Yvonne
Despite the challenging times with which we are faced, the Aria Fiction and NetGalley teams, have pulled out all the stops to make this Blog Tour a success.
With Fiction Books stop on the tour being quite close to the opening date, I’m sure that there will be plenty of extracts, author guest posts and interviews which are still to be shared, so why not visit a few of the upcoming tour participants and see what goodies are on offer … A full first half schedule of Blog Tour spots, is shown below!
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LOVE ME TO DEATH
Something sinister stirs in Stockport…
The police find a young woman’s body in the woods the same week a couple discover a crude, handmade doll in Lyme Park. But are the two findings connected… or a strange coincidence?
In a town full of loners and unhappy families, nothing is as it seems…
All Mr Anderson wants is a family. After his elderly mother died, he was almost unbearably lonely. Now it’s time for him to claim his own.
All Jacob wants is for Maggie to love him back. She only has eyes for the Vincent twins – but maybe he can make her see just how much he cares.
And everyone is a suspect.
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SUSAN GEE
Susan Gee is a crime writer from Stockport, in the North West of England, where she lives with her husband and family.
She has an MA in Creative Writing from Manchester University and was a finalist in the Good Housekeeping Novel Competition and the Daily Mail ‘Write a Best Seller’.
Her first novel Kiss Her Goodbye was published in September 2018 by Head Of Zeus’s digital imprint Aria.
Susan is represented by the LBA Literary Agency.
Keep up with all the latest news at Susan’s website
Follow Susan on Twitter
Connect with Susan on Facebook
“I think inspiration comes from every book that you read. There is always something that you take away from a novel.”
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BLOG TOUR / AUTHOR GUEST POST
BRINGING MY CHARACTERS TO LIFE
Love Me To Death is my second novel. It follows the story of Jacob and his neighbour, Mr Anderson the local librarian. When a local girl is found dead in the woods and someone is leaving strange handmade dolls at Lyme Park, the novel follows Jacob as he searches for answers.
During the writing process I enjoyed getting into the mindset of these very different characters. I found it interesting to explore the mindset of a dark character and to see if I could create a bond between them and someone very differently minded. It was challenging to explore this and see where it took me.
The book is set in Stockport where I am from. I am very influenced by setting and where my previous book focused on the river, this book is focused on Lyme Park, a place where I have visited for many years. The character Mr Anderson also has memories here. He is drawn to the place, because despite his unhappy past, this is one place where he experienced a moment of happiness and that longing to recreate it is what draws him back there.
Despite him being a disturbing character I wanted to try to create some parts of the novel where there could be sympathy for him. His desire for happiness and to create a new family, despite being twisted is also fuelled by an unhappy childhood that he longs to break away from. The two characters both have a desire for love, Jacob from his friend Maggie who he wishes would see him in a different way, and Mr Anderson from a family life that he has never been able to experience himself. Mr Anderson sees the similarities between Jacob and himself in the way that Jacob is treated by his stepmother and his need to escape into the sanctuary of the library where Mr Anderson works.
I enjoyed trying to get into the mindset of someone who is very different and see where it took me. The challenge of creating parallels between these two very different people was an interesting one. I also like the idea of people being not what they seem. The two main characters in this novel are on the outside of society. They are both searching for something that is just out of reach. The need for acceptance, for love and family is something universal and yet their paths couldn’t be more different.
The writing process is a constant learning curve. Now that I have written two novels I don’t feel as intimidated by the idea of a third. I enjoy finding out where it will take me and once Love Me To Death is out in the world, I am looking forward to starting a new project.
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A very interesting guest author post, Yvonne. I imagine writing about a “dark” character could be both fun and a little disturbing. I also like that the author uses her own locale for her stories. I know I enjoy reading novels set in places with which I’m familiar.
Thanks for sharing another good Blog Tour post!
Hi! Kelly,
It is interesting that Susan also wanted to give her readers the opportunity to have some sympathy with her ‘dark’ character. As she so rightly says, many such characters live on the fringes of society, if they are a part of it at all, so can any person ever truly be labelled as completely ‘bad’, or is there always just that glimmer of hope for them?
I always try to support authors who live locally to me, and I have come to realise that there are actually more of them than I would have ever anticipated, and I too, like to read storylines about an area I know, or have visited.
Since chatting to Cathy about her ‘armchair travel’ collection, I also now support a great platform called ‘Tripfiction’, where you can either search for books in the traditional way by author, or you can choose by location if you want to see what books have been written around specific places of interest to you. I have listed quite a few books myself now and the site is going from strength to strength. You don’t need to become a member to browse … With ‘Love Me To Death’ being quite location specific, Stockport is now on the Tripfiction map! 🙂
https://www.tripfiction.com/
Thanks for that link, Yvonne. I immediately typed in Arkansas/Fiction and saw a few I expected… though not all. I’ve bookmarked it for future reference. 🙂
It’s quite a good site, isn’t it?
Great if you feel like travelling to a specific place with your fiction, and there is definitely new stuff being added every day, including reviews! 🙂
“I think inspiration comes from every book that you read. There is always something that you take away from a novel.”
I think this is such a perfect quote. Even those of us who are not published authors are changed by the books we read. Holding conversations with people I so often end up saying, ‘Oh, I read a book about that’ or ‘set in that area’. You get some funny looks sometimes from friends but the family know me by now and anyway they read too. Stephen KIng said in his book ‘On Writing’ that an aspiring writer must read, read, read. It’s nice to see that Susan Gee agrees with this. And the book sounds excellent!
Hi Cath,
I totally agree about we readers being changed by the books we discover, be they fiction or non-fiction, as I believe that we can learn equally from one as the other.
A non-reader, or someone who reads a book without ever really thinking about the storyline or characters, will never really understand what we mean and I have given up trying to explain!
I came across another quote some while ago which I really liked:-
“What makes reading so wonderful, is that every reader takes a different journey.”
Thanks for the lovely comment and for giving it so much thought 🙂
I never used to think that you can learn as much from fiction as you can from non-fiction but over the years I’ve changed my mind. A fiction book I’ve just finished told me all about Champagne and how and where it’s made, the history of the region during WW1 etc. I think a literary reader might be a bit sniffy about this book but it was excellent and taught me a lot.
That’s an excellent quote too, Yvonne, and very true in my opinion.
It was my MIL who first instilled the belief in me that I could learn as much from reading a fiction book, as a non-fiction one. That was only really because hubbie was trying to goad the pair of us about reading rubbish as he calls it, as he only reads non-fiction, because he wants to read facts and learn from them!
These days though, the fiction authors take so much more care with their factual research, around which they base their stories, that the social learning opportunities are definitely immense, well at least they are from my perspective!
I saw the ‘champagne’ book in one of your last posts and have to admit that I thought it was a non-fiction book, so I’ll stop by and take another look – that’ll teach me to assume! 🙂
Great guest post, I enjoy reading characters who are not what they seem. Love Me to Death sounds good! Thanks for highlighting it.
Hi Naida,
I have read a few good books in the last couple of weeks, although their review Blog Tour dates are not for a week or so yet – so watch this space 🙂
Susan’s book is part of the next batch on my schedule and I am looking forward to reading more about this character Mr. Anderson, who is a local librarian!
I hope that you are finding plenty to keep you occupied during lockdown, or are you back in the office now?
Take Care whatever you are doing and Happy Reading this week 🙂