New_Beginnings_at_Promise_Lodge?id=bNqBDwAAQBAJ

Order Print
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=142014510X/
Amazon UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ISBN=142014510X
Amazon Canada: http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/ISBN=142014510X
Barnes and Noble: http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbninquiry.asp?ean=9781420145106
Books-A-Million: http://www.booksamillion.com/product/9781420145106
IndieBound: http://www.indiebound.org/book/9781420145106
The Book Depository: http://www.bookdepository.com/book/9781420145106

In Pursuit of Perfection VBT

Blurb:

The next man in Macy Rollins’s life must be perfect. She’s had enough impostors and isn’t willing to settle for anything less. All she has to do is get through the company contract negotiation season and she will get that promotion she has been working so hard for. Avery Malveaux – one of Philadelphia’s most eligible bachelors – has been hired to work with her as legal counsel for the company. From the moment they are forced to work together tensions are high and expectations are low. He questions her ability, she questions his intentions. After Macy is suspected in an accounting shortage, she accuses Avery of betraying her confidence. Has she once again been deceived by a man she thought she could trust? Can she clear her name and win her job back? And can there be any hope for Macy’s pursuit of perfection.

Excerpt:

Macy rubbed her forehead. Right now, wasn’t the time to fire Michelle and start interviewing for a new assistant. The world needed to stop spinning for just a few moments. Her job depended on finding that money. She picked up the phone and dialed accounting.

“Connie, I need your help,” she said. “Can you run monthly balances on my account, starting with January?”

“You want everything? That’s a lot.”

“Yeah. How soon can you get it to me?”

“Give me a day or two.”

“Connie, one more thing. I’m seeing a lot of new accounts. Several that I don’t recognize. I know we’re going after market share, but I didn’t expect this many. If I send you a list of the names, what information can you provide on them?”

“Well, I can tell you when the account was set up, by who, and purchasing activity. What else would you need?”

“That’s a good start. Thanks.”

Macy ended the call, but the nagging didn’t subside.

One of my most asked questions.

As a writer I’m often asked two questions. Where do I get my ideas and how long have I been writing? I try not to be too flippant, so I gave the question some serious consideration. The last time someone asked where I get my ideas, I decided I needed to have an answer to this question.

Ideas have never been an issue for me. I have more ideas than I have time to write them all. My oldest memory of creating make-believe is from grade school. My love of writing and drawing came together in a mural of portraits I taped to my bedroom wall. Each drawing came with a story that I made up. Believe me the stories were as different as the pictures I’d drawn. My sister and I didn’t just play with Barbie dolls, we made up grand adventures whenever we pulled them out of the box. I can find story ideas almost everywhere. I can hear a news story, read an article, overhear a conversation, listen to family histories and wonder, what if. I love to challenge the norm and rewrite an ending that I can control. Yes, I’m one of those writers, who has a note pad beside the bed and in my purse, so when a story pops into my head, I can jot down the details. I actually have an ideas book.

My story ideas, cross a wide range of genres too. But for now I’ve decided to stick with romance and women’s fictions. One of these days, I’m going to branch out and write some of those more bizarre stories floating around in my head.

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Author Bio and Links:

Men and women have always sought the promise that only love can offer. Jacki invites you into an intriguing world where romance abounds around every corner and down every street. You’ll be amazed at the crazy things we do and don’t do for the promise of love.

Jacki has been writing since her fourth grade teacher made her keep a journal for a grade. Now she does it to keep track of all the fascinating and heartbreaking moments that life throws our way. Poetry, personal essays, short stories and novels have all occupied space in her heart and her hard drive.

Jacki lives in the northeast where the winters are too cold and the summers are warm. But, she wouldn’t trade it for anywhere else, well maybe for a fabulous house on the sunny sands of Miami Beach in February. Her loveable husband and adorable floppy eared dog endure her long periods behind the computer creating happy-endings for her amazing hero and heroines. Romance makes the world go round and Jacki is enjoying the ride.

Website     |     Blog     |     Facebook

Buy Link

The Carousel VBT

Blurb:

…Like the Wild Geese of Old Ireland, five boys grew to manhood despite hunger, war, and the mean streets of New York...

The War had left him blind to beauty…

Kieran Donnelly is a gifted artist who has sworn never to paint again. He saw and did too many things during the war to extinguish the ugliness that lies in his heart. But a chance to work with some of the most magnificent paintings brings him close to the world he still loves…and an extraordinary woman who sees his true heart.

Darkness couldn’t extinguish the light in her heart.

