Month: March 2021

Pests

~ Paula Harmon ~ 1 Comment

Bertram smirked as he dropped his handful of dirt onto Aunt Hepzibah’s coffin. Daft old biddy. No sense of humour. Giving him a thrashing just for dropping spiders down her back while she snoozed. What else was he supposed to do on childhood duty visits?

If she hadn’t been so bad tempered, maybe he wouldn’t have put beetles in her bed or ants in the pepper grinder or crickets in her pistachio ice cream. Or maybe he would. He bit his lip, thinking of all those tricks he played on the miserable old girl when he was a kid. What a laugh. 

As others tossed handfuls of dirt and the odd flower into the grave, Bertram leaned over to watch the large spider he’d wrapped in earth, wriggle free and scuttle across the name-plate. He sniggered. Touché Aunt Hepzibah, little Bertie’s done it again. 

Some dusty old relic of a relation glared and tutted, but Bertram just smirked back.

At the post funeral lunch, the cold buffet was as dry as the company. He looked askance at his cousin Angelina, who was dabbing her eyes. But then Angelina always had been as wet as her name, buttering up their aunt with little gifts and hugs; crying whenever Bertram played jokes on her.

He started to creep up to make her shriek when the solicitor announced the reading of the will.

Bertram nearly fell off his chair when the solicitor announced Aunt Hepzibah had left her house to him. All the relations stopped sniffing to stare and mutter.

‘There is a proviso,’ continued the solicitor. ‘The house will only be yours once you’ve spent the whole of tonight in it, not leaving till seven a.m. tomorrow.’

Bertram snorted. It would be a piece of cake.

‘Are you sure you’ll be all right?’ said Angelina. ‘If you want me, I’ll be in the hotel down the road.’ 

What a drip she was.

***

A few hours later, at three a.m. Bertram found himself in Angelina’s room at the hotel, shaking. He had run all the way down the road stark naked, his glories flapping in the wind, and legged it up the drainpipe despite the flakes of rust and rose thorns stabbing delicate body parts. Now he wore Angelina’s pink frilly dressing gown which just about covered his dignity. A glass of whisky rattled against his teeth.

For a cousin who’d last seen him naked when they were three and who hadn’t seen him at all seen since they were twelve, and whom he’d thought rather prim, Angelina seemed quite mellow despite having a naked, trembling man in her room. 

‘What happened?’ she asked. ‘What made you run?’

A small whimper came from Bertram’s lips before he managed to stutter: ‘Spiders, spiders everywhere. Earwigs, beetles, tarantulas probably. They came out from the walls, down from the ceiling… they were all over me…it was terrible.’

He took a swig of whisky and rearranged the dressing gown which had fallen apart. A man is not at his best when frightened.

He looked up and saw Angelina was biting her lip. How sweet that she was concerned. Then she handed over an envelope.

Inside was a note in Aunt Hepzibah’s scrawl: 

‘Thanks for all the fun Bertram. But at long last, I’ve had the last laugh.’

Words copyright 2021 by Paula Harmon. All rights belong to the author and material may not be copied without the author’s express permission. Image http://www.dreamstime.com/photos-images/spider.html

Imaginary Friends?

~ Paula Harmon ~ 2 Comments

Did you ever have an imaginary friend?

This question was posed on a Facebook group recently. Some said they’d had several, some had had none. Some hadn’t, but their children or siblings had. Some had ones who when they explained them to adults appeared identical to dead relations the child hadn’t actually known, which is a whole potential story in itself. 

It got me thinking.

Had I had imaginary friends? 

When I was seven and in my second primary school, there was a time when I communicated with my reflection at playtime (recess). We (my reflexion and I) were called Trixie and Trina (I can’t recall who was who) and were twins separated into two different worlds by some spell/disaster and the glass was the only meeting place. I can’t remember what we talked about apart from being sad we couldn’t be physically together. I hadn’t long moved schools and was very lonely, having left my first best friend behind and knowing I’d never see her again. The fact that I was top of the entire junior school in spelling and reading but hadn’t made any friends got into my school report, but no one noticed I was talking to a reflection in playtime until a couple of school bullies decided to target me. I never dared to do it again. Fortunately, not long afterwards I made friends with a real girl who was on my wavelength (I knew this because she also wanted, more than anything, a flying unicorn). 

