#shortbookscribe #BlogTour – Dreaming of St Tropez by T.A. Williams @TAWilliamsBooks @Canelo_co #GuestPost
Welcome to my stop on the blog tour for Dreaming of St Tropez by T.A. Williams. I’d like to thank Ellie Pilcher from Canelo for asking me to be a part of it. I read and reviewed Dreaming of Florence at the beginning of the year and I really enjoyed it, but sadly I couldn’t fit in a review of Dreaming of St Tropez so the author has kindly written a guest post about the dog who appears in the book.
The perfect summer escape on the French Riviera. Sun, sea and secrets…
After a disagreement with a billionaire, architect Jess Milton is ‘let go’ from her job. However fortune intervenes – an elderly client asks Jess to dog-sit overweight, but loveable dog Brutus in St. Tropez.
Fed up with the mega-rich, Jess is reluctant to visit the playground of billionaires, but an all-expenses-paid trip and the promise of sunshine seals the deal.
Little does Jess know how much time she’ll be spending with the family living in St. Tropez. The sullen, but very good-looking David and his millionaire father are both welcoming but guarded, haunted by their pasts…
Can Jess bring some sunshine back into their lives – and, just maybe, find love in the process?
A heart-warming, funny and emotional journey for fans of Holly Martin, Tilly Tennant and Jenny Oliver.
Links to Book:
TA (Trevor) Williams explains why one of the main characters in his new book, Dreaming of St-Tropez, is a dog.
Those of you familiar with my work will know that I have a thing about dogs – big black Labradors to be precise. While it’s true that I stick a Lab in almost all my books as a homage to my dear departed Merlin (the most wonderful dog who ever lived) there is another, more pragmatic reason.
To an author, a dog is a very useful tool.
Take the dog in Dreaming of St-Tropez for instance. Brutus is his name and he is the catalyst that gets the whole story started. Without this spoilt, overweight, flatulent hound, our heroine, Jess, would never have gone to St-Tropez in the first place. That makes him a very useful tool in the development of the plot.
Dogs are wonderful listeners (which is more than can be said for most men – ask my wife…). There’s something very comforting about a dog. They seem to sense when something’s wrong and they are always ready to offer support. A pair of soulful brown eyes looking up at Jess when she’s feeling down, or a large hairy paw landing on her lap to cheer her up, convey an atmosphere to the reader that mere words can’t always do. On a practical note – Jess can sit and talk over her problems with the dog without the reader thinking she’s going potty. Like I say, dogs are good listeners.
Dogs can lead you into unexpected places. Every dog owner will have memories of chasing a wayward woofer into somebody’s garden or across a river or into impenetrable woodland. Our old dog used to have a form of “selective deafness” he could switch on when he saw something interesting – normally another dog – on the far side of the field. You could stand there and shout, but to no avail. So, in Dreaming of St–Tropez, if I want Jess to happen upon a private swimming pool or to lose the top half of her bikini in the sea, Brutus is on hand to oblige.
Dogs are guaranteed sources of humour. Apart from the aforementioned flatulence, Brutus is able to raise a smile when he emerges from the sea and shakes himself, soaking Jess, or when he gives her his “I’m starving” look when his diet is changed. His theft of a little child’s ice cream or his attempts to climb onto people’s laps make great breaks in the drama, and his love of cake will be familiar to all owners of Labradors.
And, of course, dogs need walks, and this gives the author a perfect excuse to throw in some description of the surrounding countryside. Going for a long walk by yourself can maybe imply a sense of melancholy in the character, but going with a dog is the most natural thing in the world. Why would Jess end up in the woods on her own? Because she’s taking Brutus for a walk. Why would she find herself sitting all alone on the sea shore? Because Brutus has gone for a swim of course.
So I’m not exaggerating when I say that the dogs in my books are real characters in themselves. All right, they may be short on verbal dialogue, but they can be very, very useful to a writer all the same.
Thanks, Trevor. I love the sound of Brutus!
T.A. Williams lives in Devon with his Italian wife. He was born in England of a Scottish mother and Welsh father. After a degree in modern languages at Nottingham University, he lived and worked in Switzerland, France and Italy, before returning to run one of the best-known language schools in the UK. He’s taught Arab princes, Brazilian beauty queens and Italian billionaires. He speaks a number of languages and has travelled extensively. He has eaten snake, still-alive fish, and alligator. A Spanish dog, a Russian bug and a Korean parasite have done their best to eat him in return. His hobby is long-distance cycling, but his passion is writing.
