Friday 22 October 2021

Writing Romantic Suspense by Evonne Wareham

 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!

Many thanks to Marie for inviting me on to her blog today as part of the blog tour for the third in my romantic suspense series set on the Riviera – A Villa in Portofino.

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.

Bio

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

Goodreads Reviews

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