The Write Stuff with... Michele Gorman

As you may have noticed there hasn't been as much guest content on the blog this year which is due to a number of factors that have affected my energy levels so when romcom author Michele Gorman contacted me to ask if I'd like to host this post from her about a new direction for her, I didn't hesitate to say yes.

When we went into lockdown in early 2020, I never imagined it would set me off on a whole new path. But that’s what happened. 

It’s fair to say that my husband (HB) and I found ourselves with a lot of time on our hands. A Lot of Time together. Just us, all day, every day. 

I started to occupy myself with crafty projects. I taught myself visible mending, darning all the socks and jumpers in the house (even those without holes). HB and I bought sewing machines and stitched reusable all-cotton face masks, which became a healthy business for us. I even took up The Great Big Art Exhibition Challenge, making animals out of felt and rendering HB’s portrait from used coffee bags.

Meanwhile, my latest novel, The Staycation, published into the strongest headwinds of my career. In June 2020 the bookshops were closed, the supermarkets cleared their shelves to make room for essentials and there was no foot traffic at the airports to peruse WHSmith. 

Sneak Peek at Love is a Four-Legged Word by Michele Gorman

Over the years I have read most of Michele Gorman's books so when I was contacted to ask whether I wanted a sneak peek of the first five chapters of her new book Love is a Four-Legged Word, which is published on 13th October, I didn't hesitate to say yes.  But that's not all as I've also been given the opportunity to share the links with followers of the blog so you too can have a teaser read ahead of next month.

Best friends Scarlett and Shannon spend their days tangled up in dog leads and covered in fur, running their dog business together. Scarlett’s intensive training course, Ruff Love, fixes owners as much as their pets, while Shannon spends her days walking spoiled pooches. 

They share more than their business though: they also share Scarlett's husband, Rufus, who's been Shannon's best friend since childhood. It's a cosy setup. Unless one of them has a secret... 

When Scarlett and Rufus's baby plans are decimated by a surprise turn of events, their marriage hits the rocks and they both turn to Shannon. All three relationships are pushed to breaking point, but when loyalties become divided, how do you decide who's most important? 

Available to pre-order now for just 99p http://amzn.to/2cmAGkO

A few quotes from Love is a Four-Legged Word

“She and Scarlett were in the sisterhood, they loved each other and they ran their business together. Besticles before testicles!”

“In her head she was the love child of Doctor Doolittle and Sigmund freud, a fairy dogmother who transformed pet owners’ lives across Greater London. In reality she spent a lot of time being drooled over in the mud.” 

“Barkley glued his eyes to the aluminium foil as she unwrapped it. Dog treats? Leftover sandwich? Was it even edible? It didn’t matter – could he get it into his mouth? Chicken! It’s chicken! Everybody, the lady’s got chicken! He looked from Charlie to Hiccup. Hiccup wasn’t as impressed with the big reveal.” 

Judging Covers - Match Me If You Can by Michele Gorman

You may have recently read Kelly's review of Match Me If You Can here on the blog and this afternoon I'm pleased to be able to share with you a guest post from Notting Hill Press about the design of the new cover for the US version of Match Me If You Can.

It’s interesting to see how the same book is marketed differently depending on where its fans are based. Michele Gorman’s Match Me If You Can is published by Avon (Harper Collins) in the UK and by Notting Hill Press in the US. Avon took the lead in designing the marketing package for Michele’s UK chick lit fans, with a pretty teal cover, fun font and firm focus on the online dating/romance storylines in the book. 

Meet best friends Catherine, Rachel and Sarah. Yet to find Mr Right, they’ve been settling for Mr Right Now. 

But when Catherine, London’s finest matchmaker, gets the girls to join her dating site where they can rate and recommend their ex-boyfriends, they soon realise that anything could happen… 

There’s someone for everyone, right? These best friends are about to find out!

To complement the UK cover, we at Notting Hill Press designed the US cover using the same fonts and heart motif. But something started to bother us. Match Me If You Can is also about strong women. It’s funny, cheeky, poignant and realistic. The women join the dating website and recycle their exes but their lives – their friendship, families and careers – are at the heart of the book. And while both British and American fans are definitely romantics, American readers are also really partial to a feisty story about friends. 

