#blogtour – A Year of New Adventures by Maddie Please @MaddiePlease1 @AvonBooksUK #GuestPost

Welcome to my spot on the tour for A Year of New Adventures by Maddie Please. Thank you to Sabah Khan at Avon Books for asking me to take part.

Hasn’t this book got a gorgeous, uplifting cover? Maddie has very kindly written a guest post for me to share with you. First of all, here’s what the book is about:

It’s time for Billie Summers to have an adventure … but it might not be exactly what she expected.

Billie Summers has always been quite content in her little cottage in the Cotswolds. Sure, half the house hasn’t been renovated, but what’s the point when it’s only her? Working part-time at her uncle’s bookshop and planning writer retreats with her best friend allows her to pay the bills. What more could anyone want?

That is until Oliver Forest, the bad boy of the book world, turns up to one of her retreats and points out that Billie hasn’t done anything very adventurous. Couple that with her best friend falling head over heels and beginning to drift away from their Friday night wine and dinner plans, Billie is starting to wonder if it isn’t time she took control of her life.

So she starts a list: get fitted (properly) for a bra, fix up rest of house, find a ‘career’ and well, get a tattoo … Her life might just get the makeover it needs, too bad irritating and far-too-attractive for his own good, Oliver keeps showing up …

Because sometimes you need an adventure!

It’s available now in ebook and from 5th April in paperback.

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A Year of New Adventures by Maddie Please

I was thinking about writing another book and wondered where I should set it.

It then struck me that I didn’t know much about many work environments. For example I’d never worked in a café, school, shop or office. I didn’t have the necessary knowledge to talk convincingly about business, stock taking, HR or legal procedure.

But I did know a lot about the one profession people generally didn’t want to read about. One not associated with romance or humour or light hearted flirtation.

I spent most of my working life as a dentist.

See what I mean? It’s hard to think of picking up a book about a dentist with any degree of enthusiasm. Imagine the blurb?

Pretty Louisa Wilson is having trouble with her overbite and worsening periodontal pocketing around her partially erupted wisdom teeth. She needs help and a referral to the Max-Fax Clinic. But is handsome dentist Phil McCavity the answer to her problems? Or is caring Oral Surgeon Tom Socket the one to set her pulse racing?

Nope, see? It doesn’t work.

So instead I decided to set the book in the only other workplace I have known; running writing retreats.

My best friend Jane and I set up The Place to Write some years ago because we thought it would be fun and a great way to meet other writers. Since then we have organised retreats in many different parts of the country, met several well known authors (all delightful) who have given workshops, joined in with the writing talk and generally enjoyed ourselves.

We met a lot of lovely writers too at various stages of their writing careers and we’ve been lucky – the groups always seemed to get on well and provide an enjoyable mix.

But then I wondered what would happen if a famous and difficult author came to a writing retreat in the throws of writers block? How would that affect things? Especially if there was an attraction between him and my heroine.

Thus Billie Summers and Helena Fairchild came into being and with them the famous and difficult author Oliver Forest along with his bad moods, his injured foot in a surgical boot and his beautiful dark eyes….

I had enormous fun writing this and very soon I began to wonder how Oliver might challenge Billie – who when the story starts is definitely in a bit of a rut; no boyfriend, no proper job, not much money – to make her life more interesting. To take a few risks and have some new adventures.

Thank you, Maddie. I love the sound of A Year of New Adventures but I think you should write the dentist book next 😉 

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Maddie Please was born in Dorset, brought up in Worcestershire and went to University in Cardiff.

After a career as a dentist Maddie now lives in Devon with her wonderful husband. They have 4 adult-ish children all of whom have left home and are probably rather surprised by all this. She did warn them. Sorry.

Maddie is a voracious reader, and would enjoy hoovering, defrosting the fridge and cleaning the windows but unfortunately she doesn’t really have time. She is very disciplined about writing every day because it gets her out of doing the ironing. She likes soppy films, anything to do with Christmas, America, and writing. In her spare time she likes watching American box-sets, thinking about holidays and drinking red wine.

The Summer of Second Chances is Maddie’s debut novel, and it was the result of best selling author Chris Manby’s brilliant plotting workshop in beautiful Cornwall.

Maddie is represented by the Annette Green Agency.

Maddie’s second book will be published by Avon Maze in February 2018 provisionally titled ‘Cold Hands Warm Heart’ and she is now working on her third book. *

* No cupcakes or bunting were harmed in the writing of any of these books

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