A Moment With… Fiona Embers About Loving Love
I’m pleased to be welcoming Fiona Embers to Novel Kicks and the blog tour for her book, Soft Rebound
The first hookup after a long relationship is always meaningless. Right?
Still reeling from his divorce two years ago, Joe Larson sleepwalks through life until a chance encounter with Liz Jensen jolts him awake. Their sexual chemistry is undeniable, but Liz is fresh off a broken engagement and has no intention of letting anyone get close. Joe must overcome his fear of being hurt again if he is to convince Liz that love does not mean being powerless and that their rebound fling is actually their happily ever after.
To chat about Loving Love, it’s over to Fiona Embers.
Loving Love: Romance Author Fiona Embers Shares Her Favorites
Romance is a bestselling genre with many subgenres and flavors. Whether you like your heroes to be “cinnamon rolls” (sweet and supportive of their love interest) or ruthless mafiosos or billionaires or perhaps monsters or aliens, whether you like your romance with a lot of “spice” (on-page intimacy) or prefer fade to black, whether you want your romance set on Earth in modern times or in the past or perhaps on another planet, whether want your romance tightly focused on the main pair or prefer it blended with mystery or thriller or urban fantasy, there is something out there for the enjoyment of every reader.
You will sometimes hear discussions about tropes, which are recognizable story elements that readers often rely on to decide whether they might find a story enjoyable. Think of tropes as strong spices in cooking. Some people love cinnamon in anything, be it sweet or savory (it’s me; I am those people), while others prefer to avoid it altogether, but in any case cinnamon is far from the whole dish. Tropes are a little like that.
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A Moment With…Susan A. King
It’s so exciting to be welcoming Susan A. King to Novel Kicks and the blog tour for Toffee Apple Strudel.
A NEW BEATTIE BRAMSHAW MYSTERY – It’s the summer of 2001, and for WI Secretary and practised busybody Beattie Bramshaw, it’s a time of new beginnings.
Her much-anticipated wedding to vegetable grower extraordinaire Doug Sparrow is now just months away. However, in the throes of setting up their marital home and new market garden business, she receives a surprise request to care for a distant relative.
Likewise, a number of her fellow Elmesbury residents also find their lives on the cusp of change, and not all for the good. Is it pure chance that the arrival of Beattie’s young ward coincides with yet another murder in the village? Or were plans already afoot?
Once again, Beattie picks up the gauntlet, but can she solve the case and uncover the murderer’s identity before it casts a shadow over her wedding to Doug?
Toffee Apple Strudel is a comedy crime caper in the style of Agatha Raisin and sees the conclusion of the ‘Beattie Bramshaw Mysteries series’. Make a brew, grab a chair, and prepare for a fun-filled finale.
Here to talk about Procrastination vs. Circumstance, over to you, Susan. Tbank you us joining us today.
Thank you, Laura, for inviting me to write a Guest Post for Novel Kicks.
Having given much thought to what I could or should write about, I did wonder if discussing the time gap between the publication of my second and third book, and the angst that accompanied it, would make for an interesting topic.
As is well known, an author is often prone to bouts of procrastination and, dare I say, can become rather proficient at it. I have amazed myself at the keenness I have shown towards seeking out cobwebs in the back of a cupboard or tending a flower bed that shows no evidence of plant material, let alone weeds! Indeed, the lengths authors will go to, to seek out an activity with which to postpone the completion of the manuscript waiting patiently on their PC, should probably be re-classified as an art form or, at the very least, a new Olympic sport.
by A Moment With…Alice May
I’m so pleased to be welcoming Alice May to Novel Kicks and the blog tour for her book, The Mid-life Trials of Annabeth Hope.
Two very different worlds are about to collide.
Feisty country girl Annabeth Hope has sworn off men since her ex abandoned her. Juggling three resentful step-teens, a hyperactive toddler, a smallholding, and a herd of rescued llamas, she has her hands full.
With the roof about to collapse on her crumbling New Forest home, she is desperate to find a way to hold her patchwork family together. The last thing she needs is an attractive distraction moving in next door.
Burnt-out inner-city doctor Rick Mahon has left London and his medical career behind in a moment of professional crisis. A malpractice lawsuit is on the horizon, and the cancel culture mob are snapping at his heels. His plan to stay under the radar is thrown off course when he meets his new neighbour and sparks start to fly.
Annabeth and Rick couldn’t be more different, but maybe they hold the key to each other’s happiness…
Alice joins us today to chat about inspiration and people watching so without further ado, it’s over to you.
I love writing family dynamics. Finding the inspiration to write teen characters can be tricky, especially when you are trying to replicate their interactions with the adults in their lives. When I worked as a school librarian, it was interesting that pupils using the library often forgot that I was there. While I quietly moved around the room emptying the returns box and filing books back onto shelves, teenagers would chat openly with their friends about things they would never share in front of an adult. I wasn’t deliberately eavesdropping, but it was impossible to do my job without hearing what was being shared quite openly around me. Snippets of random conversations triggered ideas, situations and character quirks that went on to influence my writing.
by A Moment With… Juliet Greenwood
I’m pleased to be welcoming Juliet Greenwood to Novel Kicks and the blog tour for her novel, The Secret Daughter of Venice.
