Our Spotlight on Author this week is on: Liz Fielding. She has a new book out this month, Murder in Bloom. And there are multiple giveaways! In your comments, let us know which giveaway interests you.
Liz Fielding met her husband when they were both working in Zambia and were keen members of the Lusaka Theatre Club. He was playing John de Stogumber in St Joan, and she was the pageboy to the Earl of Warwick. He swore it was the purple tights that got him.
Years spent in Africa and the Middle East provided the background to many of Liz's romances. Her first, An Image of You, was set in Kenya, in a place where they had spent many happy weekends on safari. It was plucked from the slush pile because the feisty feminist heroine made her editor laugh. Emotion touched with humour has been the hallmark of her work ever since.
After writing 70 books for Harlequin Mills and Boon, Liz has now turned to crime, signing with Joffe Books for three "Maybridge Mysteries", the first of which, Murder Among the Roses, is published on 18th April.
Liz Fielding on the web:
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What inspires you to write?
My first published book, An Image of You, was inspired by a television documentary about a calendar photo-shoot with Patrick Lichfield and Clive James set around a small safari camp in Kenya which I had stayed at on several occasions when we lived in the country. The models terrified of everything, the snappy exchanges between the art director and Lichfield. All it needed was heroine to arrive and cause a little chaos. (I'm beginning to think that chaos is my favourite word.)
The Maybridge series, Murder Among the Roses was inspired again by a television documentary. This one about the way uneducated young women, girls who these days would be classified as SEN, were treated by the State. Locked up for immorality - some of them for decades. It stayed with me for years until, at the end of my contract with Mills and Boon, I knew the time had come to write the story in my head. The inciting incident in my book, the moment that changes everything, is when my heroine, Abby Finch, uncovers the bones of new-born baby.
Tell us about your writing process.
Oh dear. People will ask that and honestly I don't have one. I have tried to be more organised, to plot, but if I know what happens why would I write the book? I write to find out what happens so I'm afraid the word that springs to mind is chaos. I have characters, I have an incident, there are people involved. Who are they? Why are they there? What happens next? I am a total pantster, which is a lot easier when writing romance than writing crime. Honestly, I'm with Abby Finch, my sleuth, following her as she uncovers motivations and working it all out with her so that, somewhere, fairly near the end, I know whodunnit. To be honest, it's a bit nerve-wracking!
Do you listen (or talk to) to your characters?
All the time. I'm in Abby's head, thinking what she's thinking, feeling what she's feeling, seeing what she's seeing. Smelling the roses.
What advice would you give other writers?
It's hard to give advice. What works for me won't work for anyone else. What I will say is start on the day that something changes. A confrontation, a disaster, the first day at a new job when the best-laid plans go awry. The day your protagonist is locked out of their house and has to find help. It could be a meet cute. It could be a lonely old lady who changes their life. It could be a murderer.
Don't, whatever you do, start with a load of backstory. That can wait and be filtered in small doses to reveal why your characters act the way they do. Start with action.
What is your favourite genre to read? Is it different to what you write?
I am reading widely in the crime genre at the moment, and a lot of non-fiction, mostly involving ways to kill people. I do prefer the books with strong character connections, though - and not too much gore!
Tell us about your book...
Murder in Bloom, the third in the Maybridge Murder Mystery series, opens early in the morning on the first day of the Maybridge Show. My garden-designer heroine and sleuth, Abby Finch is being congratulated by locally-born celebrity gardener and national treasure, Daisy Dashwood, for her show garden. Daisy, who famously suffers from hay fever and a rumoured a drink problem is decidedly unsteady on her feet, is going to present her television show The Potting Shed from the main marquee and invites Abby to join her on stage.
She doesn't wait for an answer - who would say no? - but staggers on to waspishly criticise the next garden, designed by a Quentin Latimer-Blythe who is supposed to be her guest on the show, but with whom she has "history". Daisy, it would seem, isn't quite the "sweetheart" of her PR image. Later, with The Potting Shed show about to go live on air, Quentin has left in a huff and Daisy is missing. Abby is left to hold the fort until Daisy staggers onto the stage and collapses at her feet.
When there is no obvious cause of death, but any number of people with a motive to see Daisy dead, her friend, DI Iain Glover turns to Abby for help.
Multiple Giveaway Alert!
Kindle copy of Murder Among the Roses
Kindle copy of Murder Under the Mistletoe
Kindle copy of Murder in Bloom
Audio codes for Murder Among the Roses & Murder Under the Mistletoe
Let us know in the comments which giveaway would you like to go in for!
MEET ABBY FINCH. SHE’S A BUSY MUM OF THREE, AN EXPERT GARDENER AND THE STAR OF YOUR NEW FAVOURITE COZY MURDER MYSTERY.
One part jealousy. Two parts rage. Somewhere in Abby’s sleepy little village, the perfect murder is brewing . . .
Abby enters the Maybridge Flower Show, never dreaming for one moment that she’ll win the gold. Or an invitation to appear on telly, alongside gardening legend Daisy Dashwood!
Some people say Daisy’s a tiresome diva. But starry-eyed Abby can’t wait for the cameras to start rolling. Until . . .
Daisy staggers out on stage. Only to collapse at Abby’s feet.
Her demise might seem like a tragic accident — resulting from a cocktail of booze and hay-fever medicine.
But Abby’s not so sure. She starts digging, to uncover shifty suspects at every turn. From snarky co-stars to a toy-boy lover, they all had reason to want Daisy dead and gone.
And that’s not the only puzzle playing on Abby’s mind . . .
In life, Daisy went nowhere without her trusty caddy of healing teas. Now it’s vanished.
What if someone’s been tampering with Daisy’s favourite cuppa?
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