Thinking back, I feel a little guilty about Trixie and Trina. Are they still stuck on either side of a reflection simply wanting to be together again?

Roll on two years and (after another move) 144 miles west and I’m on a bus with my little sister. She’s been thwarted in her desire to have a dog and shouts at me for sitting on Sandy, an imaginary corgi puppy. I am mortified by the other passengers’ horror and the sympathy I’d had for my sister’s disappointment fades completely.

Roll on even more years and 100 miles back east and my son, aged four, tells me off for putting my shopping in the Tesco trolley on top of his imaginary sheep. 

As he’s now grown up – stuck at hime with us because of lock-down – I asked him if that was the only imaginary friend he’d had and he said ‘I had loads, I had an entire team of Pokemon at one point and they did everything with me’. Recalling watching him in swimming galas and football matches, I’m somehow not surprised.

I tried to work out if I’d had any, other than Trixie and Trina and initially thought ‘no’. But the more I thought about it, the more I realised that when I was eight or nine, after another move of schools and another lost best friend and I spent a lot of time wandering about alone, talking to unseen spirits in the woods and river – that was something similar. 

I did make friends with another (real) girl around the same time. She was on a similar (e.g. highly imaginative) wavelength, and we created a series of convoluted stories to play out. One was sort of science fiction – involving an almost impassable jelly-like force field between worlds in which an enormous mutated fly was forever stuck and we acted it in the fields at school. Sometimes we could get through the jelly wall, sometimes we couldn’t and bounced off. We must have looked utterly bonkers to everyone else. 

We remained friends till after graduating university (by which time acting things out had been replaced by writing stories and boyfriends) but then lost touch for twenty-five years until she turned up at my father’s funeral. 

As we reconnected, pretty much the first thing we emailed to each other was ‘Do you remember the jelly wall with the big fly in it?’ 

Later, she said ‘Do you still have that map of the woods you drew with all the magic portals in it?’ 

I confessed that it had long been lost. 

Then she said ‘You had me completely convinced about all those magical beings there. I thought they were real for ages.’

I was taken aback on three fronts. Firstly, I rarely ever convince anyone of anything. Secondly, I wanted to say ‘but they were real.’ Thirdly, I wondered why I’d thought ‘were’ rather than ‘are’ and felt a deep, visceral disloyalty.

Were they imaginary friends? I never thought of them as either imaginary or friends. They were just there, among the leaves and bracken and bluebells, just out of sight in roots and hollows, or sparkling from the light shining through branches or on river wavelets. I could say what I wanted to them and they neither offered criticism nor advice. They never spoke at all. They just listened.

On the Facebook thread referred to earlier, someone said ‘I didn’t have one as a child, but I have one now.’ 

I’m not sure if they were being serious of course, but I felt a pang of mild jealousy. Why don’t I have one now that I’m an adult? I thought. Then I remembered my invisible household ghost and the invisible household elves. 

The former is ‘just’ a series of odd, inexplicable sounds in our rather strange (not old, just strange) house. He never communicates in any other way (yes he’s a he, I don’t know why, but he is). He’s not a ghost in the sense of being the spirit of a dead person. He’s just a noisy, companionable entity, who normally makes the house seem less empty when I work from home alone. I never speak to him, except at night when I tell him to shut up because he’s thumping about in the attic while I’m trying to get to sleep. 

The invisible household elves, who have some sort of form I can visualise, turn up when I’m doing housework or a major domestic overhaul. I think because I find those exercises immensely boring, my mind ambles off into some realm where I’m watching myself, considering myself objectively and somehow that morphs into a conversation with or listening to a conversation between a failed brownie called Ælfnod, a disruptive laundry fairy, a despairing grooming elf and potentially a mischievous dishwasher fairy and naughty garden pixies who recently snatched my husband’s glasses and hid them in a part of the garden my husband hadn’t been in. 

Are these my adult equivalent of imaginary friends?

Maybe someone who’s got this far without calling for men in white coats, will think it’s because I’m a writer and they’re the same as characters. But they’re not. Book characters are external from me almost entirely. They turn up, they make themselves known, they complain when I try to make them do something they wouldn’t do in a million years. Sometimes, without a qualm, I kill them off. There may be elements of me in them, but only elements.

