What is your book ACTUALLY about?
|
Listen to this article
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Each time I start work on a new story, I have in mind the start and end. I know what I want to say.
I know what the underlying theme is supposed to be. And yet, when I reach the end, I almost always find somewhere along the way, I’ve twisted the narrative and made it about what I seem to write about all the time.
As a rule, a Mo Fanning novel features damaged souls who overcome their past mistakes and strive for a better future. And I suppose that’s what life is all about.
Recovery
Alexandra Small is in recovery. She attends AA meetings. When her life falls apart, instinct tells her to run to the nearest bottle, but she fights back and builds a different life, from the foundations up.
Lisa Doyle (The Armchair Bride) was bullied at school. She’s 40 and single and going by the local newspaper cuttings her mother still likes to send, the only one in her year who didn’t already snare a partner. When her best mate challenges her to change as she turns 40, she makes a decision, setting in motion a chain of events that can’t help but change things.
Party mode
And so, with GHOSTED, when both Silas and Ellen receive bad news from their doctor, each decides to stop putting off something they always planned to do. One day. Ellen wants to swim with dolphins. Silas wants to reconcile with the son he sent running with unkind words, spoken in haste. Fate conspires to put them on the same ship. With 3000 gay men in party mode. From there, it’s up to them.
I guess what I want the reader to come away with is the sense that no matter how dark the day gets, there will be sunshine again. Each broken man or woman who lives on my pages finds themselves confronted with their failings and have to decide if now is the time to put things right.
And at the end, both Ellen and Silas discover the ghosts hanging around their necks are not the ones they thought they were.
I hope you enjoy GHOSTED and if you can, share it with a friend.
