I am pleased to be welcoming Chris Mason to Novel Kicks. He’s here with the blog tour for his novel, Mrs Bambi Knows.

In a small town in Oregon, everyone wants to kill the local advice columnist, Mrs Bambi. If only they knew who she was.

Mrs Bambi’s advice is so snarky that people have long since stopped asking for it. Instead she eavesdrops on conversations and writes the letters herself. The readers would lynch her, but no one knows who she is.

In fact, Mrs. Bambi is not a woman. The column is written by Richard, a quiet widower with a young daughter.
The uneventful part of Richard’s life is nearly over: he begins dating Pam, a well-known realtor and a sports addict. When people begin to learn the identity of Mrs. Bambi, Richard is threatened and humiliated in public. Despite the pleas of his editor, his friends, and Pam, he refuses to stop writing the column.
The only thing that can prevent disaster is for the town to finally learn the whole truth about Richard, which is much larger than the simple mystery of Mrs. Bambi.

Set in 1995, Chris Mason’s skillful storytelling brings a tale of humour and romance – and not a little peril – charmingly to life in the mind of the reader.

Chris has shared an extract today. Enjoy! 

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

The advice (agony aunt) column in a small town newspaper is written by a widower using the alias Mrs. Bambi. Because no one will ask him for advice anymore, he eavesdrops on peoples’ conversations and writes the questions and the answers himself. Every chapter in the book begins with one of the advice columns. Here’s an example.

Dear Mrs. Bambi:

My mother is sick, but not as sick as she thinks she is. She’s an incurable hypochondriac, and I think it’s going to kill me.

Last week her vision went blurry. She called me at one in the morning, hours after I’d gone to bed, to tell me she had an eye tumor. I drove over and cleaned her glasses for her.

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