No surprise here. Susan Mallery dishes up another excellent contemporary fiction for women. A great story with lots of plot twists and romance. A real page-turner.
This time three women who don’t know each other share a lease on a retail space none of them can afford by themselves. They set up shop, books, muffins, and gifts, right off the sand, on the boardwalk in Santa Monica, California. Each has been wounded by love in the past, romantic or familial; it all hurts the same.
All three main characters are equally balanced with in-depth storylines, so the reader has the opportunity to care about each one of them. Will their particular shop succeed? Will true love win out? How many nasty turns will life serve up before the women find happiness?
I highly recommend this as your next book. But it’s no secret (by now) that I’m a huge fan of Susan Mallery myself.
Did you miss my Interview with author, Susan Mallery?
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Donna Ashcroft declared she would be an author at the age of twelve and used to write voraciously. During her career, Donna worked in publishing, online retail and as a freelance copywriter until she started her family. She had two children and finally decided she’d reached her “now or never” time. She joined the Romantic Novelists Association and started to write seriously in 2016. In 2018 (after penning a number of novels) she was offered a publishing contract by Bookouture and has been with them ever since. Her debut novel, Summer in the Castle Café was shortlisted for the RNA Debut Romantic Novel of the Year Award in 2019.
She says, “I love a happy ending and am never more content than when I’m escaping into a romance novel or movie. When I’m not reading or writing I’m probably swimming, or negotiating with my OH or teenagers about who is doing the washing up.”
Q. Where do you write? Do you have a special room, shed, barn, special space for your writing? (please provide a photo of you at work in your shed, room, closet, barn, houseboat….) Or tell us about your ‘dream’ work space.
DA. I work in my spare room. It’s a small space so we had to take the bed down and I have the headboards along one wall! I’ve tried to make it into a lovely space with a heart banner, plants and pictures of my novels. When the sun is shining though I love working outside in the garden. My ‘dream’ workspace would probably involve a pool and somewhere I can shelter from the sun but take a dip whenever I wanted to.
Q. Do you have any special rituals or quirks when you sit down to write? (a neat work space, sharpened #2 pencils, legal pad, cup of tea, glass of brandy, favorite pajamas, etc.)
DA. In the mornings I have to have coffee (multiple) and can’t start work without a caffeine hit. I also always have water on the go and drink plenty as the day progresses. I have hand cream on my desk as it’s good to just take a little time out sometimes to have a mindful moment as I’m applying it.
My office
Other must haves include pens, pretty notebooks and post it notes which I make notes on all the time! I also have a ball instead of a chair for when I’m working in an attempt to look after my back.
Q. Could you tell us something about yourself that we might not already know?
DA. I’ve been training to do a 1.4km open water swim since March – the swim is this weekend and I’m terrified but I always think it’s important to try new challenges. I’m a qualified life coach and NLP Practitioner. I don’t practice but I think the learning experience was useful to understanding behaviour in both myself and others.
Q. What tools do you begin with? Legal pad, spiral notebook, pencils, fountain pen, or do you go right to your keyboard?
A daily walk with my friend’s dog Tiggy
DA. I usually like to make notes on a pretty notepad when I’m brainstorming but I then hop straight onto the keyboard.
Q. Do you have a set time each day (or night) to write?
DA. I’m a full-time writer so I write between 8am and 6pm on weekdays and sometimes I work in the mornings on weekends. I take regular breaks to refresh my mind and body.
Q. What’s your best advice to other writers for overcoming procrastination?
Heart banner in my office
DA. Treat writing like a profession. You can’t wait for your muse, you just have to get on with it. Often I’ve spent a day writing chapters I think are awful, but then I often discover a nugget in there that’s worth keeping. Writing is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration with a little talent thrown in.
Join us next week for Part 2 of this Interview
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Coming soon! July’s author interview with Donna Ashcroft.
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Odd, loveable, quirky characters are sprinkled throughout this story. From the first page they seduce and beguile the reader.
