Good wishes for the holidays

Just a post to wish everyone 

A Very Happy Christmas

And if you do happen to get a new electronic device in your stocking, or you're looking round for something to read by Boxing Day, then just a reminder that What Happens at Christmas is a romantic suspense - a different kind of Christmas read, and if you fancy some sunshine, Summer in San Remo is in the Choclit bonanza sale at the moment. Just a hint, if you haven't read them yet!

See you in the New Year!

Romantic Suspense for Christmas

Reggie with one of my posh postcards.
He was very impressed,
and it's not easy to impress a unicorn. 

What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.


What Happens at Christmas ... well ... that's a bit complicated ...

I wrote the Christmas romantic suspense by accident. It wasn't in the plan. When it went to the publisher it was called To Have Your Heart - a variation of which eventually became the strap line for the cover.

The title What Happens at Christmas was my publishers' suggestion, because a Christmas book has to have Christmas in the title, doesn't it?

Actually it was quite apt, as what happens in What Happens at Christmas does have to stay secret. But the only problem for hero Drew is that it got a bit too secret, and now he's looking for the girl of his dreams, and she seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth ...

I had fun writing the book, and I loved giving Devlin, from Never Coming Home, a cameo role, and I have to admit I fell for Drew in a big way - my unexpected and accidental hero. I also enjoyed setting the book in a beautiful part of my native Wales - the Brecon Beacons. I had to arrange a freak snow storm, because you have to have snow in a Christmas book too, but that's the thing about being a author - you even get to arrange the weather.

The book is out now in e-book, paperback and audio, with a male narrator, which is a first for me, but as a lot of the book, including the opener on the roof of a train, is written from Drew's point of view, it makes sense.

If you're looking for something a little different in Christmas reading, you've just time to get your hands on a copy. If you do, I hope you enjoy it.

You can see all the options HERE

Why I'll never write literary fiction.

Let's face it - I don't have deep thoughts, or a message, or anything like that. I don't even manage to have a theme. I like telling stories. Beginning, middle, end, so I'm stuck with genre fiction. And quite happy, actually. It's what I like to read. I've never got on with highbrow stuff.

I might one day venture into non fiction - the day job, when it is done, has possibilities to be a piece of popular history, if I have the energy to do it, once the thesis is finally finished, and some publisher thinks they want it, but that's a long way away.

I like distinctive locations, and a plot, and a love story and a happy ending. Literary fiction doesn't have to have any of those, so I really wouldn't have a clue what I was doing.

It's the love story that drives the thing, for me. I might murder a few people along the way - all right, maybe a lot of people - and the course of true love never does run smooth (thank you, Mr Shakespeare, or whoever wrote the plays. I'm researching that at the moment as a side issue to the day job, for a very much in the future plot for a romantic suspense. But I digress...) And there is usually a dark moment, before the end, when Hero and Heroine don't look as if they will get together, but then they do. And it all ends happily. That's my contract with the reader. Uplift. And probably a wedding ring.

I have to confess though that I have had a few thoughts lately about killing off a hero or heroine before the end of a book. I don't know where that evil impulse is coming from, or whether I'll ever act on it.

If I did, would that make it literary fiction, d'you think?

Publication day X 2

A book release is a red letter day and this week I am having two, as the paperback of What Happens at Christmas was out on Saturday and the audio version is out today from Isis Publishing.

I've featured in the Choc-lit Advent calendar - if you haven't caught up with that yet - check out the Choc-lit twitter feed. A clue every day and a chance to win a daily prize and something big (lots of books) for the overall winner.

There is an interview on the Female First website, all about the inspirations for What Happens at Christmas. The ones I can identify, that is.

It all started with a lunch with some fellow authors, and there was no alcohol involved ...

The link for the interview is HERE

What Happens at Christmas is on special offer on the Choc-lit Amazon page, if you have not got your copy yet LINK

It has been quite a week.

And what's next?

Well, the next book in the pipeline should be another in the Riviera Rogues series, set in the South of France, once the day job is finally put to bed.

According to Jamie Dornan and Matthew Rhys, Barry Island is the Welsh equivalent of St Tropez, so for the location for the one after that, all I have to do is open the front door. Not sure about the weather though ....

Jamie and Matthew