Blind from the age of four, Emily Lawrence yearns to experience the outside world. When she hires Kieran Donnelly to catalogue her father’s paintings, he offers her a glimpse at life outside her exquisite home…and a chance for a future.

Can Kieran and Emily emerge from the darkness to find happiness and love?

Excerpt:

Queenstown Harbor, Cork, Ireland, 1847

“Take your fill of it, lad. Remember it all.”

Ten-year-old Kieran Donnelly clutched the icy metal of the ship’s railing, his gaze locked on the wild, rocky coast as the Sally Malone moved slowly out of the harbor.

The long voyage to America had begun.

He heard Gran’s keening wail, filled with grief as she lamented the loss of their homeland. Da’s hand rested on her shoulder, his silent grief palpable. His brother’s spirit, full of anger and despair, reached out to him.

None of it touched his heart.

His eager gaze sought the mist-shrouded green hills, distant, dotted with tiny white cottages. Empty cottages, no sign of the ever-present gray turf smoke rising from their rich, dark thatched roofs.  The fields were black with the stinking slime of the blight, but hawthorn and gorse and wild strawberries still dotted the landscape with bright splotches of white, yellow, and scarlet.

The water bucked and spat white-capped waves, gray-green with angry sorrow under the cloud-smudged sky. A single bright ray of sunlight broke through the clouds, as if to bid the desperate refugees a fond farewell. A patch of sky, so pure a blue it made his throat ache, brought a rush of tears to Kieran’s eyes.

Oh, to capture the image that would forever be in his mind on paper before the ship sailed! The colors, the hues, the light and shadow. The crowds of skeletal people scurrying about, weeping as they waved good-bye, the lone fiddler playing them away with a desolate lament of parting and grief.

One day. He struggled against the harsh sob that clawed at his throat. One day I’ll paint this scene and the whole world will know the sorrow that gripped Ireland in its cruel fist.

I’ll call it The Parting.

 A Heroine to Be Proud Of

Hello, and thanks so much for having me as your guest today! I’m thrilled to be able to share The Carousel with your readers!

As a romance novelists, I’ve created many a fictional hero and heroine. And I’ve been lucky enough to have real ones in my own family. The Carousel, Book 7 of my Wild Geese Series, is dedicated to the memory of my paternal grandmother. She was a heroine any girl would be proud of.

Her name was Emma Laflamme, and she died when she was 88 years old. She raised a family of nine children in a tiny farmhouse on the wind-swept Gaspé Peninsula in the province of Quebec, Canada.

She was also blind from the age of 40.

It must have been difficult for her to look after her children and take care of the house on her own. I only had two children, and well I remember the merry dance they led me at times!

Yet it never seemed to bother her. I remember watching with utter fascination as she kneaded a loaf of bread (made from scratch, no less!), and marveling at how easily she did it. It was even more fun to devour the wonderful results. To this day, whenever I smell bread baking, I think of her.

One of my most tender memories of my grandmother was the way she greeted us when we’d arrive each summer. She would smile and run her toil-worn hands over each of our faces, “seeing” in her own way how we’d changed since the previous year.

I can’t remember ever seeing her stumble, although I know she must have. She never shuffled, but stepped proudly across a room. I even remember coming into the living room, where I was ensconced in the big, comfy chair with a book, and handing me a glass of chocolate milk. How did she know where I was, or who I was? I wondered. I believed it was a sort of magic that only my grandmother possessed.

My heroine, Emily Lawrence, is also blind, and has been since she was four. I based her on my grandmother in many ways.

I hope she’s proud of both Emily and me.

Thank you for having me as your guest today, and for sharing The Carousel and my grandmother with me.

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Author Bio and Links:

I believe I was destined to be interested in history. One of my distant ancestors, Thomas Aubert, reportedly sailed up the St. Lawrence River to discover Canada some 26 years before Jacques Cartier’s 1534 voyage. Another relative was a 17thCentury “King’s Girl,” one of a group of young unmarried girls sent to New France (now the province of  Quebec) as brides for the habitants (settlers) there.

My passion for reading made me long to write books like the ones I enjoyed, and I tried penning sequels to my favorite Nancy Drew mysteries. Later, fancying myself a female version of Andrew Lloyd Weber, I drafted a musical set in Paris during WWII.

A former journalist and lifelong Celtophile, I enjoyed a previous career as a reporter/editor for a small chain of community newspapers before returning to my first love, romantic fiction. My stories usually include an Irish setting, hero or heroine, and sometimes all three.

I’m the author of The Claddagh Series, historical romances set in Ireland and beyond, and The Wild Geese Series, in which five Irish heroes return from the American Civil War to find love and adventure.