Stewie, a 10 year old boy (when we first meet him) is passively neglected by his overly taxed, older sister. His Gam has recently died and as a way to stay connected to his much beloved grandmother, he adopts and takes over the care of her chickens. During his ‘egg route’ he meets Marilyn, another grandma-type with the same rough edge as his Gam.
And that’s where I’ll leave the spoiler alert. The writing is done with the same brilliance we have come to expect from Catherine Ryan Hyde. Her turn of phrase is unapparelled. Her balance of descriptive text and dialogue is near-perfect. And my readers know how too little dialogue irks me! This will never happen in a Hyde book. The characters are well thought out and deeply written. Hyde ‘shows’ you her characters; never tells you who and what they are. And who else could get a beautiful story out of a young boy and his chickens?
I highly recommend this book to my readers. If you loved Allie and Bea (and I did!) you will certainly love Dreaming of Flight.
Lillian Hellman said this. ‘If you hope to be any good, nothing you write will ever come out as you first hoped.’ It is true and if you are truly lucky it will happen to you.
In my novel, Women Outside the Walls, I have waited until Joe dies at Charlie’s hands to share with you the back story of how the last chapters of my book came to be. How I experienced this lucky event of my book not turning out as I had first hoped.
In the play script version , this is where the story ends; Joe dying on the cold floor of a prison and Charlie’s line: “I got you to find Chelsea, didn’t I?” And this was where I had planned for the novel to end too.
IF I had not been working closely with a woman who had ‘stood by her man’ for 15 years while he was in prison. Shortly after he was paroled, her son received 13 years for manslaughter. She has been there, done that, times two! After SK (the woman outside real walls) read the last pages, she looked up and asked: “What happened to Charlie? To Alma?”
I looked blank for a moment. I was, first and foremost, a playwright after all. Then replied, “do you think anyone would care?” She said, “Absolutely. Is Charlie in a death penalty state? Does Alma stick by him?” she asked. And “By the way, what happened to Hattie and her kids?”
The problem was I had no experience with death row……BUT I did have SK, whose son narrowly avoided the death penalty when he pled down from murder two to voluntary manslaughter. SK never spoke of those dark days when she thought she would lose her son when the state executed him. Now she was willing to speak of it with me.
Based upon her stories and the stories of her friends (other women outside the walls) I was able to write those
final chapters. Did Charlie walk down that long hallway to the ‘needle’? Was anyone there to witness his death?
You might be surprised. And yes, what happened to Hattie and Kitty?
Try to explore everything you can about your characters’ lives. Don’t leave a single road untraveled. We all care about what happens to the villain!
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Sigh. Another delicious, wonderful story from Boo Walker. Perfecto! Magnífico! We all know him for his fabulous series, Red Mountain. Plopping his readers down amongst the vines in northern California. Introducing us to wonderfully drawn characters that we could savor through the series.
With A Spanish Sunrise, he takes us on a journey of loss, grief, fear and love. A Dad and his little girl, each seeking peace in their own way. And then a surprising and shocking email arrives one day. Enough said, I try not to write spoilers.
A little while ago I wrote a “teaching” book review about the writer who ‘tells’ the story instead of ‘showing’ the story with the actions and dialogue of his characters. This book is a perfect example of ‘showing’ the story. Through the characters’ voices I could smell the loam in the olive tree orchards. Feel the hot sun on my shoulder, taste the pungent, spicy oil on my tongue. Because Walker showed me, through his characters’ actions and dialogue. He didn’t tell me “the oil was good.”
I’ve read most of Walker’s books; maybe all of them. A Spanish Sunrise is my all time favorite from this wonderful writer…..so far. It would be divine if this was book 1 of a new series. Boo, are you listening?
This could have been a great story, a fascinating, enjoyable family saga spanning several generations.
Instead, the writer, Bill Kitson, chose to tell his readers the story, instead of showing them. Chapters of telling, telling, telling. Then a half page of dialogue and ‘showing’. For example, the rift between patriarch, Albert, and his son, James. Albert’s decline into dementia would have been an interesting sub-plot if the writer had shown it; not told it. Jesse’s arduous journey from war-torn Europe back home to England. The First World War (section) was reduced to a few chapters of ‘telling’. Ugh. Leaving this reader not caring about Kitson’s characters much at all.