Without asking a psychologist, I can work out that imaginary friends are almost certainly personifications of parts of one’s own psyche. This is why I think they exist and why they’ve been valuable for me at least.

As a child, they were companions to a little girl who was lonely, serious, imaginative and out of sync with her generation.

Now perhaps, if my household companions count as imaginary friends, they’re a reminder not only to take myself too seriously but also to just let my imagination run wild just as I once did at nine when it was as easy as breathing.

They are the part of me that may be honest and critical but is also validating and affirming. They make me laugh at myself but also accept myself. Basically they say ‘be yourself.’

So how have my household companions managed during lockdown?

The invisible household ghost is rather quiet. I’m never in the house alone these days as there are three other people also working from home. Does his silence tell you more about him, me, or my ability to hear anything over the sound of four adult people on video calls, and in the case of the younger two, also video games? Has he left, or is he just pottering about in the attic till he can be heard again?

And I have to confess, I haven’t heard from the invisible household elves for nearly a year either. But as I say, they tend to turn up when I’m doing a clear out so this may give you an idea of the state of my house. 

I kind of miss them all. Perhaps it’s time to send my three mortal house-companions off for a walk, have a quiet cuppa and then get the duster out. I wonder if they’ve missed me too?

If you’ve got this far and want to hear how I first met Ælfnod, you can see me read the story ‘Dust’ by clicking here, or check out ‘Perspective‘ or ‘Personal Grooming‘ or ‘Interview with a Laundry Fairy’ or check out the book ‘Weird & Peculiar Tales’.

To find out more about my invisible household ghost, check out ‘Ghost Coin’ and ‘Quiet Company’

To find out about the woodland and river, check out ‘The Return’ and also the book ‘Kindling’ which features the same woodland in some of the stories, though not always in a serious context.

Words and photograph copyright 2021 by Paula Harmon. All rights belong to the author and material may not be copied without the author’s express permission.

An Interview with Val Portelli about her new genre busting book Alderslay

~ Paula Harmon ~ 1 Comment

Hi Val, your new book ‘Alderslay’ has just been published. What’s it all about? Hi Paula, Thanks for having me as your guest. The book is about a young woman looking for her first home to share with her fiancé, a dog, a vineyard, an old house in need of renovation, family history and some surprising revelations.

It sounds like a bit of a detour from your previous novels. What genre would you say it fell into and how would you describe your book’s ideal reader? As one book reviewer said, I don’t think I’ve ever had such a hard time trying to pinpoint a genre for a book I’ve read as this one contains a bit of just about everything – from creepy to romantic, it has it all! I’ve settled for psychological crime and murder mystery but hopefully readers with very varied tastes will find it suits. 

What inspired the idea for your book? A newspaper article about a local area with an airport having plans to expand it from a backwater and put it on the map. (It never happened.) 

What part of the book did you have the hardest time writing? Writing the book wasn’t difficult -editing had me emotional as I knew beta readers were right but poor Woof lost out on so many walkies. 

What part of the book was the most fun to write? The ending. I tend to have quirks in my short stories and this was no different.

What is a significant way your book has changed since the first draft? The first draft was some years ago and it sat on the back burner while I published other books. The idea was a good one and hopefully my writing skills have improved over time, but with feedback from beta readers it has changed drastically. It was interesting when someone who saw a first draft, recently bought the book and thought it sounded vaguely familiar but assumed it was another book with a similar theme.

How did you come up with the title? At first it was called ‘Murder of Changes’ to tie in with my first published book ‘Changes.’ As the book developed, and with the passage of time, it became obvious it needed a new title. The house became important and I researched the era from when it was originally built, investigated upper crust names from the time, and with a bit of jiggery-pokery finally settled on a title which I felt reflected both its history and was appropriate for modern tastes.

Which of the characters do you relate to the most and why? I would like to say Woof because I’m a dog lover and he would be the perfect companion.

Would you and your main character get along? If I count Gina as my main character, I like to think we would be friends, and I could give her some straight advice without causing offence.

If you could meet your characters, what would you say to them? Gina: ‘Trust your instincts.’ Paul: ‘Women are stronger than you think. Be honest.’ 