I’m a member of the Romance Writers of America and Hearts Through History Romance Writers. A lifelong resident of Montreal, Canada, I still live there with my own Celtic hero. I have two adult children.

Website: http://authorcynthiaowens.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AuthorCynthiaOwens

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Cynwrites1

https://www.amazon.com/Carousel-Wild-Geese-Book-ebook/dp/B07TXGS4QM

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-carousel-cynthia-owens/1132308194?ean=2940161461914

Google +:  https://plus.google.com/u/0/+CynthiaOwens/posts

Amazon Author Page:  http://www.amazon.com/Cynthia-Owens/e/B003DQ1V2E

Alice: A Memoir VBT

Blurb:

Few, if anyone, could have had a life like Alice Gilmore. It was almost unbelievable yet carried on under the cover of a respectable middle-class existence.

You might strongly disapprove of what she did, but Alice was determined. She overcame insurmountable obstacles to keep the love she longed for.

Her single-minded fight to live out her love makes a gripping, riveting story that one eminent literary person called ‘staggeringly readable’. It is shocking. Her methods will upset some, but are you with her or against her? Your decision.

This is no misery memoir. It’s a story told with joy, wit and fervour – the astonishing story of the overwhelming love Alice Gilmour was determined to live out.

Excerpt:

I am going to tell you our story, my darlings. It is really only for you three and one other (you know who) but I can’t help hoping that the world will read it, which is why I shall probably publish it. But not for some years. When you’re fully grown up and have flown the nest. God knows what they will make of it, the world I mean, whoever they are, but I am not suggesting that any rules or taboos should be changed by our story, or new rules made. Leave all that alone. Our story, perhaps I should say my story, just is. You could tritely call it the exception that proves the rule. Perhaps that is just what it is: unique. I doubt that but it is certainly extraordinary. I have carefully chosen those words. Any old event of yawning banality is called ‘amazing’, ‘fantastic’, ‘unbelievable’, ‘fabulous’ in our current jargon. Whatever else people may call my story it is certainly extraordinary.

It is, above all, a love story, an all-consuming love story, though I have never felt consumed by love, rather continually renewed. But isn’t that what love should do to you? Consume you and renew you constantly like the phoenix. And it brought with it another constant emotion: fear. And pain. The fear of pain. The fear of the pain of losing it, this wonderful state. The word love doesn’t fully express what I/we felt. Another word that is more or less totally debased.

What would we find under your bed?

Dust and anything that needed storing that I didn’t have room for elsewhere.

What was the scariest moment of your life?

I was driving a car in the USA when I first went to live there and in a rural situation a school bus pulled up in front of me, red light flashing. I pulled out to overtake, not realising that the school bus red light meant that I must stop to  let children cross the road. As I passed the bus a boy ran out from behind it. He was quick witted and stopped dead as I just swished past his nose missing him by nothing. There were shouts from behind and I looked in the mirror. The boy was clearly all right, staring after me, and the bus driver was furious so I just kept going. There was no point in my stopping to explain I was a foreigner. I said it was a rural setting so I was going at more than the urban speed limit. I still wake up at nights, or am brought to a dead halt every time I see a US school bus stopping, lights flashing. I was 100% in the wrong and my life would have been wracked with guilt and completely different if I had hit him, probably killing him, to say nothing of the effect on him and his family had he been so unjustly killed.

Do you listen to music while writing? If so what?

Now that I’m back in the UK I often have Radio 3 on in an adjoining room so that it is background. In the USA I would have in the kitchen a player or an appropriate radio station that played serious music of many sorts. Occasional jazz and popular music OK but never rock ‘n’ roll or contemporary pop of any sort.

What is something you'd like to accomplish in your writing career next year?

A novel that is widely praised and widely read, in that order. Prizes? Yes, I don’t really care and don’t think a first novel from a middle-aged should win any prizes, except New Writer ones of course. Come to think of it leave those for younger, needier, more ambitious writers than me (I? Me? Me, I think).

How long did it take you to write this book?

Years for the first part, as I lived it. Then in a rush, only weeks, after my husband was murdered and I needed to have it done before events blew my cover.

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Don’t forget to visit the other stops on the tour.

Author Bio and Links:

If you want to know about my life and background read this book. I can scarcely add to what I have written about myself in there. I earnestly hope that the rest of my life is too uneventful to even consider writing anything else, I am no novelist. The life I have described was full enough and rich enough for me. God knows what I would come out with if I had to invent. If you find you need a good chef I shall consider anything not too energetic – which rules out most jobs in the kitchen.

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