The characters that this writer created were interesting, predictable in places, but on the whole pretty good. But, with the storytelling style of ‘telling’ rather than showing who these people were they were not deeply drawn. Dialogue enriches not only the story but the characters. Telling rather than showing is, to my mind, a lazy way of writing.
for the story. For the writing.
The formatting was distracting. The pages were not titled with the traditional title and author’s name. In the front or back, there was no list of Kitson’s other books; a missed marketing opportunity. There was no author biography.
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First page, first sentence, the reader meets McCoy and is hooked. A broke-down, wounded, homeless handsome cowboy. Who can resist? This new book is part of the “Honey Creek” series.
The other characters in this story are equally empathetic and interesting. Jam, Tucson, Pecos, Pop Sadler, to name just a few. My only criticism (if you can call it that) is I would have liked more paper and ink dedicated to McCoy’s story.
This is a story of small town, USA; Honey Creek. Infused with colorful and interesting characters that only Jodi Thomas can serve up.
The writing is supurb…it is Jodi Thomas after all.
On Sale: April 26, 2022
Did you miss my Interview with Jodi?
My weekly BLOG features INTERVIEWS with best-selling AUTHORS! October: Life Coach, shaman, author, Jennifer Monahan, November: Susanne O’Leary, December: Mimi Mathews, February: Jennie Goutet To receive my weekly posts sign up for my
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You find inspiration in the strangest places. I was dedicated to writing scripts for the stage. A few years back, I attended this production of my children’s play, Emma and the Lost Unicorn, outside of Boston .
After the actors had their curtain calls, the Director told them that if they changed out of their costumes and did their assigned tasks back stage, they could ‘have some time with Trisha’.
So I found myself holding impromptu stage craft classes with these adorable young actors (age 5–18). I was struck how serious they were about their craft. Their questions were very sophisticated. And then it happened……the inspiration to dare to write something completely out of my comfort zone…..a book.
Emma
The youngest ones begged me to write the stories from my scripts into storybook form. They wanted to have Emma, Stare, Cheets, and Stanley in their personal libraries. Six children’s books, a mystery series and three novels later I have found a new outlet for my story telling. These children, who knew no fear, gave me enough courage to try chapter books, poetry, and becoming a novelist. Experimental at times, risky at times, scary, but so rewarding.
I was lucky and had a head start using my stage plays as a story outline as I adapted them to story book form. But for my true crime series and the novels, I was flying solo….staring at a blank screen, typing that first sentence (that I am always talking about).
So step out of your comfort zone and try writing in a different format… it’s very liberating and you might surprise yourself. I did!
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This is one of those rare books where the reviewer wants to give it ten, no, a hundred, no, two thousand stars! The writing is stunning. Ruth Talbot has a delicate, beautiful usage of words that we mortal writers can only dream of for ourselves.
And her words craft a wonderful story. Griping, grim, tragic at times, nostalgic and loving. About friendship, perseverance, crushing hardship, with no real happy ending. Talbot takes us tramping across this great nation of ours during one of the bleakest times in our history. The Great Depression. I, for one, never imagined that children….yes, you heard me correctly….children were cast out into the world to join the thousands of ‘hoboes‘ who jumped on and off trains and used them as their only transportation. Following work and seasonal harvests in order to not starve to death.
Beautiful writing….a book you’ll want to take your time with. Mulling over a turn of phrase in the prose if you are a ‘English literature’ buff….or view, in your mind’s eye, the stunning visuals Talbot paints for her readers.
This appears to be Talbot’s debut novel and we can only hope that she is working on her next one.
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My weekly BLOG features INTERVIEWS with best-selling AUTHORS! October: Life Coach, shaman, author, Jennifer Monahan, November: Susanne O’Leary, December: Mimi Mathews, February: Jennie Goutet To receive my weekly posts sign up for my
On the home page, enter your email address. Thanks!
Watch for more interviews with authors. September: Culley Holderfield. October: Simon Gervais for ROBERT LUDLUM’S THE BLACKBRIAR GENESIS
