Book Extract: Flowerpot Romeo By Simone Goodman

Please join me as we welcome Simone Goodman to Novel Kicks and the blog tour for her book, Flowerpot Romeo.

For readers who loved About a Boy and One Day — but wanted more women in the room.

Sebastian Wilson wasn’t aspiring to be anybody’s hero. He just wanted to be an actor.

Instead, spurred on by his unimpressed agent, he pretends to be an Irish busker. Charmingly drifting through London’s Islington, burdened by an inability to face himself, he unwittingly changes the lives of the women he meets.

A lonely dame of the stage and screen.

A single mother making ends meet.

An underworld wife on the brink of divorce.

And Fiona, whose best friend he’d sooner avoid…

Life rarely consults the script — especially when Romeo the cat enters the scene, a tiny agent of chaos.

Simone has kindly shared an extract from Flowerpot Romeo with us today. We hope you enjoy it (there is also a chance to win a £25 Amazon gift card below.)

(Warning – brief mention of mild drug use.) 

*****beginning of extract*****

Wilson, a thirty-two-year-old aspiring actor, has been encouraged by his eccentric agent, Isadora, to hone his craft by pretending to be an Irish busker. On his first day in character, he meets Fiona — and promptly lets her walk away. Now he’s wandering after her through Islington, hoping fate will do the work he didn’t. Instead, he finds himself vaulting a low railing and landing behind a hedge.

*****

Behind the O2 Academy at Angel, Wilson takes a single puff on the joint from Raf and Teddy then immediately stubs it out. He hasn’t touched drugs since his backpacking stint in Asia and has no intention of starting again now.

Fiona and her cat headed this way, but there’s no sign of them now.

Wilson wanders on, up the road, hands in his pockets. He tells himself he isn’t stalking a woman he’s just met. He’s just exploring. Seeing, perhaps, if that well-known Irish saying is true: what’s meant to be won’t pass you by.

He is, however, a little haunted by the last time he was in the area, a few years earlier, on a good date that ended badly (as a great many of his do, as Leo loves to remind him). Arriving at an off-licence on a quiet junction, a group of teenagers are milling about. They’re wearing blood-red hoodies emblazoned with a flexing-tomato emblem, which Wilson assumes is meant to be a beating heart. An electric hire bike, tossed to the ground in front of them, is bleeping painfully.

Catching a whiff of weed, one of them asks, ‘You want some herb, bro?’

Wilson shakes his head. ‘I’m good, thank you.’

Politeness had been all but beaten into him at boarding school.

He ducks inside and buys a can of ginger ale. As he steps out, one of the kids hurls the wailing bike against the kerb, before they all tear off down the hill howling.

Spotting the street signs – Cloudesley Road and Cloudesley Street – Wilson swallows the memory of his great escape from the good-date-that-turned-bad when, fleeing in the middle of the night, he got lost trying to find the tube station, with every street around here seeming to be Cloudesley-something. Not looking for his past, he’s curious where his feet might take him. Which, strangely enough, leads straight back to the road where he once sprinted through a block of flats, breathless as a fugitive, cradling a parlour palm like contraband: Cloudesley Avenue.

Just ahead, a woman steps onto the porch of an elegant, white semi-detached house. Dark hair. Black dress. Bare feet. Smoking.

Charlotte?

Wilson stalls, wondering what the chances are that she’d be on her porch at this exact moment.

He recalls how, during the pleasant moments of their evening, they’d bonded over their parents – or, rather, lack thereof. Her mother was dead; his absent. His father was long buried; hers unknown. Charlotte declared them both orphans, or as good as. Their conversation so meaningful, she further declared them ‘some sort of soulmates’. Then they got stupidly drunk and played board games – Charlotte beating him every time – until, at some point, they both passed out top-to-toe on her enormous sofa, having never so much as snogged.

The woman at the front of the house glances across the road – officially an avenue in the Cloudesley matrix – and Wilson stops dead.

She tilts her head, as if she’s spotted something.

Wilson isn’t convinced he’d know her anywhere else; it’s the familiar setting that’s sparked his memory. But in a split-second of panic, he vaults the low railing in front of the flats opposite her, getting completely out of sight, just in case.

His landing cushioned by grass, he stays low, holding his breath.

He hears a door shut.

‘Hello?’

Wilson realises he’s not alone.

Crouched beside him is a young lad, also scrunched small.

‘Oh, hello. What are you doing here?’

‘I’m hiding,’ says the boy. ‘What are you doing here?’

Wilson exhales. ‘Also hiding.’

The boy stares at Wilson with unblinking hazel eyes.

‘What’s your name, young man?’

‘Magpie.’

‘Like the bird?’

‘My mum’s favourite bird,’ says the boy.

Wilson wonders what possessed Magpie’s mother to name him after a bird – especially a boy whose build is so spindly.

‘What’s your name?’ the boy asks him.

‘Wilson.’

‘Mr Wilson,’ the boy repeats, articulating each syllable.

‘Er, just Wilson.’

‘No Mr?’

‘We’re not in court, Magpie.’

‘We’re behind the hedge.’

‘Yes.’

‘Hiding.’

‘Apparently so.’

Wilson wants not to be hiding behind the hedge any more, but he’s afraid that Charlotte may have recognised him, and that the slam of the door he heard may not have been her going inside her home.

‘Who are you hiding from, Magpie?’

*****end of extract*****

About Simone Goodman – 

Simone Goodman is a London novelist, reluctant romantic, and full-time CFO who spends her days in spreadsheets and her evenings turning questionable experiences into taller tales – always in the hope that things will somehow work out.

Say hi to Simone on Instagram. 

Flowerpot Romeo was released in May 2026. Click to buy on Amazon UK, Amazon US and Waterstones. 

*****

Win a £25 Amazon Gift Card

This is your chance to win a £25 gift card from Amazon.

The great news is that this competition is open internationally.

For more details on how to enter, head over to Gleam by clicking on this link.

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Laura

I'm Laura. I started Novel Kicks back in 2009 as I wanted a place to discuss books and writing - two loves of my life. As someone who has anxiety, these two things give me, and I am sure countless others, a much needed escape.
There is a monthly book club, writing exercises, prompts, reviews, author interviews, competitions and guest posts. I cover many genres and I hope there is something for everyone.
I grew up by the sea in Dorset and currently live in Poole with my husband, Chris and three cats. I love writing and have a BA (Hons) in Creative Writing from Falmouth University. I am writing my first book. If only I could stop pressing delete. Chris has threatened to stop it from working. Haha.
I have always loved creative writing since I was in first school and would very much like to meet my teacher, Miss Sayers, to say thank you for all the encouragement she gave me then.
When not writing, I love reading, cats, Disney, singing (I can't sing but this doesn't stop me,) and falling into a good TV show or film. If I could step into any fictional world, it would be amongst the characters in ABC's Once Upon a Time.
I love reading many genres and discovering new authors.