ShortBookandScribes #BlogTour #GuestPost by Lisa Hill, Author of Heart in the Right Place @LisaHillie @BooksManatee
Welcome to my stop on the blog tour for Heart in the Right Place by Lisa Hill. Lisa has very kindly written a guest post for me to share with you today. My thanks to Tracy Fenton for the place on the tour.
Lottie Hardwicke is Yorkshire’s answer to Kirstie Allsopp, but ten years spent raising her three children with husband, Drew, has relegated her to Saturday Girl status at the family estate agents. This is Lottie’s year; she’s turning over a new leaf and is going to make her time in property less of a borderline obsession and more of an actual career. Only, she hasn’t bet on her interfering in-laws returning to scupper her plans or her teenage crush, celebrity Tom Thorpe, arriving in the village and offering her the opportunity of a lifetime, which could compromise everything…
Can Lottie have it all? Can she be a hands-on mum and get her career back, without wrecking her marriage in the process?
Love knows no limits… by Lisa Hill
I am a true romantic and have been an avid reader from when I first learnt to read, when I was four. If you look hard enough, love can be found within any novel, not just those sheltered under the romance genre umbrella. The love Mister Tom shows William in Goodnight Mister Tom, the care the big, friendly giant shows for Sophie in the BFG, the concern which Piglet has for Pooh. I grew up looking for love, so it was perhaps inevitable that one day I would want to start writing about it.
Heart may not be the first novel I’ve had published but it was the first novel I wrote, and its characters are very special to me. When the idea started formulating in my mind, I was conscious that although I wanted to write a love story, I wanted to reach out beyond ‘girl meets boy’. There’s Lottie and Drew who have already, ostensibly, had their happy ever after but are now finding that the course of true love did never run smooth, fifteen years into their relationship, and Jude who really does need rescuing by a Prince Charming. One author who had influenced my reading over the years was Rebecca Shaw and her village and country series of novels. If you have never read any, she has quite an extensive back catalogue which I would recommend you explore. She takes you into a cosy world of countryside living and the day-to-day scandals which go on within village life. It was the first time I’d ever read a love story between a hero and heroine over forty-something and the love that grew between Muriel and Ralph had me transfixed.
When you learn to write, you’re taught to consider your reader all the time (and believe me, you lovely lot are always forefront of my mind) and so, in considering my readership for Heart, I started to look to the readers among me. Most of my friends, being working mums like I am, had little time to read and my attention settled on my mother’s generation. The women either working part-time or retired, with plenty of spare time on their hands to read. The women who organise their own book clubs. The women both entertained and inspired by what they read. What was going to enthral those women? Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m sure they’d love to read about a thirty-something stud-muffin, I am not saying that anyone over sixty is past it, but I did try to put myself in their shoes. Some of them are divorced, some of them are widowed, and some of them cling to the hope of finding love again, in later life.
So, let me introduce you to Jack Sellwood; sixty-eight, widowed and Lottie’s dad. I’m not going to give you much more than that because I don’t want to spoil the plot. He’s got a lot to come to terms with; in his mind he’s still married to his late wife Mary. He doesn’t even know he’s looking for love but that’s the thing about love, isn’t it? It knows no limits and it comes to strike us when we at least expect it…
I do hope you enjoy Heart in the Right Place.
Best wishes,
Lisa x
Thanks so much, Lisa. I love the sound of Jack!
Lisa grew up in the village of Bussage, near Stroud, in the Cotswolds until she returned to Cheltenham as a teenager. She is married to her very own hero, Matt, and has three sons, Hamish, Archie and Laurence. Her first encounter of a romance author was chats over the garden wall between her father, Godfrey, and Mrs Cooper from the neighbouring village of Bisley. It came as quite a surprise in later life to find that Mrs Cooper was in fact Jilly Cooper! Lisa’s writing inspiration now comes from other Cotswolds authors including Jill Mansell and Katie Fforde.
Lisa writes contemporary women’s fiction with a light-hearted tone. What interests her most is people, their interactions, emotions and relationships. It’s probably why her career to date has been based in property; she confesses herself that she is ‘naturally curious’.
When she’s not busy writing, helping Matt run his electrical empire, or being her sons’ taxi service, Lisa enjoys long walks with the family gundog, Sparky, and is training to be a counsellor where she hopes, one day, to be able to provide therapy in the form of writing to those who need it.
Lisa is a graduate of the Romantic Novelists’ Association New Writers’ Scheme and attributes this supportive and informative scheme to her career to date, including her debut novel, Meet Me at Number Five, and this year’s perfect summer read Heart in the Right Place.
Author photo and bio from Amazon