The paper is stiff and brittle with age as Kate unfolds it with trembling hands. She gasps at the pencil sketch of a rippling waterway, lined by tall buildings, curving towards the dome of a cathedral. She feels a connection deep in her heart. Venice.
England, 1941. When Kate Arden discovers a secret stash of drawings hidden in the pages of an old volume of poetry given to her as a baby, her breath catches. All her life, she has felt like an outsider in her aristocratic adoptive family, who refuse to answer any questions about her past. But the drawings spark a forgotten memory: a long journey by boat… warm arms that held her tight, and then let go.
Could these pictures unlock the secret of who she is? Why her mother left her? With war raging around the continent, she will brave everything to find out…
A gripping, emotional historical novel of love and art that will captivate fans of The Venice Sketchbook, The Woman on the Bridge and The Nightingale.
There’s a chance to win a signed copy of The Secret Daughter of Venice below but first, Juliet talks to us about the inspiration behind her novel.
Finding Venice
The inspiration for The Secret Daughter of Venice came from my two visits to Venice. The first was when I was ten. It was part of a family holiday in an ancient VW campervan that had a habit of breaking down at inopportune moments, but managed to stagger to the campsite just outside the city without steam pouring ominously from the engine. It’s strange looking at those old photographs now. The memories of St Mark’s Square and travelling through the canals on a gondola are as vivid as if they were yesterday. That visit was just a few hours, but it always made me want to visit again.
by A Moment with… Colin Garrow
I am pleased to be welcoming Colin Garrow to Novel Kicks. He’s here with the blog tour for his novel, Blood on the Tyne: Red Snow – book 3 in the Rosie Robson series.
A dead body. A hoard of forged banknotes. A gangster out for blood.
Newcastle, December 1955. Returning home after a weekend away, singer and amateur sleuth Rosie Robson discovers a man lying on a baggage trolley with his throat cut. After the police get involved, an attack on Rosie and her boss prompts Inspector Vic Walton to find a safe house for the pair. But the bad guys seem to be one step ahead of them and Rosie is forced to track down a possible witness to the murder in a bid to learn the truth. Can the canny crooner solve the mystery before a Newcastle gang boss catches up with her?
Set on Tyneside, Blood on the Tyne: Red Snow is book #3 in the Rosie Robson Murder Mysteries series.
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Without further ado, it’s over to Colin who is chatting about creating a book series.
I assume that other authors, like me, create a series of books (ie a sequence featuring the same characters or setting/location) so the expectation that whatever readers loved about the first book will prompt them to read the others. But do we do it simply to have the same group of characters ready and waiting, therefore making the writing of additional books (in theory, at least) a bit easier? Or might it be to cash in on something that proves popular with readers? In my case, I have to be interested in what happens to my characters to keep me interested. Once I begin to lose that interest, there’s no point continuing.
With my Blood on the Tyne series, I originally started out with the idea of a character who would be a sort of British version of some of those American classics, like Chandler’s Phillip Marlowe, Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer and Ross Macdonald’s Lew Archer. Aside from the fact that these are all male characters written by male authors, I wanted to write something that had that same sense of noir (dark themes and equally dark subject matter).
But when I tried to come up with a kind of English private eye with Chandleresque witticisms and classic one-liners, it just didn’t feel right. Also, I already had Terry Bell (from the Terry Bell Mysteries series) who kind of fitted that role, albeit in a more laidback and naïve way.
Ideally, what I wanted had to make sense without seeming contrived, so instead of a male PI, I came up with an amateur detective but made her female. Making Rosie Robson an unwilling investigator, who just happens to be in the wrong place when the poop hits the ceiling fan, I came up with a woman who works as a nightclub singer and is forced to come back to her hometown of Newcastle for her mother’s funeral. In doing so, she gets embroiled in a murder hunt and meets a potential partner in the shape of Detective Inspector Vic Walton.
I also wanted her to be strong as well as a bit vulnerable, so popped her in the mid-1950s so she’d have to deal with the kind of sexist and misogynistic attitudes that were commonplace at the time, as well as countering ideas about women’s roles in the home and workplace.
by A Moment With… Steve Exeter
Welcome to author, Steve Exeter.
With October being Black History Month, I am pleased to be welcoming Steve to Novel Kicks. He is here to talk about his book, Severus: The Black Caesar who was the first African Emperor.
About the book:
Severus follows the amazing true story of a rebellious boy who grew up in an African province and became the first Black Caesar of the Roman Empire, the head of a dynasty that would lead Rome through bloody civil wars and rapidly changing times.
As a young man, Severus hates the Romans and conspires to humiliate them. What begins as a childish prank unfurls into a bloodbath that sends Severus careening into his future.
Through a tragic love affair, dangerously close battles and threats both internal and external, Severus accrues power — and enemies — in his unlikely rise to become the most powerful man in the ancient world.
Without further ado, chatting about his book and the fascinating history behind it, it’s over to you, Steve. Welcome.
I was encouraged and excited to see that notable historian Patrick Vernon included the Roman Emperor Septimius Severus on his list of 100 Great Black Britons and that he ended up ranking as highly as 25 in the final list.
Severus died in York in 211 BC and was arguably the first black man to set foot on British soil, but he came not as a slave, but as Emperor. Behind this still little-known fact there is the incredible tale of someone who grew from rebellious youth to the most powerful man in the ancient world.
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