I have been waiting for weeks to meet Leah. As soon as the book arrived, I made myself some strong coffee and lost myself in France.
As I opened the book, I could feel the ‘sheen on my skin where the sunshine streamed in through the window’. But the book isn’t just about the shimmering heat, a fast heart beat and copious amounts of rosé pamplemousse. It is a wonderfully witty book that isn’t ‘Just for the Holidays’ because the consequences of the holiday will last forever. This novel examines the fragility of the ‘protective shell’ surrounding teenagers that can shatter without their parents. In turn, Moorcroft also shows how adult are left vulnerable and exposed when relationships breakdown. However, you will still laugh all the way through novel and forget that you need to go to sleep – hence strong coffee needed. You will also crave some expensive chocolate.
Prior to reading this novel, I was unaware of the challenges facing Leah as I had focused on the trail of clues in the #PostcardsJFTH. One must admire Leah as she ‘rolls up her sleeves’, supports everyone and hopes that the ‘frost’ will thaw between her sister and brother-in-law. Leah’s ‘heart twists’ for the teenagers but also flutters when she feels the heat from a certain man. It is moving that Leah has an incredible capacity to empathise, putting the needs of others first. It is equally endearing that she removes the halo from time to time. Who wouldn’t want Leah, with her ‘sunny personality’ and compassion, as a sister?
The narrative is as fast paced as Leah’s Porsche, but one longs to find out if the romance will become a harmonious melody rather than a sporadic drum beat. Besides the events rolling on, there is a tremendous lyrical quality to the dialogue that drives you through the events. The humour sparkles throughout the interactions and difficult situations. I am in awe of the way in which Moorcroft combines humour with a more challenging and sensitive subject. Characters are built with precision as each word is selected with tender loving care: Moorcroft cares about her characters thus ensuring that the reader will also suffer from a ‘sore heart’ at times.
Read it and you will understand why Leah needs to get a massive ‘Do not disturb’ sign on her door.
A whole constellation of stars to be awarded to Sue Moorcroft for this funny, poignant yet heart-breaking read! Must go now and bake the quick pecan toffee pudding to console myself for having finished the book.
Sue Moorcroft is an author who has worked hard for success. Her last novel, The Christmas Promise, rose to #1 in the Amazon Kindle chart and her latest, Just for the Holidays, has just been released. She likes reading, Formula 1, dancing and sunshine.
It was an honour to welcome Sue Moorcroft. She came to visit on a Sunday afternoon when the sun was indeed shining, as it does in her latest novel. She’d dressed for the weather in cut-offs and a T-shirt and was carting along her usual over-sized bag that she calls ‘half handbag and half briefcase’. As well as her personal stuff it accommodates her iPad and/or Kindle, bookmarks, cards and a battery and leads in case any of her devices need charging. I opened the French doors and we sat on sun loungers that I had placed under my vine terrace.
I poured us both a glass of Crémant d’Alsace and we made a toast to Leah and Ronan from Just for the Holidays. Inspired by Leah, I prepared a simple, refreshing salad. Sue had brought some strawberries as she had promised to make some of her strawberries and cream mug cakes. It was like a scene from Just for the Holidays as the ‘shimmering heat of the garden’ welcomed us. I had planted the pots with ‘white petunias and red geraniums’ to set the scene and we chatted about the novel.
Jessie: I know what happens in the novel and thoroughly enjoyed the exciting sequence of events and the sparkling humour. Can you capture the narrative in fifty words?
Sue: Just for the Holidays is about Leah, who doesn’t want a husband or children, ending up looking after her sister’s husband and children in France, where she doesn’t speak the language. Luckily, there’s a helicopter pilot next door who does – until he receives an unexpected guest of the embarrassing kind.
When asked to read a tempting extract from the novel, Sue opened her book and instantly found the perfect introduction to Ronan.
‘You’re not French!’ Leah exclaimed.
‘No, indeed.’ If anything, she could detect a touch of Irish in his voice.
‘But you spoke to me in French!’
He grinned disarmingly. ‘I’m a big fat show off.’
J: You have had many, many sparkling reviews. Can you provide a snapshot of some of the reviews?
J: It is evident that you care about your characters – it was difficult for me to say leave Leah behind. How did you feel when you had finished writing your book, and did you miss any of the characters?
S: Whenever I finish a book I always feel a heady mixture of triumph and relief. Yes, I do sometimes miss characters and I particularly missed Leah and Ronan from Just for the Holidays … but I know I’ll meet them again during the various edits. By then I’ll be keen to be with them again and will greet them like old friends.
J: Who would you like to read your book and why? This could be another author, someone famous, a friend or a member of your family.
S: I suppose ‘As many people as possible’ is the answer! There are few things that please me as much as people liking my books, so the more people who read them, the more likely that is.