What do you do to get inside your character’s heads? I don’t have to do anything. They tell me how they feel and what they want to say.

At what time of the day do you do most of your writing? In the early hours of the morning. Perhaps I was a vampire in a previous life, but I was born at 3 a.m. and that seems to be when my brain wakes up and the words flow.

What’s your favourite writing snack or drink? Black coffee is my life blood. I’m not much of a snacker unless you count a whisky and lemonade in the evening.

Have pets ever got in the way of your writing? The foxes sit and look at me mid-afternoon, and although I try to hide behind the computer screen, eventually I give up and open the chicken restaurant knowing I won’t be able to concentrate until they have been fed.

As a writer, what would you choose as your spirit animal? Either a unicorn because they fascinate me, a wolf or possibly a majestic tiger in memory of my Dad.

Would you share something about yourself that your readers don’t know (yet)? A few people already know I breed unicorns, but perhaps don’t realise I have a collection of unicorn inspired gifts ranging from USBs to mugs, cuddly toys and condiment sets. I’m 185 years old which is about eight in earth years so I’m allowed to be a big kid. I also knew David Bowie quite well in my youth and wished him good luck with his new record ‘Space Oddity’ before he became famous.

Do you hide any secrets in your books that only a few people will find? Not secrets exactly, but one or two close friends have ‘recognised’ characters from my books, even though I haven’t consciously based them on anyone. 

How did you celebrate when you finished your book? It’s more once the book has gone through all the editing, revisions and is published that I breathe a big sigh of relief. Then I start to go through all the tasks I’ve neglected while I’ve been working on it. At that stage I’ll celebrate with a drink, ignore the TBD list and start thinking about the next book.

What can we look forward to next? I’m planning to do a follow-up to ‘Country Boy’ from the son’s viewpoint, but it’s ten to one an idea will hit me and I’ll end up doing something totally different. 

Thanks for telling us all about Alderslay, Val. Great chatting with you, Paula and I can’t wait until we can raise a glass in celebration of the release of our latest books. Thanks for having me; it’s been great catching up. You can buy Alderslay, or if you have Prime Membershire, you can ‘borrow it’ for nothing via Kindle Unlimited on Amazon by clicking here.

Val Portelli’s bio and links

Val aka Voinks in a previous persona, received her first rejection letter aged nine, from a well-known women’s magazine. A delightful, hand-written response from the editor encouraged her to continue writing intermittently until a freak accident left her housebound and going stir crazy. To save her sanity, and with time of her hands, she completed her first full length novel which was accepted by a publisher. This was followed by a second traditionally published book before she decided to use the experience she had gained to self-publish. Since those early days she has somehow managed to publish seven books, contributed to various anthologies, started a YouTube channel and written weekly short stories for her Facebook author page and website. They cover various genres, often including her trademark quirky twist, but these achievements wouldn’t have been possible without the wonderful support provided by fellow authors and book bloggers. With constantly changing technology and reading tastes, every day presents a fresh challenge, but there is always something new to learn, and inspiration is everywhere. She is always delighted to receive reviews as they encourage readers, and sales help to pay for the upkeep of the Unicorns she breeds in her spare time.

Amazon: Val Portelli’s author page

YouTube ‘Val’s Tales’

Facebook Author Page ‘Val’s Tales’

Goodreads: Val Portelli’s Page

Val Portelli’s Blog & Short Stories: Voinks

Twitter: Val Portelli

Twitter: @vals_tales

Quirky Unicorn Books Website

Choose to Challenge

~ Paula Harmon ~ Leave a comment

‘Maude and I are going to Switzerland for 19th March while you’re on your mission,’ said Margaret.

‘Really?’ said Fox. ‘Is this to do with International Women’s Day? Why Switzerland?’

Margaret shrugged. ‘I’ve never been there and they’re not doing it in Britain.’

‘I might come with you before heading over the border,’ said Fox. 

‘Keeping an eye on me?’

‘No. Because I agree with the aims: votes and decent working conditions for all – it’s a thousand pities people are more interested in the latest society gossip, the coronation and playing “our empire’s better than their empire” to notice how close we are to tipping into anarchy or war.’

