Skip to main content

Guest Blogger: Margaret James

At last some cheerful news! I'm delighted to welcome my fellow Choc Lit author, lovely Margaret James to Home Thoughts Weekly It's publication day for her new novel The Wedding Diary and here she is to tell us about it...



Thank you for inviting me to be your guest today, Chris. It’s great to be here!

I’ve always loved fairy tales. Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Snow White, Rapunzel – all those heroines waiting for handsome princes to come along and save them from fates worse than death (or even death itself) fascinated eight-year-old, unreconstructed, pre-The Female Eunuch me.

I’m considerably older and more cynical nowadays, but I still love fairy tales, probably because they have such strong story lines and they’re so life-affirming. You, dear reader, can wish upon a star. You too can have your happy ending.

I wrote my romantic comedy The Wedding Diary at a time when my own life was in meltdown. I was almost too scared to pick up the phone because I knew something else would have gone wrong. I’ve written several historical novels which have casts of thousands and are full of drama, action and – inevitably, since I often set my stories in wartime – death. But in the summer of 2011 I couldn’t face writing about things going wrong for my characters. So I decided to write a rom com instead. 


The Wedding Diary is a present-day reworking of Cinderella in which the heroine starts off in a very bad place – she’s just won a wedding competition but she doesn’t have anyone to marry because her fiancé has vanished off the face of the earth. So what does she need if her story is to have a happy ending? Well, a handsome prince, obviously – and a fairy godmother to make sure this happy ending is delivered. 


My handsome prince is a building projects manager whose own heart needs some urgent repair work, and at first my fairy godmother seems anything but fairy-like. She behaves more like the wicked witch in The Wizard of Oz than a dear old lady with a talent for bibiddi bobiddi boo. But in fairy-tale-land things aren’t always what they seem, and after some fairly hair-raising frights and setbacks my heroine finds her happy-ever-after with her very own handsome prince. 


Nowadays, I’m in a better place, too!



Thank you so much for being my guest, Margaret - it's been great to have you here.  
Links
Buy The Wedding Diary HERE
Margaret's on Facebook Twitter
And you can find her blog here

Comments

Margaret James said…
Thank you for inviting me to be a guest on your blog, Chris. I'm so glad things are looking up for you! MXXX
Margaret James said…
Thank you for inviting me to be a guest on your blog, Chris. I'm so glad things are looking up for you! MXXX
Sarah Tranter said…
It's on my kindle, crying 'read me!' X
Flowerpot said…
That sounds a fabulous read, Margaret - can't wait! Thanks for guesting that Chris x
Mandy K James said…
It is very fab-u-lous!
Margaret James said…
Thank you, ladies!
Unknown said…
It’s amazing in support of me to truly have a blog site, which will be valuable meant for my knowledge. Thanks admin. guestblogged.com

Popular posts from this blog

My First Book Signing!

It’s a fine, dry day and there’s an Italian market in the square outside Waterstone’s. Good for a book signing? ‘Bad,’ says Tim. The stalls are blocking the view of the shop and the fine weather’s keeping everyone outdoors. Hmm, that must be why they’ve only put one small poster up for my event, I mean why waste the Blu Tack? Tim demonstrates handing off the marauding hordes After much refolding of a black tablecloth and a rummage around for some books, I’m invited to take up my position at the author table somewhere between ‘fantasy and horror’, children’s books and a poster of the next author, Bobby ‘Iron Duke’ Windsor who’s signing on Monday. Once Tom, Lily, my lovely daughter, and her partner, Russ, are all sure I’m not going to run away, they leave me to it, taking it in turns to make sure I’m all right and bring me tea. Very soon, I notice a small boy watching me. When he returns with his family I learn that he would like to be a writer. His method, he tells me, is to rewr...

Since You've Been Gone

Well, Ma Mère, There have been so many times when I’ve gathered up all the little shiny moments I’ve collected during the day, ready to present to you in our evening phone call and then I remember all over again that you’re not there. But, Mum, so much has happened since you’ve gone - maybe you know, maybe you don’t - that I’ve decided to write to you instead.  A few days after you died, we sold our house! After all those months! We even joked about you rattling cages somewhere. At first, nothing happened and then suddenly everything happened at a breathless pace and the next thing I knew I found myself driving (yes, me, driving!) along the M4 to Bridgend and the Time Capsule House, the one you said you and Dad would have bought. I remarked, when we first viewed it that if it was meant for us, it would come to us. Over a year later, when it had been under offer twice, we moved in. Oh, Mum, you and Dad would have loved this house; it’s peak Seventies and the decor - the pampas ensu...

Forever Young

Looking at the blurb for my new Lacura WrinkleStop from Aldi, I see that its active ingredient has been ‘proven to help • Reduce forehead wrinkles by 52% • Reduce crow’s feet by 24% • Restrict 82% of wrinkle muscle activity’ That’s quite a claim, isn’t it? Frankly, after years when my face looked like a lunar landscape thanks to the joys of acne, these days I’m just grateful to see a fairly blemish-free skin. Part of me wants to believe that the wonder cream’s making everything looking a bit smoother and tidier, but, hey, there’s also a lot of ‘aqua’ and ‘glycerin’ in the stuff, too. Besides, I could tamper with my skin as much as I like (and I don’t), but I’ve only got to stand next to my beautiful daughters to see the difference. Ma has wonderful skin, so the chances are there are some helpful genes in the mix, but my dad died far too young of cancer, so it’s not all good news. My dad was a carpenter. ‘You can’t get age from a tin, Miss Chris,’ he’d say when rubbing his hands o...