Saturday 29 July 2017

Hot Summer Knight

Welcome to Sally's book-a-day-for-2017 blog. If unfamiliar with the blog, scroll down.

Hot Summer Knight 2017 (Post 212)

Hot Summer Knight is the seventh story in the Fairy in the Bed series I write under my Lark Westerly pen name. Although the seventh published, it was the second one written, but that doesn't matter since each story can stand alone. Chronologically, it takes place around half a year after Fairy on the Christmas Tree, which was the first in the series. When I wrote that, I had no idea it was going to be a series. I'd enjoyed writing Fairy, which was a Christmas short of around 11k, so when eXtasy Books decided to do another series of shorts, this time for summer, I, or rather Lark, hopped on board. I've always loved connected stories and developed networlds, so I decided to set my summer story in the same reality as the Christmas one. At first, I considered writing a new story about Frances and her fairy lover Niall, but the plot I had in mind would have had to be less than a year after the first. Then it occurred to me that the new series was set to release in July, the Northern Hemisphere summer. Midsummer over there is Midwinter to us, so I wondered if I might make use of that fact. Midsummer night gave me the midsummer knight pun, and there there was Meat Loaf's Dashboard Light song with its "hot summer night". Okay then, I'd call the story Hot Summer Knight.

Now I has a title, and all I needed was a plot. Frances lived in Sydney, but her parents were in Brisbane, and I'd sent her and Niall there for Christmas. I made use of that to swing off to the new story; this time taking Kendra, Frances's orphaned first cousin, who lived near her aunt and uncle and who was best friends with Frances. Until meeting Niall, Frances had been a disaster magnet, romantically speaking, so I thought maybe Kendra was too... There's comfort in solidarity, so how might it be for Kendra when her cousin suddenly lucked out in the romantic stakes? Cue a call from Frances, asking Kendra please to come to Sydney to pet-sit while she and Niall went to a convention to meet Niall's English cousin. Signs of loving domesticity (including jointly-owned cats) made Kendra elect to arrive after Frances and Niall had left already, so she was alone in the house when the cats suddenly went bananas and a knight in armour came clanking up the stairs. Add to this a summer heatwave in the spare room, and Kendra is really thrown in at the deep end. An telephoned appeal to Frances and Niall for advice in dislodging the knight led to his identification and some quick coaching but it's up to Kendra to find the best way to survive the situation.

Like Fairy on the Christmas Tree, and the other titles in the Fairy in the Bed series, Hot Summer Knight is a romantic comedy for adult readers. It was published on July 28th and is available as an ebook from http://www.tinyurl.com/buyhotsummerknight 
If you buy it and enjoy it, Lark would be enchanted if you would leave a review at the website, or at Goodreads or Amazon.  


 About the Blog 

Sally is Sally Odgers; author, manuscript assessor, editor, anthologist and reader. She runs http://www.affordablemanuscriptassessments.com and Prints Charming Books. (Sally is me, by the way, and I am lots of other things too, but these are the relevant ones for now.)

The goal for 2017 is to write a post a day profiling the background behind one of my books; how it came to be written, what it's about, and any things of note that happened along the way. If you're an author, an aspiring author, a reader or just someone who enjoys windows into worlds, you might find this fun. The books are not in any special order, but will be assigned approximate dates, and pictures, where they exist. If you enjoyed a post, or want to ask about any of my books or my manuscript assessment service.

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