‘You think that’s the choice?’

‘Quite possibly,’ said Fox. ‘Don’t you?’

The first international Women’s Day was celebrated on 19th March 1911 and occurs a few days before the beginning of the sequel to The Wrong Sort to Die which I’m working on just now, so the above might theoretically be a conversation held a while before that.

My character, Dr Margaret Demeray is a determined person. She believes firmly in equality and safe working conditions but I doubt she’d be oblivious to the sort of things that were said about suffragettes and the men who supported them in for example, postcards like these. 

In the United Kingdom, the suffrage movement was gaining momentum. On census day 1911, Emily Davison allegedly hid herself in the Houses of Parliament as a protest – here’s a fascinating article researching the truth of this. Many other women refused to be counted as part of their defiance in a document which recorded for women but not for men, how long they’d been married for example. Whether Margaret will is yet to be seen.

Margaret of course, is a creation of my imagination, but the inspiration for her comes to some extent from the older women on both sides of my family. 

I had nine great aunts and two grandmothers, who would have been aged between three and sixteen in 1911. I never thought to ask any of those I knew what they’d known or thought about suffragettes, although one did recall with delight that she’d turned twenty-one in 1928, the year that the voting age for women was dropped to be the same as that for men.

None were sentimental women. None thought womanhood had anything whatsoever to do with swooning or weakness or subservience. Not one ever gave me the impression they thought girls took second place to boys or that I should do less than make the most of every opportunity which came my way.

Ten of them had some form of career at least until marriage and I can easily imagine that most of them could have made senior management nowadays if they’d wanted to. 

They could be funny and they could be affectionate, but they also thought nothing worse than an indulged child. There was certainly no place in their mind-sets for crying. We were expected to get on with things, however crippled with shyness we were or lacking confidence or fearing criticism. Painful as that frequently was, it was a useful life skill, although having uncritical and supportive parents probably helped a great deal.

Since growing older, I started finding out more about them and they stopped being simply old relatives and became people. As far as I can establish, every single one rose to every challenge with determination to become valued women in their families and communities with strong ethics and views which were their own opinions and no one else’s.

Two, in 1941, then in their fifties, picked up the pieces (literally) when their home and business was destroyed by a WWII bomb and started up somewhere else, but not before making a cup of tea in the rubble immediately after the raid (which they’d escaped while hiding under the stairs) because how could you think without one?

One (whom I never met but wish I had) doubtless scandalised her highly conventional mother with Edwardian new age philosophies, esoteric books and curios. My father inherited the last two, a fair amount of which I recall from my early childhood.

Her youngest sister (who I did know) went travelling the world as soon as she retired and thrilled us with tales of camel rides, deserts, bazaars and souks, lighting a flame in me to want to do the same one day.

My favourite great aunt dedicated herself to teaching, never losing her interest in young people. As a retired lady in the late 1970s, she plonked herself down next to a group of punks in Glasgow bus station. She said they recoiled a little, clearly expecting her to tell them they were a disgrace, but she simply started chatting and as they relaxed, she learned all about how they got their mohicans to stand up, how many safety pins they needed and all about punk culture. 

It’s a thousand pities that 110 years after groups of women and men marched for fairness, equality and safe working conditions, these are still far from the experience of people, even in the developed world and that we still need an International Women’s Day, but we do. This year’s campaign theme is #ChooseToChallenge.

I knew plenty of contemporaries even in the 1970s and 1980s who felt second rate to their brothers and that there was no point to further education or trying for a career. But I was fortunate to have very determined (if sometimes a little uncompromising and occasionally downright eccentric) role models, who challenged any suggestion that their whole focus should be their husbands and children. They embraced everything the world could offer them but knew how to be phlegmatic if life didn’t turn out as expected.

Maybe they’d be horrified by my appallingly untidy house but I think they’d appreciate that even though it’s sometimes a struggle, I have just about balanced my creativity with building a career, raising a son and a daughter who are staunch feminists and that I’ve never once thought that being a woman should hold me or anyone else back.  

I am not entirely sure how they’d feel about being the inspiration for a number of my characters, from shy, proper, but quietly brave Aunt Alice, to somewhat mad Tullia to straight-talking Margaret via various other characters, some of who haven’t met the general public yet. But I hope they’d take it as a compliment and on International Women’s Day, I’d like to salute them.

