I'm very excited to be part of this blog tour today and it's a chirstmas book as well! So what's it all about?
PAPERBACK AND EBOOK PUBLISHING: 3rd November 2016
Christmas with the family. Cosy, relaxing…and a total nightmare?
Driving home for Christmas, Beth has everything she wants. The kids and the house, the career and the husband. So why is it that when the New Year comes, she can’t stop thinking about her old college boyfriend?
Her husband Daniel is tasked with bringing a struggling school up to scratch, but when family life catches up to him, can he be a good father and a good teacher at the same time?
Beth’s sister Lou has just been dumped…again. Single and childless, she can’t help but be jealous of her sibling’s success. But is the grass really always greener?
It’s a Wonderful Life is a heart-warming novel about the lives that could have been, and what happens when you start to question the choices you made…
And here's an exclusive extract for you right now...
The email arrived this morning, and I must have read and reread it a dozen times already, trying to see if there was a hidden agenda. Jack Stevens was always a bit slippery. Gorgeous, charismatic, but very, very slippery, as I found out to my cost. But seeing him again has reminded me of the person I used to be around him: someone with possibilities. The years of parenting and being a wife have taken some of that away from me. Thanks to getting pregnant with Sam, my career ended up on hold, and I slipped into the world of picture books by accident. Daniel had known someone from college who worked in publishing and got me my first gig. He’d always been hugely supportive of my efforts, while not having a clue about the creative process involved. It had suited me to create stories for children when mine were small, and the work fitted in with being a mum. But when I was at college I’d had other ideas. I was going to be an avant garde artist and win the Turner prize. Or develop my sculpture work, which I’d loved. Or be an inspiring teacher for a new generation of artists. Daniel never understood that side of me, so I never discussed it with him. Whereas Jack…
Jack had always instinctively got where I was coming from when I spoke about my art. He had great ideas for how to get the best out of my work. We used to sit up till the early hours discussing our plans for the future. At the time I’d fantasised about us getting together properly, having a proper relationship, not the half-hearted moments which seemed to promise so much but ended up going nowhere.
Jack Stevens. I can remember him in my first year at art school. He was a self-confident strutting peacock, one among many, but there was something about him that made him stand out from the rest. Jack was going through a massive Bowie phase at the time, and oh, he was beautiful. He had a thin, angular face, with the most amazing cheekbones and blue eyes which sucked you in, making you believe he could see into your soul. He knew it of course, and was quickly surrounded by a coterie of fans, both male and female. He was always ambiguous about his preferences, playing with gender before it was even a thing, but for some reason he admitted to me when we still barely knew each other and he was very very drunk that he was a through and through hetero.
I tried to ignore him at first, thinking someone as dazzling as Jack wouldn’t be interested in me, but to my surprise he kept seeking me out. Then, one night in a club, we got chatting and we both felt an instant connection. I knew I hadn’t imagined it, and the day after that Jack asked me for coffee. I had a feeling I was heading for trouble, but he made me feel special.
‘The others are nothing,’ he’d say, ‘you’re my muse.’
It was immensely flattering, and being young and naive I believed him. I was intoxicated by the idea of being Jack’s inspiration. His room was full of sketches of me – and he even persuaded me to model for him. Even though there was evidence of other women, I chose to ignore it, because he always said that I was the only person who meant something to him, and I suppose I really wanted to believe it. Till the moment I finally realised he was bullshitting me all along…
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