Hello, and welcome, especially to new friends joining me here. I hope you and yours are keeping well and enjoying the beginnings of spring. It’s my favourite season of the year, and I love to see the changes in the garden as perennials begin to grow and trees are covered in blossom.
I’m deep into Christmas in Book 4 and I’m delighted to let you know that this is going to be the final chapter in the Welcome to Thorndale series. Thorndale to me is a very special place with a great cast of characters, and I don’t think I’ve written my last book there just yet.
Writing about snowball fights, selling Christmas trees for charity and one character trying to persuade another to write a Christmas movie has been a lot of fun as I’ve worked on Olivia and Tom’s story. Olivia has a grown-up daughter at university and Tom is someone whose life is a little complicated. His circumstances are different to the heroes I’ve written about previously and he’s a character I’m already really fond of, for various reasons!
Here are a few lines from the very first draft, and this could change in the edit so they might not appear in the final book:
‘Excuse me?’
Olivia’s glance raced up to find a man standing beside her table, his smile apologetic, a glass of something that look liked whisky in his hand. She took in dark brown hair flecked with grey; tall, smart jeans worn with a navy cashmere jumper highlighting blue eyes and a probably a few years older than her.
‘Would you mind?’ He had the most beautiful voice, as warm and luxuriant as the fire blazing nearby and somehow she felt it was another layer of comfort on such a vile evening. He pointed to the empty space opposite her. ‘I really wouldn’t bother you, but there are literally are no other seats and I’m desperate for a square meal.’
‘Me too.’ She couldn’t help her smile, liking the intelligence she’d already identified in his expression and the courteous manner of his approach. She normally avoided such encounters like the plague but today had been far from normal, and it would be mean in the extreme to deny him the empty seat at her table. It wasn’t like they had to make conversation, she was good at closing down such attempts when she didn’t want to talk. ‘Please, sit down.’
‘Thank you.’
Then he was opposite her, placing a phone and a paperback on the table followed by his glass. It was a booth made for two, three at a stretch and Olivia felt perturbed by his proximity, unable to completely remove him from her vision. Her eyes were back on her phone as she sipped her drink, aware of him picking up the menu she had discarded earlier.
I hope you enjoy this very early glimpse into Olivia and Tom’s first meeting, and it may be quite different once the book is out.
There is still a third book in the series to come before Christmas, and publication is likely to be brought forward to June. It will be called A Summer of Second Chances and I love the title. It perfectly sums up Daisy and Ben’s story as they learn about each other and consider how life might be lived a little differently.
Becoming an author is an ambition realised, and I didn’t ever expect that I would have three books published in one year. I’ll be taking a break from writing later in the spring as I begin to plan a new series. Ideas are popping up in my mind about new settings, new characters and new beginnings. And that story in Connemara just won’t go away. A reclusive artist, a wild coastline, someone in search of their history, a community full of characters. I plan to write that one too, but not until next year at least. I’d like to spend some time in the location and explore a part of the world I haven’t yet seen before I do.
I will be chatting tomorrow with Staffordshire Library’s online Book Chat if you’d like to catch up with me; details are on my website and social media.
Take care, thank you for joining me here.
Suzanne x