Words copyright 2021 by Paula Harmon. All rights belong to the author and material may not be copied without the author’s express permission. Illustration 136452856 © Maryia Naidzionysheva | Dreamstime.com

Timeline of Women’s Suffrage

Twenty Significant Women in History

Ten Famous Women Mathematicians

Most Influential Women in British Science

Twelve Famous Female Painters

Author Interview with J.D. Hughes

~ Paula Harmon ~ 2 Comments

Welcome to my website – can you tell us something about yourself?

My favourite authors are: Colleen Hoover, L.J. Shen, Vi Keeland, Sylvia Day, E.L. James, Nora Roberts, Linda Fausnet, T.M. Frazier, Melanie Harlow.

And my favourite books are: My all-time favourite book has to be Verity by Colleen Hoover. It has a romance element, but the story line is so unique that I never saw the end coming. When I finished it, I had a terrible book hangover. My other favourite books include Me Before You by Jojo Moyes but if I fancy something a little grittier, I always turn to T.M. Frazier and the King series.

What is your favourite genre of writing? I love anything romance. Lately, I have been drifting towards romantic suspense and psychological thrillers. I blame lockdown. I just want to read everything.

How old were you when you started reading? I got into the game quite late. I was around thirty years old and on holiday in Turkey when my sister forced me to read The Hunger Games. It blew my world wide open. Ever since then, I have my head in a book or I’m writing.

How old were you when you started writing? I loved writing at school and always jotted down thought inspiring quotes, but I never thought anything would come from it. Then I turned thirty-eight and thought, it’s now or never. So I bit the bullet and published You Have My Heart. Including the books that have been published, I have another eight or so to fine tune and tweak.

Did someone inspire you to write (ie an author, teacher, relative)? It sounds kind of corny but the person who inspired me to write was E.L.James. After reading Fifty Shades, I thought to myself ‘I can do that. I WILL do that.’ And so I did. I’ve never looked back.

What part of the country do you live in? Worcestershire. The place where they make Worcestershire sauce. It’s the only thing we’re famous for. Other than that, nothing ever happens. 

What do you do for a living? I spent ten years working as a cleaner for the NHS. It was back-breaking and thankless work, but I loved my team and loved talking to patients and hearing their stories. It’s fair to say that I did more talking than cleaning. I’ve had many jobs over the years—never knowing what I wanted to be—and then I became a published author. Go me! 

What about your family? I have three children who are nearly all grown up and a chocolate Labrador called Maggie who I adore. I’ve been married to my husband for seventeen years this year. I still love the bones of him—even if he drives me insane. He drinks a lot. I suspect I’m the one that’s driven him to it. 

Is it easy for you to find time to write? The simple answer to that is no. I am my own worst enemy and the queen of procrastination. I mostly write in the evening when the house in quiet, but if there’s a good drama on TV, I’m easily distracted. When you’re raising three children and have to pay constant attention to the dog, it’s hard to multi-task. Plus, my husband drinks. Did I mention that?

Do you have a favourite place (room in the house) to write? The sofa. But if the house is too loud, I vacate to the dining room. It takes less than twenty minutes before someone is calling my name to help them with something. Usually my husband after a few drinks.

Are there certain times of the day you find most productive for writing? The evening.

Have you appeared in the media before and, if so, why? I have appeared in the local newspaper twice now to publicise my books. It’s crazy to see yourself in the paper, but the support I received was truly wonderful. My little town rocks! Oh, and another time when I was burgled…but that’s a different story.

Have you met anyone famous? No, but I thought I saw Graham Norton once. Turned out it was just a small Irish man with a grey beard.

If you could meet anyone famous, dead or alive, who would that be (more than one, if you like)? I always said that if I could invite three people to my fantasy tea party, they would be:

Boudicca—I mean, why not? She’s the ultimate badass warrior.

Stephen Fry—I love him. His voice, his intelligence, his grace.

George Michael—I’d make him sing to me all evening. 

What has been your greatest achievement? I’ve had so many. Aside from my children, marrying the love of my life, publishing four books, jumping out of an aeroplane and performing on stage, I’d have to say getting my degree. It was the hardest thing I ever had to do, but it was totally worth it. 

