Friday, 31 January 2014

Launch day!

My romantic suspense TRUSTING A STRANGER meets the world today.  Here's a thrilling description: 

A new romantic suspense novel set in Italy, where not even the Tuscan sun can fully expose the dark and shadowy underbelly...
Hayley Wolfe will do anything to keep her father healthy and comfortable for as long as possible. When she is offered a hefty contract in return for some international travel, she jumps at the chance, and the security the paycheque provides. Though the beautiful Tuscan villa doesn't look like a hotbed of crime, nor its owner a deviant and evil man, looks can be deceiving...
Investigator Ethan MacDonald will do anything to keep his young daughter Katy safe from his ex-wife's family, even from beautiful young women who infiltrate his home. Hayley claims to have arrived under false pretenses, but Ethan well knows the lengths his in-laws will go to to get what they want.
With Katy's life on the line, there's no time for misplaced confidence. Will Ethan and Hayley risk everything for their families by learning to trust a stranger?
Sounds like something I'd like to read myself!  It's available at numerous places including:





I can't work out how to link to itunes but a search for "Kimberley Brown Trusting a Stranger" in the app will get you there...

(my most enjoyable find was on the Amazon Japan website because I'm going to Japan later this year!)

Nook, Kobo and other details coming soon.




Friday, 10 January 2014

On romantic suspense, incredible locations... and the near-impossibility of getting there.

I was born with itchy feet and have spent just about every cent I've ever earned on travelling.  So I thought I'd celebrate the approaching release of TRUSTING A STRANGER with an excerpt from the journal I kept while researching one of its locations -- on a trip to Tuscany, with children in tow.

As it turned out, the most difficult part of this trip was actually getting there....




Diary entry from Villa Costalpino, near Siena, Italy...

This place is so overwhelming, both its beauty and how difficult it was to get here.  Yesterday started badly when our plane from Paris to Milan was over three hours late.  The professional opinion amongst the staff at Orly airport was that we got what we deserved for choosing to fly Easyjet.  With accommodation already booked some hours away, we raced to pick up our hire car. And that was where real problems began.

To start with, we couldn't find the entrance to the autostrada from Milan to Bologna.  Literally couldn't find  it.  We drove around all these little side streets that seemed to be going in the right direction (passing a little town called Lodi about four times).  At one stage, we followed a couple of other cars who seemed to know where they were going, but they knew well enough to go really quickly (my partner, *Patrick, was still getting used to driving on the wrong side of the road) and we ended up on this tiny road that wound through the countryside, parallel to the autostrada,  barely wide enough for one car, where we were nearly run into a wide, deep ditch by a car going the other direction. 
            After about two wasted hours, eventually we found our way onto the autostrada headed towards Bologna.  At a restaurant to the side of the road, we grabbed some pasta for dinner, and Patrick phoned the housekeeper of the place where we planned to stay.  She was waiting for us to arrive by 6pm, which was no longer possible, so let her know we’d try to get there by 11pm when she (the keeper of the keys) was due to leave. To make even our new deadline, we knew we had to rush.
            Eventually, after much travail, many miles travelling far faster than we usually do over autostradas which are fantastic as far as Bologna, and a little less fantastic after that, and on the ordinary highway between Florence and Siena (which doesn't have much in the way of lighting, also--it was raining) we arrived in Siena just after 11. 
Yay. Nearly on time and it seemed like we were so close.
But from there, we could not get anywhere. I read my instructions over and over. They said, approach Siena, then take a turn off towards Grossetto. We tried this a few times--early in the piece, we almost ended up in Grossetto, until it obviously became time to go back.  The second time we tried to get there, we went too far the other way and ended up nearly in Sinalunga.  In a town just before there, we found a hotel, and decided that the only thing to do was to stay somewhere else and come back to Costalpino in the morning. 
But the hotel was full.  Patrick had gone in to check, leaving me in the car with the two boys who were both sleeping by then (after our turns and twists, it was about 1am), and returned with instructions to another hotel that was just a few hundred metres up the road. 
We started the car again and continued driving, jet-lagged and sleep-deprived on the wrong side of a dark road, towards a place that turned out to be a couple of kilometres further than that.  And closed. 
We turned and headed back for Siena, with the idea of finding  a hotel there.  But as far as we could work out, even the hotels inside the city walls, where we weren’t allowed to drive and did anyway, were all already closed. All of them. Over the next few hours, we drove around looking for other things.  This quest centered around a place to do a wee. If there were public toilets, there were no signs. We saw signs pointing towards the Ospidale (yes! there were signs--plenty of them!--that should have made our search easier) and thought we might be able to use toilets there, but none of the signs seemed to bear any relation to a place where a building, either the ordinary Ospidale or the nuovo ospidale was.
When we finally found the nuovo ospidale, there was a gate to pass and a gatekeeper sitting there, looking suspicious at us for just being there interrupting whatever it is that gatekeepers do at 2:30 am.  I didn't feel like taking him on just for the sake of using the toilet.  Nothing as civilised as a public toilet or even a bar open that time of the night.  Eventually, we found an industrial estate and had to...  do our business... In the bushes behind.
Some time around 5am we pulled into a car park and tried to catch some sleep in the car until the warm aroma of fresh urine wafted towards us from the back seat and we knew we had to get the boys somewhere to bathe. And buy some upholstery shampoo
Who would have guessed how wonderful the rest of our stay was going to be or how many story ideas I’d get while there? More details in following posts...

*all names have been changed

Saturday, 14 December 2013

Happy with the cover fairies

Actually, I'm happy with some very talented cover people at Escape. Because this is what they've given me... Trusting a Stranger, available digitally on 1 February, 2014. Stay tuned for a sample and further details...

Saturday, 28 September 2013

Welcome to the blog of author Kimberley Brown.

My first romantic suspense novel, Trusting a Stranger, will be published by Harlequin Escape .... details coming soon!!!