It's always a pleasure to have returning guests on my blog. Today, it's the turn of my good friend and author, Deirdre Palmer. It isn't just Deirdre who is making a second appearance though - her two great books, Dirty Weekend and Moonshine (both set in the 60s) are also having another outing. Check out their fabulous new covers!
If you haven't already read Deirdre's novels, I'll let her tell you a little more about them. Over to you, Deirdre.
When Wendy heard I was re-launching two of my books, she
kindly invited me onto her blog to spread the word. Thanks, Wendy!
They say ‘write what you know’
and that was the advice I had in mind when I wrote Dirty Weekend. It’s also
said that if you remember the sixties, you weren’t there. Well, I was there, and I do remember, which
made this book a whole lot of fun to write!
Dirty Weekend was taken up by my publisher at the time, and looked after very well, as was Moonshine later. Recently, with the future of those books with the publisher looking uncertain, I took the difficult decision to liberate them from their contracts and send them back into the world with a fresh new look. The stories might be set in the 1960s but the problems that face the characters are universal and just as relevant today.
Without giving away too much of
the plot, in Dirty Weekend, Jeanette
doesn’t see the weekend in Brighton as just a bit of fun. For her it’s an escape from the unspoken
horrors of her home-life. In Moonshine, Beverly’s first experience of
unrequited love sends her emotions and actions into free-fall, almost wrecking
the holiday on a Torbay caravan site. Also in Moonshine, an
unexpected find on a removals job pitches Terry into agonies of indecision when
he learns that doing ‘the right thing’ is never that straightforward.
But it’s not all gloom, far from
it. Themes of friendship, loyalty, love and sex, run through both books, and
there’s a whole lot of laughter, too. At
least, I hope my readers find plenty to laugh at!
Here’s a taster from Dirty Weekend. The grim reality of arriving in Brighton
without booking a B&B beforehand has just struck home…
“The room was fantastically grim, Mark thought, looking about. For a
start, it was up four flights of creaky stairs and slotted in under the eaves
so that you couldn’t stand up in the parts where the ceiling sloped down. The
bed was missing a leg and had a fishing tackle box supporting the fourth
corner, and the bedspread thing thrown over the blankets must once have had a
pattern on it but had migrated into a murky mixture of oranges and browns with
no distinction between the two. As for the mattress, well, he didn’t even want
to think about that, let alone take a butcher’s at it. He couldn’t see any actual
dirt anywhere, but everything in the room was so worn out it must have
pre-dated the D-Day landings.
Remembering Terry’s prior claim to this room as his
and Carol-Anne’s love-nest, Mark laughed to himself. Terry seemed not to have
noticed the state of the place, or if he did, he didn’t care. He definitely
hadn’t spotted the fishing tackle box, but there was no point in bringing it up
now.
Yes, on balance, he approved of Terry’s version of
tonight’s sleeping arrangements. The girls’ room across the road in Pier View was
probably a damn sight better than this one – it could hardly be worse – so all
he’d have to worry about, providing Jeanette didn’t take it into her head to
spoil the party, was getting into Pier View and up those stairs without having
his collar felt by the landlady.”
© Deirdre
Palmer 2015
Dirty Weekend and Moonshine are available from Amazon.
Deirdre is the author of seven novels and a collection of short stories,
writing under her own name and as Zara Thorne. She is published by
Crooked Cat Books, and independently.
To find out more about Deirde, visit her website
To find out more about Deirde, visit her website