Are you a member of a writing group? No. They threw me out. I’m in a lot of book clubs, though. 

Can you tell us about your book? Imperfectly Yours is about family, forgiveness and healing. Ava Dean runs a failing drag club on the Golden Mile in Blackpool. After being jilted, she has sworn off the opposite sex. When she meets Jack Alexander on a rare night out, she allows herself to have fun. When they part ways, she is certain that she will never lay eyes on him again. Destiny intervenes the very next day. When Ava goes for a bank loan to save her club, guess who the bank manager is? Throw in a bunch of sassy drag queens, you have the perfect slow burn rom-com… I hope.

Can you describe the main characters? Ava is a very complicated creature. Heartbroken from being jilted three years ago, she doesn’t find it easy to let anyone new in. Especially men. Because of what she’s been through, she is tough, not afraid to speak her mind and has no tolerance for BS.  Jack is the very opposite of Ava. He is a family man, funny and doesn’t take life too seriously. Throughout the novel, you see the push and pull between the pair. Whilst Ava is black and white, Jack is full of colour and persuades her to see the joy in the small things.  

Are the main characters based on real people? Absolutely not. But I suppose there is a bit of Ava and Jack in all of us. I can be deadly serious one minute and cracking a joke the next.

Is the book based in a specific area? If it is, why that area? Imperfectly Yours is based in Blackpool on the Golden Mile. I went there over a decade ago with my girlfriends and had the time of my life. Whilst there, I went to drag club called Funny Girls which is still going today. I fell in love with it and always thought I would incorporate a drag club into my writing one day.  

Is the story or are parts of the story based on real events? Well, funny thing. There is a scene in the book where Jack is telling Ava about the time a farmer chased him off a field with a gun when he was young. This actually happened to me. It was the scariest moment of my life—I suppose having a gun pointed at your face would be. The fear has stayed with me always and I just had to add it into the story. Apart from that, the rest of it is pure fiction. (Sidenote, my dad had a NOT so friendly word with the farmer.) 

Was much research needed to write the book? The only thing I had to research was Pulminary Fibrosis. It’s a theme within the book and I wanted to get it absolutely right. Hopefully, I’ve done it justice.

Is this book part of a series? No. It’s a stand alone with no cliff hanger and a happy ending.

Have other people read it already? What was their reaction (hopefully positive)? I sent multiple copies out to beta readers, not only to spot mistakes and flaws in the storyline, but in the hope that they would like the story too. Each one raved about to unique storyline to my absolute delight. Since it’s gone live, the book has been selling well (ish) and I’ve had great feedback and wonderful reviews. Am I the next international best seller? I highly doubt it, but for an indie author, I’m doing okay. Some people have cried during scenes which I wasn’t expecting but everyone has told me how they finished the book with a smile on their face. For me, that’s the best feedback EVER. 

Where did you get the idea for your book? I wanted to create a love story around a drag club, with the main focus of family. I’m a sucker for Ru Paul’s Drag Race and love reading romance stories. So I guess I decided to combine the two and Imperfectly Yours was born. Once I had the beginning set in stone, the words poured out of me and the characters came to life. The story evolved with every scene I wrote. Within a week, I knew where the story was heading, I couldn’t be prouder of Imperfectly Yours. 

Where can we buy Imperfectly Yours? You can buy it in the UK by clicking here, or in the US by clicking here.

And finally, where can we find out more about you?

UK Amazon page and US Amazon author page

Facebook J.D. Hughes

Twitter @joannahughes77

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J.D. Hughes (Jo) pens angst filled contemporary romance. Born and raised in Worcestershire, she lives with her husband, three children and a stubborn chocolate Labrador.
She never dreamed a single person would read a word she wrote. But after publishing You Have My Heart in 2016, there’s no stopping her.
Despite training in Musical Theatre, J.D. Hughes soon found she preferred making up her own stories, always completed with a happy ending. When she’s not writing, she loves to read anything romance.
Five years on, her books have been described as gritty, powerful and can be found via her UK author page and US author page
Her debut Novel ‘You Have My Heart’, published in 2016, was selected as an Amazon customer favourite.