#blogtour – This Fragile Life by Kate Hewitt @katehewitt1 @NeverlandBT #GuestPost #giveaway
I’m pleased today to welcome you to my stop on the blog tour for This Fragile Life by Kate Hewitt. Thank you to Jenny Marston from Neverland Blog Tours for asking me to take part. I have a guest post from Kate for you today and there’s also a chance to win her next book, A Mother’s Choice, but first, let’s see what This Fragile Life is all about.
You love your best friend. You trust her with your life. But could you give her the most precious gift of all?
Alex’s life is a mess. She’s barely holding down a job, only just affording her apartment, and can’t remember when she was last in a relationship. An unexpected pregnancy is the last thing she needs.
Martha’s life is on track. She’s got the highflying career, the gorgeous home and the loving husband. But one big thing is missing. Five rounds of IVF and still no baby.
The solution seems simple. Alex knows that Martha can give her child everything that she can’t provide. But Martha’s world may not be as perfect as it seems, and letting go isn’t as easy as Alex expected it to be. Now they face a decision that could shatter their friendship forever.
This Fragile Life was the first serious women’s fiction I ever published. I loved writing it, and I poured a lot of myself into the book. It underwent some extensive revisions—mainly because my editor felt the two female characters were too unlikeable at times.
I seem to have a bent to creating unlikeable characters. I don’t mean to; in fact, I always like my characters a lot! They feel so real to me; it’s as if I have continuous conversations with them in my head. Their back stories became part of myself; in the case of this book, Martha’s overbearing mother and Alex’s dysfunctional family.
But I do like to write about people who are fallible and weak and broken, who make messes and bad choices and struggle with difficult emotions. Ultimately I want to see them to the other side, where they’ve changed and grown, even if they’re not perfect, just as none of us are. But the journey is tough and tiring—for both writer and reader. That’s because along the way I show them in all their ugliness, and sometimes readers don’t like that.
Certainly, my editors over the years have tried to get me to ‘soften’ my characters, and I have—to some extent. But I don’t want to write about people whose main flaw is a loud laugh or a tendency to believe the best in people. I want to write about people who struggle, who suffer, who are broken and trying to heal. And that is certainly the case with This Fragile Life, whose story deals with a lot of brokenness—and a lot of healing.
My most recent book, A Mother’s Choice, is out with Bookouture in June and deals with similar topics—and characters. What about you? What kind of characters do you like to read?
Thank you, Kate. I have no problem with unlikeable characters at all, in fact, they’re often much more interesting than the likeable ones!
Your chance to win a copy of A Mother’s Choice, which is published in June. The competition is open internationally.
Kate is the USA Today-bsetselling author of over 60 books of women’s fiction and romance. She is the author of the Hartley-by-the-Sea series, set in England’s Lake District and published by Penguin. She is also, under the name Katharine Swartz, the author of the Tales from Goswell books, a series of time-slip novels set in the village of Goswell.
She likes to read romance, mystery, the occasional straight historical and angsty women’s fiction; she particularly enjoys reading about well-drawn characters and avoids high-concept plots.
Having lived in both New York City and a tiny village on the windswept northwest coast of England, she now resides in a market town in Wales with her husband, five children, and an overly affectionate Golden Retriever.