J: Why should readers choose this novel?
Sue Moorcroft
S: Entertainment and food for thought. My books usually have issues bubbling under the surface and in the case of JFTH they are: the changing shape of families, women being voluntarily child free, independence, bankruptcy and homelessness, and the problems of taking a relationship to an intimate level with teenagers around to thwart you.
J: What is the last sentence written in your writer’s notebook?
When she realises Levi has been her guardian angel, initially she’s furious. But the homeless guy tells her not to knock it. This relates to the book I’m currently writing for publication in Summer 2018.
J: What is the biggest challenge for an author?
S: For me, doing my accounts. Being an author is like any other business and I don’t enjoy the paperwork.
J: What is the best advice that you have received as a writer?
S: Don’t make enemies. This was from Margaret James, who was then the New Writers’ Scheme Organiser of the Romantic Novelists’ Association.
J: How does a best-selling author manage to stay so down to earth?
S: I work hard. I don’t have the time for airs and graces and my family and friends would probably point them out if I did.
Sue made the strawberries and cream mug cakes and they were deliciously gooey. Her recipe is on her Facebook page and she agreed to share the link to my Timeline. Although she’s cut right back on teaching in order to accommodate her publishing schedule of two books a year, Sue was incredibly generous with her time and passed on to me a few nuggets of practical advice about the world of publishing. She feels lucky to be writing full time and able to live her dream and it was a privilege to listen to her wisdom about the professional world of writing.
Before Sue could drive off, she had to remind herself of how to start the shiny new car. In common with Leah, Sue loves cars with a bit of power.
Ideas come from all over. I began my new book, Summer on a Sunny Island, after visiting Malta with my brothers and sister-in-law for a service kids’ reunion.
To celebrate three years of Books in my Handbag Blog, I invited a special guest to join me. Sue Moorcroft was the first guest on my blog three years ago and is renowned for her captivating escapist fiction. I asked her about her latest novel, Summer on a Sunny Island, and where she finds her stories and characters. Get the kettle on, join us for a chat and let’s indulge in a short break to Malta where sparks are flying.
Jessie: When did you get your big break in writing?
Sue: Securing my agent Juliet of Blake Friedmann. She sold two books to Avon, HarperCollins and they got the first, The Christmas Promise, to #1 on UK Kindle in December 2016.
Jessie: Did you dream of becoming an author when you were a child?
Sue: Yes. I was six or seven when I realised someone created what went between a book’s covers and decided I’d like that to be me.
Jessie: Have you ever been tempted to chat to readers if you see them buy your book in the supermarket?
Sue: I was once in W H Smith in St Pancras Station, talking to a friend where A Christmas Gift stood on the shelf. A lady picked up a copy. I froze but my friend said, ‘Would you like to meet the author?’ We chatted and took photos and members of staff joined in and another guy came up and said he knew me from columns I wrote for Writers’ Forum. It was a lovely experience. Ideas come from all over. I began my new book, Summer on a Sunny Island, after visiting Malta with my brothers and sister-in-law for a service kids’ reunion.
Jessie: You have written an amazing number of novels. Where do you get your ideas from? Are you constantly searching for characters?
Sue: I made Rosa’s mum and Zach’s dad army kids who’d lived on the island. Another spark was a sweet anecdote I heard about a celeb cook, which made me make Rosa’s mum a food writer. Zach’s troubled past comes from my memory of a guy at school. Part of Rosa’s from something that happened when I worked in a bank. I’m lucky to have a plotty head that weaves together things I remember/hear about.
Jessie: How many times do you draft a book before you send it to your editor? How many rewrites do you go through before the book is ready to release into the wild?
Sue: Two or three drafts before I send the book in. Then comes a structural edit (probably another two drafts), a line edit and a copy edit. Sometimes two of these edits are combined into one.
An uplifting, happy read that will raise your spirits and warm your heart!
Jessie: Your novels always have distinctive settings. Did you visit Malta before you wrote the latest novel, Summer on a Sunny Island?
Sue: I was brought up there for several years and return whenever I can. Last year, with Summer on a Sunny Island in progress, I visited four times! I wrote about a quarter of the first draft there, which was an enriching process.
Sue: Characters standing at a crossroads in their lives; online gambling; young people pulled into the wrong crowd; family dynamics; negative equity traps; responsibility.
Jessie: The opening lines of your novels always hook me. Please share the opening lines of Summer on a Sunny Island.
