Countdown to Christmas Day 21: Festive Fun Q&A with Rosie Fiore

Tonight's Countdown to Christmas feature is a festive fun Q&A with author Rosie Fiore who has just published her Christmas novella, Holly at Christmas.

What’s your earliest or favourite Christmas memory?
My dad in his red (-ish) dressing gown with a cotton wool beard, pretending to be Santa and coming to our bedroom window on Christmas Eve. My sisters and I weren’t fooled, even when we were really tiny, but we appreciated the effort. 

What are you looking forward to most this Christmas?
My older son (21) coming home from uni, and going shopping for the Christmas tree with him and my younger son (4). Then we’ll all decorate the tree together, and the tinsel wars will begin. My older son thinks it’s vulgar, my husband loves it. It’ll go on and come off the tree a number of times.

Christmas Reading Challenge: Rosie Fiore - Holly at Christmas

Christmas comes but once a year . . . unless your name is Holly Evans. She’ll be experiencing Christmas four times over. In the course of one year, Holly will see the festive season in all its guises, from the sizzling to the stressful to the hopelessly romantic. 

After a rollercoaster couple of years and a three-month holiday in South Africa, Holly is on her way back to London. She has a firm plan for her life – career, money, home, romance – it’s all worked out. Except it looks like nobody let the universe know that. Almost as soon as she touches down in England, Holly’s plans begin to go awry. With no flat, no job and dwindling finances, Holly will need to be brave and resourceful in order to build herself a new life. And what about handsome doctor Fraser John? Where does he fit into her plans? And does he really want to catch Holly under the mistletoe?

Amazon link: Kindle 

Guest Book Review: Rosie Fiore - Wonder Women

Reviewed by Lisa Bentley

Jo has always dreamed of starting her own business, but the arrival of her two gorgeous toddlers has put her ambition on the backburner. Then she hits on a brilliant idea – a kids’ clothing shop with a twist – and is thrilled when it really takes off. When husband Lee offers to quit his job to look after the family while her business grows, it seems a godsend – but will their marriage stand the test of reversing their roles? 

Jo soon recruits Holly and Mel to help her in the shop. Designer Holly’s high-flying career has come crashing down and she’s moved back home – but is she ready to manage a major family crisis? Meanwhile, Mel worries her teenage daughter Serena is going off the rails. Is finding out more worth risking her daughter’s trust?  

At the crossroads of their lives, friendship could be the only the thing keeping these wonder women strong.

Crime Fiction Week Guest Post: Rosie Fiore talks about attending a masterclass with Ruth Rendell

Rosie Fiore, author of Wonder Women and Babies in Waiting attended a Masterclass with Ruth Rendell at the Royal Society of Literature. She gives us some insight into the work of this masterful writer.

One Saturday in the mid-1980s, I was in the Parkview library in Johannesburg, aged probably twelve or thirteen, a precocious bookworm who had exhausted the children’s section. My mother, who was a voracious reader herself, and who was tired of my nagging for something new to read, handed me a book by Ruth Rendell. “You might like this,” she said. It was The Tree of Hands. Memories from when you are young are always so vivid, so my recollection of that day is suffused with the smell of the books, the sunlight through the narrow windows, shining on the parquet floor, and the squeaky, squashy, sweat-inducing blue plastic of the chair I sat in to begin reading.

Ruth Rendell took me by the hand, plucked me out of 1980s Johannesburg, and drew me into London, her London. She did it with her spare, beautiful writing, her ability to create characters who are mentally ill, and wrong-headed, yet whose thought processes we can follow, and with whom we still empathise. Her plotting is impeccable and careful, and she places every clue and hint we need to fully appreciate her brilliant climax and denouement. She opened my eyes to what books could do. “One day,” I remember thinking, “I want to be able to write like that.”

Books Read: Rosie Fiore - Babies in Waiting

Source - Received from publisher to review

Meet Louise, 38, Toni, 26, and Gemma, 18.  They are all expecting babies in September.

And they are all discovering that impending motherhood is more than a little overwhelming. 

Finding their way onto an online forum, they discover fellowship, friendship, way too much information - and ultimately one another.  Meeting in real life, they set out to face the highs, lows, secrets and revelations of pregnancy and the first months of motherhood together.

But one of the women is keeping a secret that will test their friendship to its very core...