It was three years ago when I first encountered Choc Lit Publishing and since then I've been consistently impressed by the standard of the books they publish. Yes – it's chick lit and you're not going to end up struggling through something that was written with the Booker Prize in mind, but it's at the upper end of the genre, with good writing, romantic content and, best of all, a real story that you can believe in Sue Magee, The Bookbag
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Where did you find the inspiration for your novel, Moonshadows?
Melinda
I have been writing Regency and Georgian romances for many years now – full of deliciously sexy rakes and courageous heroines – and I have often wondered what might happen if the romance didn’t have a happy ending – if there were insuperable obstacles to their getting together. That’s where Sarah and Richard’s story came from. However, I am too much of a romantic to leave them unhappy, so I had to resolve it with a bit of ghostly intervention!
There is also one scene that I took directly from my own experience. Jez is opening up an old fireplace in her cottage: a few years ago I did just that in my own house: When I removed the first couple of bricks there was a sooty black void behind with a cold draught coming through – very spooky since I was working on a cold blustery night with the wind howling around the house. My imagination went wild!
What was particularly challenging about writing this story?
Melinda
The contemporary part! I love writing “costume dramas” set in the past, but Piers and Jez are very modern people, and I found I had to work much harder on this – I actually felt much more vulnerable writing the story without the usual historical framework. Having said that, I really loved the finished book – it is very special to me.
What do you love most about your hero and heroine?
Melinda
This story has an added bonus for me because there are two heroes and heroines. Richard and Piers are both tall, dark and handsome (clichéd I know, but still very attractive). They are also very strong personalities and need equally strong women for their life-partners – which of course they find in Sarah and Jez!
Dark Belgian chocolate – not too sweet, very smooth, but with a bite!
There is a bittersweet element to Moonshadows:
Richard is a hardened rake who finally meets his match in the beautiful but very moral Sarah. She loves him, but can’t be happy because they are both married. There’s nothing Richard can do about this, for once it is a situation beyond his control. He wants Sarah to be happy, and that means giving her up. Piers is a much more modern man, but he too finds that the woman he loves is fiercely loyal to another man, even though she no longer loves him.
