Blog Tour: People We Love - Jenny Harper + Giveaway!
Jenny Harper is back with the fourth instalment in her popular Heartlands series.
People We Love will be on tour for the next few weeks, visiting some of the best and brightest book blogs for reviews, guest posts and a colourful giveaway!
What they say:
Her life is on hold – until an unlikely visitor climbs in through the kitchen window.
A year after her brother’s fatal accident, Lexie’s life seems to have reached a dead end. She is back home in small-town Hailesbank with her shell-shocked parents, treading softly around their fragile emotions.
As the family business drifts into decline, Lexie’s passion for painting and for her one-time mentor Patrick have been buried as deep as her unexpressed grief, until the day her lunch is interrupted by a strange visitor in a bobble hat, dressing gown and bedroom slippers, who climbs through the window.Elderly Edith’s batty appearance conceals a secret and starts Lexie on a journey that gives her an inspirational artistic idea and rekindles her appetite for life. With friends in support and ex-lover Cameron seemingly ready to settle down, do love and laughter beckon after all?
Writing a Series
Guest Post by Jenny Harper
The Heartlands grew from nowhere. I had no idea when I started that my small-town location would turn into a series!
The first book I set in Hailesbank was actually Maximum Exposure, which was the third to be published. I wanted to write a story about a local newspaper under threat of closure, and decided it would be easier to set it in a fictional town – and so Hailesbank was born.
When I started writing Loving Susie, which is about a politician in Edinburgh, my location had become ‘real’ in my head – so I decided Susie Wallace could live in (and represent) Hailesbank.
And when Face the Wind and Fly started life, a small conservation village close to Hailesbank sprang, ready formed, into my head.
Now the fourth book in the series, People We Love is out as an ebook (with the paperback due later in the year), and there was only one place it could be set: Hailesbank.
It’s been great in many ways – Hailesbank, Forgie and the nearby social housing estate called Summerfield are alive in every detail. But – there are problems I certainly didn’t foresee when I started. It’s all grown and grown. I need a map, because it’s impossible to hold every detail in my head. I need timelines for my characters and the stories I have already written. And I need time to produce these things!
So far, my characters haven’t overlapped much, but they’re going to in future books. The next in the series, Mistakes We Make, develops the back story of one of the minor (but key) characters in People We Love, and I’ve written a novella based on Nicola Arnott, the head teacher in Summerfield Primary (in Face the Wind and Fly), which should be published this summer.
Two of my readers have told me they’d like to live in Hailesbank. I think I would too – but then, part of me already does!
Author Bio:
Jenny Harper lives in Edinburgh. She is the author of four books about Scotland and Scottish culture, a history of childbirth, and The Sleeping Train for young readers. When she isn't writing, she enjoys walking in the Scottish countryside or anywhere warm, and travelling to Europe, America and India.
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Enter via the Rafflecopter below to win:
1st Prize: 1 x Winsor & Newton Cotman Watercolour Sketchers Pocket Set and an E-copy of People We Love by Jenny Harper
2nd Prize: 1 x Winsor & Newton Cotman Watercolour Sketchers' Pocket Set
Giveaway is international. Jenny Harper and CandleLit Author Services reserve the right to cancel or amend giveaway details at anytime and without prior notification.
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