Today The Blonde Plotters have met up with Jane Lovering author of, Christmas Secrets by the Sea to find out more about her latest book.

Thanks for popping by to visit us.

Please can you tell us a bit about Christmas Secrets By The Sea?

It’s set in a little seaside town in Dorset, called Christmas Steepleton, which featured in  my novella The Boys of Christmas, and it’s sort of a playful twisting of tropes – there’s a famous TV star, a beach café, a camper van, a teenager and a cute dog! There is also a lot of very bad weather, and a fair sprinkling of romance and jokes. It’s a sort of romantic comedy, but very character-driven, my heroine Tansy just wants to get away from it all, but finds herself having to chaperone a sexy Irish star, babysit a teenager, help out an old friend – so she’s not given much time to lick her wounds, which is probably a good thing.

And the inspiration behind it?

I wanted to subvert some tropes. Not all beach cafes are successful businesses (or have the possibility to be), because of the very restricted season, not all Irish TV stars are twinkly-eyed sex gods (or, at least, that’s not all there is to them!), not all dogs are cute and well behaved and TV sets aren’t the place for lots of romance – everyone is too busy, too cold and too short tempered. I like to put a lot of realism in my books. My novels are more a place for nods of agreement and cries of ‘I never realised other people did/felt that!’ rather than places of escapism.

Can you tell us a little about your route to publication?

I learned about the Romantic Novelists’ Association whilst doing my degree, joined, and found an e-publisher at my first Convention. Those books found me my agent, and my agent got me my publisher, Choc Lit, and we won Romantic Novel of the Year (with Please Don’t Stop the Music in 2012) and the RoNA Rose (with Christmas at the Little Village School in 2018). I’m now published by Farrago, which is a publisher of humour.

What have you learnt that you wished you’d known when you started writing?

So much! That humour must be natural, not forced with huge set-ups. Humour should come naturally, through dialogue. Also that characters don’t know they are in a story, and aren’t puppets for the writer (honestly, some of my first attempts at writing are so bad I had to burn them). Also that I should take up exercise of some kind, sitting down so much isn’t good for the bottom.

What would be your biggest tip for a new writer?

See above. And read. Read everything, not just the genre you want to write in. Oh, and take up running sooner rather than later, you’ll thank me when you can still do  your jeans up in five years.

Bio

Jane was, presumably, born, although everyone concerned denies all knowledge.  She now lives in North Yorkshire, where she writes romantic comedies, some of which win awards, and labours under the tragic misapprehension that Johnny Depp is coming for her any day now. Owing to a terrible outbreak of insanity she is now the minder of three cats and a mad terrier. Jane’s likes include marshmallows, the smell of cucumbers and the understairs cupboard, words beginning with B, and Doctor Who. She writes with her laptop balanced on her knees whilst lying on her bed, and her children have been brought up to believe that real food has a high carbon content. And a kind of amorphous shape.
Not unlike Jane herself, come to think of it.

Book Blurb

Christmas by the sea – that sounds romantic, right?

Tansy Merriweather is down on her luck. She’s lost her business and her relationship, and instead of a glamorous London apartment, her home is now a campervan on a Dorset beach. And as if things couldn’t get any worse, a scruffy dog called Brian with a taste for sardines has adopted her.

When Tansy’s new-found friends at the cafe in the bay help her find a job as a location scout for a new TV show, things start looking up. However, when she finds herself babysitting the show’s grouchy star, Davin O’Riordan, she’s not sure she wants to stay around. But when Brian forges a touching romance with Davin’s elegant whippet Seelie, Tansy begins to see another side to Davin.

As Christmas approaches, secrets emerge and Tansy and Davin discover a bond between them. But how will they cope with the storms headed their way – and can they save the cafe from closing?

Buy Christmas Secrets by the Sea

Links

Website   www.janelovering.co.uk

Twitter @janelovering

Facebook Jane Lovering Author