Please Release Me: A Blog Splash and a Gale

Today I’m delighted to be taking part in the blog splash for fellow ChocLiteer Rhoda Baxter to celebrate the release of her latest book, Please Release Me, which has a rather unusual premise for a romantic novel. In Rhoda’s own words, “Please Release Me, is a contemporary romance with a touch of the paranormal, published by Choc Lit Ltd. It’s set in a hospice (granted, that’s not the most intuitive setting for a romantic comedy…) and features Sally, whose body is a coma while her ghost gets to walk through furniture; Peter, who reads to his comatose wife every day; and Grace, who is the only person who can see or hear Sally’s ghost. It’s a story about moving on in one way or another and about how people need each other, especially when they think they don’t.”

Something else you need to know about this book is that Rhoda’s generously donating half the royalties from it to Martin House Children’s Hospice.

When Rhoda invited me to take part in her blog splash she suggested ‘being stuck’ as a possible prompt because her characters are unable to move on. Perhaps it’s because we’ve just bought another boat that I thought of Veryan, the first and loveliest of our boats and when, on an early Epic Voyage, we found ourselves galebound in Ramsgate…

“To describe what I did this morning as ‘waking up’ would be stretching it. Although we were expecting a gale, it blew up really quickly” my sailing diary records. “One minute I was washing up in the cockpit and the next I was leaping ashore because the boat was jumping around all over the place. We felt very vulnerable on our mooring but couldn’t move because the wind was driving straight onto a pontoon. We did what we could to make the boat safe, then waited… and waited, but the gale didn’t stop. It blew throughout the afternoon, evening and all through the night making even the most innocuous sound seem threatening.”

Veryan (and her crew) take a battering!

However, there was a silver lining to that storm…

“Last night was one of the worst of my life after one of the nastiest journeys, but it suddenly occurred to me that if the advice is to write about what you know that this is what I should be writing about! Some of the characters we’ve met here would fill several books …”

Well, two so far, Turning the Tide and Follow A Star (directly recalling that time in Ramsgate!) which just goes to prove that sometimes you need to be stuck to move on. And once we set sail again, next summer, who knows where those adventures will lead?

Please Release Me

What if you could only watch as your bright future slipped away from you?
Sally Cummings has had it tougher than most but, if nothing else, it’s taught her to grab opportunity with both hands. And, when she stands looking into the eyes of her new husband Peter on her perfect wedding day, it seems her life is finally on the up.
That is until the car crash that puts her in a coma and throws her entire future into question.
In the following months, a small part of Sally’s consciousness begins to return, allowing her to listen in on the world around her – although she has no way to communicate.
But Sally was never going to let a little thing like a coma get in the way of her happily ever after …

Please Release Me by Rhoda Baxter is out now and you can buy it here.

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...

A Winter's Tale

Thursday 2 December Feeling confined in her snow-muffled flat, Ma takes a walk up her front path to take the morning air. As she returns a cat jumps over the wall and startles her. She slips on the icy path and lands heavily on her shoulder. When her injury doesn’t spontaneously heal, she eventually gives in and calls her local GP surgery. In the evening a GP visits and summons an ambulance ‘sooner rather than later’. Around 10.30 pm Ma is admitted to her local hospital. X-rays suggest she has a fractured scapula which will require emergency surgery. She is put on a nil by mouth regime that night and transferred to a larger hospital for an emergency operation. However, she’s picked a busy period for her accident so the operation doesn’t take place. Saturday 4 December The operation is rescheduled for this morning, so Ma’s had a second night of nil by mouth. A CT scan shows that Ma’s humerus is broken in four places. Despite her obviously smashed-up arm, which is in a sling and...

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...

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