We had to admit it: our hot pink cover didn’t seem quite right for Michele’s US fans. So we had a rethink about it, and here’s the result!

Kelly's Review: Match Me If You Can by Michele Gorman

Reviewed by Kelly Spillane

Ever thought about recycling your ex?

Best friends Catherine, Rachel & Sarah are fun, smart, successful and single – just like millions of women with a low tolerance for idiocy in their dates.

Mr. Right hasn't turned up yet, and Mr Right-Now isn't worth booking a wax appointment for. So when Catherine, London’s finest matchmaker, gets Rachel and Sarah to join her dating site where they can recycle their ex-boyfriends in exchange for an upgrade, they soon realise that anything could happen...

Three best friends, proving that sometimes it really isn't you… it's him.

Amazon links: Kindle or Paperback

Guest Book Review: Michele Gorman - The Curvy Girls Baby Club

Reviewed by Kelly Spillane

LOVE, LIFE AND A CHRISTMAS DUE DATE 

Ellie is fresh back from her honeymoon and can’t wait to share her news with her best friends Katie and Jane. To everyone’s surprise, mother-of-two Jane has news of her own… The women are due a day apart and Katie can’t wait to be an honorary auntie to the babies. 

But it’s hard to keep your sense of humour, not to mention your self-esteem, in the face of hemorrhoids and elasticated waistbands. Add a clingy mother-in-law, a career in cardiac arrest and a sex life that makes Mother Theresa look lusty, and soon their lives are as out of control as their bodies.

As the co-founders of The Curvy Girls Club, where loving yourself is the only rule, will the friends be able to practice what they preach? 

Amazon links: Kindle or Paperback

Guest Book Review: Michele Gorman - The Curvy Girls Club

Reviewed by Kelly Spillane

Can the curvy girls have their cake and eat it?

Meet best friends Pixie, Ellie, Katie and Jane. Fed up with always struggling to lose weight, they start a social club where size doesn’t matter. Soon it’s the most popular place to be – having fun instead of counting carbs. And the girls suddenly find their lives changing in ways they never imagined.

But outside the club, things aren’t as rosy, as they struggle with the ups and downs of everyday life.

Amazon links: Kindle or Paperback

Guest Book Review: Michele Gorman - Bella Summer Takes a Chance

Reviewed by Tanya Phillips

When is enough not enough? 

Bella's career and relationship are her life's foundationwear: not glamorous and perhaps a bit binding, but supportive enough... until she realizes that they are not enough. Her life is sagging badly. She's never been in love with her boyfriend, despite a decade together. And somehow she stopped being a musician-with-a-day-job and became a consultant-who-was-musical. So she takes a terrifying leap of faith, leaving her relationship and resolving to follow her musical dreams no matter what. 

But the life you walk away from doesn't always let you walk away.  

With a wonderfully warm and witty cast of friends, all navigating between their ideals and the realities they face, together they'll find out what love and compromise really mean in this empowering tale about grasping life with both hands. 

Amazon links: Kindle or Paperback 

Guest Book Review: Michele Gorman - The Reluctant Elf

Reviewed by Tanya Phillips

Meet Britain's Worst Innkeeper

Single mother and extremely undomestic goddess, Lottie, has five days to become the ultimate B&B hostess to save her beloved Aunt Kate’s livelihood.

When Aunt Kate ends up in the hospital, Lottie and her seven-year-old daughter are called to rural Wales to stand in at the B&B. Without the faintest idea how to run a hotel (she can barely run her own life), Lottie must impress the picky hotel reviewer and his dysfunctional family who are coming to stay over Christmas. Without the rating only he can bestow, Aunt Kate will lose her livelihood.

But will Danny, the local taxi driver who she hires to help her, really be Santa’s little helper, or the Grinch who stole Christmas? 

Amazon link: Kindle or Paperback

Author Interview: Emma interviews Michele Gorman

Emma recently reviewed Michele Gorman's Perfect Girl for the blog so when we were contacted about doing an interview I asked Emma if she'd like to come up with some questions for Michele...

Where did the idea come from for Perfect Girl?
I like to explore familiar situations, and the pressure to have it all while living a perfect life is something that most women can identify with. The fun thing about writing romcoms is that you get to take a situation and push it to the extreme. That’s where a lot of the humour comes from. So in Carol’s case, it wasn’t enough to have demanding parents and work commitments (something a lot of us experience). I piled on a nightmare sister, rogue boyfriend, hopeless best friend and the risk of prison… and Carol came out swinging! 