‘Rosa twirled her wine glass, trying to choose her words over the chatter and clatter of Gino’s pavement café and the rumble of traffic along the seafront road. Here in the busy area of Sliema, old buildings outnumbered the new and the promenade was filled with people selling harbour cruises to tourists. Rosa preferred Ta’ Xbiex, where she was staying, about a mile along the coast, with its traditional stone villas. Sliema’s air was punctuated by the sound of car horns but in Ta’ Xbiex you could sometimes catch the mellow sound of church bells rising into the blue sky above the boats bobbing on the sparkling sea.’
Jessie: I am so grateful to you for writing such great escapes. What do you read when you want to escape?
Sue: I read in the area I write – authors such as Jules Wake/Julie Caplin, Kathryn Freeman, Rhoda Baxter, Christina Courtenay – and romantic suspense such as Toni Anderson, Suzanne Brockmann and Linda Howard. I also love books on Formula 1!
Sue Moorcroft is a Sunday Times and international bestselling author and has reached the coveted #1 spot on Amazon Kindle.
Jessie: What message would you like to give to your dedicated group of readers?
Sue: THANK YOU. There are few things give me more pleasure than readers enjoying my books. And thank you, Jessie, for inviting me onto Books in my Handbag!
As an international bestselling author of escapist fiction, Sue Moorcroft is the perfect writer to visit my blog. As I can’t travel, I fancy an escape to Malta because we need an ‘uplifting happy read’ at the moment.
Sue Moorcroft is a Sunday Times and international bestselling author and has reached the coveted #1 spot on Amazon Kindle. She’s won the Goldsboro Books Contemporary Romantic Novel Award, Readers’ Best Romantic Novel award and the Katie Fforde Bursary. Sue’s novels of love and life are currently released by publishing giant HarperCollins in the UK, US and Canada and by an array of publishers in other countries.
Her short stories, serials, columns, writing ‘how to’ and courses have appeared around the world.
Born into an army family in Germany, Sue spent much of her childhood in Cyprus and Malta but settled in Northamptonshire at the age of ten. An avid reader, she also loves Formula 1, travel, time spent with friends, dance exercise and yoga.
This Christmas, the villagers of Middledip are off on a very Swiss adventure…
Christmas is never far away when Sue Moorcroft releases her Christmas novel. I am excited to tell you that Let it Snow is out on 26th September. When Sue agreed to chat to me about her latest novel, it felt like an early Christmas gift. I also wanted to know how Sue manages to capture the Christmas spirit each year and tell yet another magical story.
Jessie: Let it Snow is a great title. Did you think of the title while listening to the Christmas song?
Sue: No, my editor and the sales team chose it! It’s working title had been ‘A Christmas Adventure’. There’s a singing group in the book and I made ‘Let it Snow’ their favourite song.
Jessie: How do you manage to create such vivid settings? Did you visit Switzerland to capture the sense of place for Let it Snow?
Sue: Yes! My friend and fellow author Rosemary J Kind lives between the UK and Switzerland and she said, ‘If you want to set a book there, you can come with me.’ I instantly asked my editor if she was happy with Switzerland as a setting and went back to Ros to say, ‘I want to set a book there!’ She drove us – and her Entlebucher Hound Wilma – through England and France to Switzerland. It was lovely! I’d never visited Switzerland and I was thrilled with it. The Swiss really know how to do Christmas and we went to processions, markets, brunches, choirs and all kinds of things. I try hard to include all the tiny details that capture a setting: the snow on chalets and Christmas lights on balconies.
Sue celebrating Christmas editions of her books. Mark West took this pic of Sue at Christmas in a pub with The Christmas Promise and its German edition.
Jessie: How do you plan the narrative for Let it Snow and did any of your characters misbehave and change events?
Sue: I met a woman in a same-sex marriage and she had just had a baby. It raised all kinds of questions in my mind and I wanted to write a heroine who had two mums. When she discovers she’s not the result of an anonymous one-night stand as she’d always thought but that her mother had a relationship with a man especially to get pregnant, she experiences a compulsion to discover what she can of her bio-family. I’m afraid my brother Kevan was ill while I was planning the book and I gave his heart failure to Tubb from the Pub. This meant I had to find a relief manager for the pub, The Three Fishes. He is my hero, Isaac O’Brien. I think of him as a reluctant hero because he’s on his way to a new life when he gets sucked into Lily’s. His ex, Hayley, played a much bigger part in the story than I expected her to. Sometimes a character can be secondary but also pivotal.
Jessie: When do you write your Christmas stories? Do you immerse yourself in Christmas, grab a notebook and begin planning next year’s story gift, or are you writing during the summer and transport yourself to the scene?
Sue: It takes a while to write a book so though I planned Let it Snow in Malta in the sunshine, I wrote the majority of the first draft through the winter. Then the editing came in lovely weather again. When I used to write short stories for magazines it was normal to write Christmas stories in June and summer stories in December so I’m used to it. I had the chance to return to Switzerland when I was almost at the end of the first draft and that would have been fantastic. Sadly, the dates clashed with a professional engagement so I had to give it a miss.
