I am delighted to welcome Evonne Wareham to the blog today to talk about her latest novel, A VILLA IN PORTOFINO, which was recently released by Choc Lit UK, and why she loves writing romantic suspense. I must say that I have to agree with her about the appeal of the genre. I love reading and writing romantic suspense novels and I cannot wait to read A VILLA IN PORTOFINO. And look at that gorgeous cover!
It took me a
long time and a lot of experimenting before I discovered that romantic suspense
was the genre I wanted to write. It ‘s a genre that can get complicated though,
as Marie will probably agree, because as well as a full scale love story, with
proper emotional development, you also have to have a satisfying crime narrative.
And the two have to dovetail together. It’s romance, but romance with an edge.
And quite possibly a few dead bodies. It’s the genre where I feel most at home,
although I’m never quite sure what admitting to like writing mayhem and murder
says about me. I like to think I’m redeemed from my criminal tendencies by
insisting on a happy ending for my love story.
I always say
that when I write I plot the crime element and let the love story take care of
itself, which is sort of true. The characters do kind of take over when you let
them loose. We all know where this thing is going, so let’s just get on with
it. The love story has to stand up on its own though, not just be an add-on, so
all the stages of attraction and discovery have to be there and the course of
true love rarely runs smooth. What would be the fun in that?
The crime
element ramps up the tension and the genre can cover a wide spectrum – spies
and law enforcement, serial killers and witness protection, historical
settings, protagonists with paranormal talent, even plots that border on horror
– anything that comes under the heading of crime writing and which can sustain
a love story as part of the action.
My current
Riviera series is at the lighter end of the spectrum, sunshine, food, art,
glamour. The first book, Summer in San
Remo, has only a smidgeon of crime, but the subsequent two are a bit darker
- and things definitely go up a few notches in the scary action stakes in both
in the last couple of chapters.
When I was
writing A Villa in Portofino I wanted
to explore the mysteries and secrets within a family, not all of them
intentional. My heroine, Megan, inherits the villa from a great-great aunt of whom
she knows next to nothing. Deciding that she will make the villa her home she
begins to unravel the secrets of her aunt’s life, but what she doesn’t know is
that someone else is watching her, with their own agenda. On the surface everything is fine, but
disturbing events from the past begin to break thorough – are they sinister or
not? The reader sees what my villainess is doing to manipulate the situation without
Megan being aware of it, to the point where the plots cross and Megan’s growing
attraction to hero Gideon is in jeopardy. I was looking for a sense of mounting
threat and menace, where the reader knows more than my protagonists. I hope it has worked. I’ll have to wait for readers
to tell me.
Evonne is an award winning Welsh author of romantic
suspense - more crime and dead bodies than your average romance. She likes to
set her book in her native Wales, or for a touch of glamorous escapism, in
favourite holiday destinations in Europe. She is a Doctor of Philosophy and an
historian, and a member of both the Romantic Novelists’ Association and the
Crime Writers’ Association.
Why
not find out more about Evonne? Twitter
and Facebook
Website www.evonnewareham.com
Blog www.evonneonwednesday.blogspot.com
A Villa in Portofino
Third
in the ‘Riviera’ Series of romantic suspense: love and mayhem in the sunshine
of the French and Italian Riviera
From
chambermaid to “got it made” …
When hotel cleaning temp and poetry academic
Megan Morrison finds out she’s inherited an Italian villa and small fortune
from her estranged great-great aunt Olwen, she doesn’t quite know how to react.
That is, until she travels to Portofino to see Il Giardino delle Rose for
herself. Then she knows exactly what she has to do: live there!
Enchanted by the beauty of the house and
gardens, fascinated by the history, and more than a little intrigued by
handsome hired landscape gardener Gideon West, Megan can immediately see the
villa’s potential as a dream home.
But having long-lost relatives sometimes means
long-lost secrets – and it seems that Olwen had plenty of those. Could these
secrets and a jealous obsession be powerful enough to drive Megan out of the
house that she’s already fallen in love with?
Available as an
e-book from
Amazon Kindle,
Apple,
Barnes
and Noble / Nook,
Kobo,
Google
playbooks