Have you ever experienced writer's block? If so what do you do to overcome it?
I don’t get Writer’s Block as much as Writer’s Procrastination. It’s often worse! There’ve been times (sometimes weeks) when I’m supposed to be writing but find myself doing anything but that. I’ll spend hours on Facebook and twitter, or looking for new recipes or cleaning my flat (a classic procrastination technique from university days). When it happens I have to break the cycle, so I start writing first thing in the morning, with the Internet turned off, and don’t stop until I reach my word count. After a week or so of such discipline my writing routine returns and I’m productive again (until next time!)

Guest Book Review: Michele Gorman - Perfect Girl

Reviewed by Emma Crowley

Carol is perfect… at least that’s what everyone thinks. In reality she’s sinking fast – her family treats her like their personal assistant and her boyfriend is so busy with work that he’s got her single-handedly running their relationship. Not that her job is any easier. As the only woman on the bank’s trading floor she spends twelve-hour days trying not to get sworn at or felt up by colleagues who put the "W" in banker.  

How long can she go on pleasing everyone else before she snaps and loses it all? 

Amazon links: Kindle or Paperback

Christmas Reading Challenge: Michele Gorman - Christmas Carol

One winter wedding, two happy couples, three ex-boyfriends. And a very uncomfortable weekend.

Carol hates Christmas. Being recently dumped, she's not crazy about weddings either. So her sister Marley's nuptials, over the Christmas weekend, are making her positively Scrooge-like. When she arrives for the weekend at the stately home in rural Scotland to find her three ex-boyfriends in attendance, Carol has no choice but to face her ghosts to discover what really happened in those relationships, learning a lot about herself in the process. As the snow falls outside and the fire crackles in the hearth, might one of the wedding guests become the harbinger of Christmases to come? 

Amazon links: Paperback or Kindle

Guest Book Review: Michele Gorman - Misfortune Cookie

Reviewed by Lisa Hemmings

Would you move 6,000 miles to be with the love of your life?

Hannah did. Unfortunately her plan isn't going terribly well. What was supposed to be a move to Hong Kong to start a wonderful new life with Sam is turning into a move to Hong Kong to spend occasional weekends with Sam, when he can get away from an unanticipated work assignment on the opposite side of the South China Sea. Still, she's optimistic, if woefully unprepared for the intricacies of Hong Kong. Stumbling through the alien city, which she loves, she starts to build a life for herself. Things definitely look up when she finds a great boss to work for, and her best friend Stacy moves to the city too. But alarm bells ring as Sam seems to be getting a bit too cozy with his boss. And when things start going wrong at work, Hannah can't help but wonder if she's made the biggest mistake of her life.

Guest Book Review: Michele Gorman - Single in the City

Reviewed by Lisa Hemmings

Take one twenty six year old American, add to a two thousand year old city, add a big dose of culture clash and stir. 

To think Hannah ever believed that Americans differed from Brits mainly in pronunciation, sophistication and dentistry. That's been the understatement of a lifetime. She lands upon England's gentle shores with no job, no friends and no idea how she's supposed to build the life she's dreaming of. Armed with little more than her enthusiasm, she charges headlong into London, baffling the locals in her pursuit of a new life, new love and sense of herself.

Books Read: Michele Gorman - The Twelve Days to Christmas

          What if his proposal had an expiration date?

 

Hannah’s in a bit of a pickle.  In twelve days she flies from Hong Kong to the US with Sam, where he’s finally going to meet her parents… and ask to marry her.

Since overcoming a rather rocky patch in their relationship (which was totally his fault), he really is a new man, and they’re completely in love. The problem is, she feels panicky every time she contemplates matrimony. Which is perfectly normal, isn’t it? Isn’t it?! She has no idea but she’s got to find out before he pops the question... because she’s not 100% sure she’s going to say yes. Which will make for a very uncomfortable family holiday. He’s got to ask her before they go. So Operation Proposal begins.

As time ticks down to their flight, Hannah realizes that her own secrets are threatening their future. Before she can be happy with Sam, she’s got a lot to learn about herself in the twelve days to Christmas.