Is the modern Western world of technology and ever-faster transport making us forget the joy of walking – just walking, for the joy of it? Should we all walk more, not just for our physical health, but to inspire and soothe mind and soul? It’s an idea increasingly explored. Take
I have bookshelves bursting with books at home – with old, well-thumbed titles whose authors are long-departed, and with smart, new books whose authors are busy writing more, more, more. I love both kinds of books, but as I sit at my writing desk, pondering a scene in my latest
I take researching the settings of my novels seriously (why not, when it allows me to travel to amazing places!), and by far my favourite aspect of the research is people-watching. I think all writers are observers of life, and truthfully few are happier than when ensconced in a café
From the blurb: Discover beautiful South Africa in this sweet, heart-warming Cinderella story about a blogger, a billionaire, and one chance meeting. When it comes to men, if physiotherapist Caitlin Sutherland didn’t have bad luck, she would have no luck at all. To help cope, Caitlin starts blogging in her
Once upon a time, a man named Jeff Bezos decided to jump aboard the Internet business boom. He looked for a product he could sell easily online– something not too large, not too pricey, of which various kinds existed and for which there was plenty of demand. He considered CDs,
In both of my novels published to date, my heroines are very much women standing alone in the world. This is in part due to their fierce independence and determination to make their own way; but it is also because they lack parents on whom they rely. In Burning Embers,
I set a large part of my novel The Echoes of Love in Tuscany, Italy, because it’s a region I know well and love for its scenery and, especially, its culture. And what better typifies the spirit of the Tuscans than the Giostradell’Orso, the Joust of the Bear. Today,
In my novel The Echoes of Love the hero, Paolo, explains: ‘I spend a lot of time reading about beautiful things and like to surround myself with them.’Were I describing myself, I would edit this to: ‘I spend a lot of time reading beautiful things and like to surround myself
From the blurb: In the idyllic seaside town of St Carys, Sophie is putting the past firmly behind her. When Josh arrives in St Carys to run the family hotel, he can’t understand why Sophie has zero interest in letting any man into her life. He also can’t understand how
Venice comes alive this weekend for the FestadelRedentore – the Festival of the Redeemer. It takes places on the third weekend of July, and has done each year since 1577. Then, the city was celebrating its deliverance from devastating plague that decimated the population of Venice in the preceding two
Summer’s here! Wherever you are in the world, I hope you’re enjoying the sunshine. I’m certainly taking every opportunity to write outside in my garden, amid all the tantalisingscents and vibrant colours and the sound of the breeze rustling the leaves and the distant waves crashing on the rocks. It’s
Ask me my most favourite books, and a classic English romance will always appear near the top of the list: Wuthering Heights. The agony and passion at the centre of the love story between Heathcliff and Cathy has always gripped me, moved me – and it inspired me as I
I’ve always loved this song: The tune is haunting, and the main lyric ‘Where have all the cowboys gone?’ strikes a chord about how society – gender roles, notions of romance – has changed. Cowboys aren’t quite my ideal heroes, so I’d perhaps be singing ‘Where have all the gentlemen
Did you know that when author F. Scott Fitzgerald died in 1940 he believed himself a failure? That long years of alcoholism saw a heart attack claim his life at just 44? That since the publication of his book The Great Gatsby, which had received poor reviews and lack-lustre sales,
No doubt you’ve heard of Carl Jung (1875–1961), the Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who was the father of analytical psychology. Yung wrote prolifically, and his writings have been hugely influential in many different areas, from philosophy to archeology, psychiatry to literature. In my novel The Echoes of Love, Paolo quote Jung to Venetia
The following extract is from my novel The Echoes of Love: It was two o’clock in the morning. The Ferrari sped through the night towards San Stefano in Tuscany. Attuned to the darkness surrounding him, his sombre mood overwhelming, Paolo drove the sleek, powerful sports car as though he was
The modern concept of romantic love owes much to the roman of medieval times: a story told in one of the Romance languages (Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese or Romanian) about chivalry and love. As Marilyn Yalom of Stanford University pointed out in her recent article ‘How medieval storytellers shape our
Did you know that to this day, much of the Western way of thinking is derived from the philosophical explorations of three men of Ancient Greece? Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. No doubt you have heard of these thinkers. Certainly, when I began researching my latest novel, Aphrodite’s Tears, set in
What ties together all of my novels? Romance, of course; but more than that, each is set in an inspiring place. My debut novel, Burning Embers, is set in rural Kenya – think the unspoilt beauty of the national parkland where wild animals roam free. My next novel, The Echoes
Did you know that the very first form of diving was sponge diving? In ancient times, the people of the Greek islands did not dive for pleasure as we do today, to explore the underwater realm and see all the different creatures that dwell there; diving was their livelihood. They
Happy Valentine’s Day! Did you give your special someone a card today? Some chocolates, perhaps, or flowers? Have you booked a restaurant for an intimate meal for two? Such gestures have become traditional on Valentine’s Day, thanks in great part to clever marketing. Stores have been festooned with pink and
Researching my latest novel, Aphrodite’s Tears, was an absolute pleasure, for it involved reading up on ancient mythology. I was especially interested, as the novel’s title conveys, in stories of the gods; but as my heroine Oriel points out in the book, so many of the stories of the ancient
In Liverpool, you can stay in a hotel modelled on the Titanic; in London, in an imitation Hogwarts; in Montana, in a Hobbit house… Themed accommodation has been growing in popularity in recent years, and now not only can readers escape into the fictional worlds of their books, but they
My new novel, Aphrodite’s Tears, set on the Greek island of Helios, takes inspiration from the colourful, dramatic myths of the Ancient Greeks. The hero of the book, Damian, is Greek, and he is very knowledgeable about the culture of his homeland. But more than that, he is a born
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