Jessie: Your romance novels have layers and always explore contemporary issues and the changing family unit. In Let it Snow, it’s that Lily has two mothers, and this adds a poignant dimension to the narrative as she searches for her father. How did you research this?
Sue: My other brother, Trevor, volunteered to take on some of my research when he retired and he’s brilliant at it. I was able to send him emails asking whether lesbian couples could have received artificial insemination in 1983 and he’d come back with a factual answer. (Lily’s sister Zinnia was conceived via artificial insemination.) For the emotional side I was able to read case studies on websites and talk to someone about twins they know who are searching out all their half-siblings and learn something of their journey. There seemed to me to be two distinct attitudes amongst the children of same-sex relationships, however they’re conceived, and so I gave Lily one attitude and Zinnia the other. I don’t want to give details because they’d also be spoilers.
The ‘singing Christmas tree’ in Zürich. It’s a pyramidical stage for a choir. This appears in the book, of course!
Jessie: I am in awe of how you manage to vary your characters and always make them so likeable. What three tips do you have for developing characters?
Sue: Thank you! My big tip is to look at each major character through the eyes of several other characters. If we take Lily, for example, I looked not just at the facts of her life, interesting as they were, but what Zinnia thought of her, what Roma her birth mother thought of her and also, importantly, Patsie, her ‘other mother’. How was she regarded at work? What about her ex husband? In real life we behave differently with and are perceived differently by different people and I use this to build multi-faceted characters.
Jessie: The sparks always fly in the brilliant dialogue between your characters. What advice do you have for writers who wish to make their dialogue realistic? Can you give us a snapshot of some of the dialogue in your latest novel.
Sue: I think one develops a feel for dialogue. I listen to people speak, think about the syntax they use and try and make it appropriate for age, background and region. An 18-year-old girl and an 80-year-old woman could each say, ‘He’s wicked!’ and mean two entirely different things. Dialogue’s wonderful. It breathes life into characters, allows them to interact with each other and passes information to the reader. Here’s a few lines from Let it Snow, Chapter 1:
‘We’re your family!’ Zinnia declared, shoving her fingers through her chestnut hair. ‘What you’re doing could hurt Patsie and Roma.’
Lily climbed on a stool and began to feed the string of lights through hooks above the bar. ‘They understand it’s my decision. You know this, Zin. Let’s not press “repeat” on the conversation.’
Zinnia bulldozed on. ‘Aren’t we enough for you? You and I grew up sharing a bedroom! We’re sisters—’
‘And you’re the loveliest sister in the world.’ Lily hoped popping in a positive note would distract Zinnia. She jumped down, scraped her stool towards the next few hooks, gave Zinnia a hug then clambered up again. ‘How about twisting that tinsel around the ivy swags along the mantelpiece?’
Jessie: Do you give your books as Christmas gifts to family and friends?
Sue: No. I give out most of my free copies when they arrive to various members of my family who would read them and to anyone who has played a major part in research. Apart from that, people have to buy them themselves, I’m afraid.
Jessie: What is your typical Christmas like and are there any special family traditions or recipes?
Sue: I like the run up to Christmas and all the festive meetings of the various writing organisations to which I belong or Christmas meals with friends, but when Christmas itself comes around I like a quiet time with family. Between Christmas and New Year either my household or my brother’s household hosts an extended family lunch and that’s anything but quiet.
Sue wraps up her Christmas stories beautifully and her novels are perfect Christmas gifts. The Ebook is out on the 26th September. The paperback and audio book will be available on 14th November.
This Christmas, the villagers of Middledip are off on a very Swiss adventure…
Family means everything to Lily Cortez and her sister Zinnia, and growing up in their non-conventional family unit, they and their two mums couldn’t have been closer.
So it’s a bolt out of the blue when Lily finds her father wasn’t the anonymous one-night stand she’d always believed – and is in fact the result of her mum’s reckless affair with a married man.
Confused, but determined to discover her true roots, Lily sets out to find the family she’s never known; an adventure that takes her from the frosted, thatched cottages of Middledip to the snow-capped mountains of Switzerland, via a memorable romantic encounter along the way…
The Sunday Times bestseller returns with a gloriously cosy read, perfect for fans of Katie Fforde, Trisha Ashley and Carole Matthews.
, rose to #1 in the Amazon Kindle
chart and her latest, 
and/or Kindle
Jessie: I know what happens in the novel and thoroughly enjoyed the exciting sequence of events and the sparkling humour. Can you capture the narrative in fifty words?
S: I work hard. I don’t have the time for airs and graces and my family and friends would probably point them out if I did.
