Today I have the honour and pleasure of introducing Joanne Phillips, author of The Family Trap which is released this week, and Can't Live Without
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| photos courtesy of the author |
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- Publisher: Mirrorball Books (14 Feb 2013)
- ISBN-13: 978-0957309418
Also available on Kindle |
The Family Trap – A Romance With A Difference!
When I typed those two wonderful words – ‘The End’ – and finally finished my debut novel, Can’t Live Without, I honestly didn’t intend to write a sequel. In many ways I was glad to see the back of Stella and Paul and their will-they/won’t-they love story. I’d lived with these characters for six years, endured countless rewrites and edits on my journey to publication, and was more than happy to send them off into the ether.
Readers, however, had other ideas. ‘Are you planning a sequel?’ they’d ask by email or on Facebook. ‘What happened next?’ And Stella didn’t want to go away – she had one more story to tell me, she said. What else could I do but obey?
The Family Trap could carry the subtitle: What happens after the happy ever after? I wanted to show a real couple, with real problems: all the messy, complicated, awkward stuff that arises from bad communication and a lack of total honesty. I wanted to take it to its limit, and push this star-crossed couple as far as I could to see if they cracked! Writers can be cruel at times JI also wanted to show a strong female character who could manage quite well without a man, thank you very much. In fact, all the female characters in The Family Trap are strong and resourceful. There’ll be no wimpy heroines on my watch!
For me, the real joy of writing The Family Trap was exploring relationships in later life. Stella’s mum and dad are wildly in love and planning a renewal of their wedding vows, and my favourite sub-plot of all time happens in the old people’s home where Stella works. (I think Edie and Franklin and their octogenarian romance might deserve a novel all of its own!) And set against all this lurve is Stella’s own nightmare wedding scenario ... Well, I’m not giving too much away here.
There won’t be a third outing for Stella and Paul. Although The Family Trap is a stand-alone sequel (you don’t have to have read Can’t Live Without to enjoy it), I did find writing a sequel hard work. For a writer of romance, keeping the characters fresh and interesting, while remaining true to their original incarnation, is pretty challenging. Stella has promised to go away and leave me alone now. I just hope she keeps to her word ...
Excerpt:
‘Get it out of me. Get. It. Out.’
My daughter is only sixteen, but today is possibly the best and the worst day of her life. Even though she’s still my baby – will always be my baby – right now she’s trying to squeeze out her own baby into the waiting arms of a red-faced midwife. While discovering the hard way that some young bodies just aren’t designed for childbirth.
Her gasps of pain bring back the memory of her own birth with a force I hadn’t expected, and I almost find myself reaching for the gas and air in sympathy. They say you eventually forget the torture of giving birth – why else would any woman go on to have more than one child? We’re brave, not masochists. Well, I only had one, and I can tell you right now: a woman never forgets.
They also say nothing is more painful than giving birth. Wrong again. Watching your own child in labour is far more painful. Right now I wish it were me lying there on the bed and not her.
What is it they also say? Be careful what you wish for?
Sometimes I wish theywould just shut up.
I’m standing away from the business end, holding my daughter’s hand and mopping ineffectually at her forehead while she screams and swears at the midwife. My feelings aren’t important right now, are they? This is about her, and that little life fighting its way down her underdeveloped tubes, every beat of its heart monitored carefully, every movement another stab of agony for my girl.
I push away the tiny, ashamed-to-show-its-face part of me that is also thinking: See? You didn’t listen, did you, when I told you how awful it would be? You weren’t careful, you didn’t take precautions, and now look at us. A slip of a girl, high on Pethidine, showing off an astonishingly varied vocabulary, attended by her own single mum who still hasn’t gotten used to the fact that any minute now she will become a grandmother.
A grandmother! At thirty-eight. There is so much wrong with this picture I don’t know where to start.
Here comes Robert with fresh supplies of ice and chocolate, his face showing the strain of watching Lipsy suffer. Robert is one of those people who seem to be all one colour: his fine hair is the same pale biscuit shade as his skin; even his clothes are beige. He looks young for thirty-one, but his hairline tells of problems to come.
That my daughter chose to fall in love with a man nearly twice her age tops off the craziness just perfectly, in my opinion.
‘Stella?’ says Robert, handing me the ice wrapped in a flannel. He’s only just stopped calling me Mrs Hill, despite the fact that I’ve never been a Mrs in my life. This is about to change in two weeks’ time, of course, but I won’t be Mrs Hill.
I take the flannel and apply it to the back of Lipsy’s neck. She’s on all fours now, panting like a marathon runner, her white T-shirt stuck to her back. Her long dark hair is matted at the crown like a fallen-out beehive, her lips vivid against her fair skin.
I know why I’m angry, why I’m blaming Lipsy and dragging up all the stuff I thought I’d buried months ago. It’s because I’m scared. No, terrified.
If I allow my mind to process what’s happening in front of my eyes – if I let the fear in for a second – I’ll be no use to my daughter at all. So I huff when she asks me for a glass of water, and I tut when Robert tenderly places a square of Bourneville in her swollen mouth.
‘I need the toilet,’ Lipsy croaks, her voice hoarse from shouting.
‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ is my response. It’s how I’m dealing with it. Don’t shoot me.
Joanne Phillips has kindly offered one e-copy of The Family Trap to one lucky winner. International.
Please fill in the rafflecopter form below to be in with a chance.
Please see Giveaway Policy.
Ends 1 March 2013
