Maybe the Portbraddons are not so lucky

If you are kind enough to read my posts regularly, you’ll know that I’ve been having a session trying to promote my books. I often write about my published books here on my blog, and I share my progress when I’m in the process of writing them. I share their details when they’re published – but it’s really just an extended blurb, trying to interest potential readers. After that I refer to them from time to time; however – I’ve begun to realise that I must do more than merely mention them, I must promote them! I wrote them for people to read, so I need to broadcast that they are available, advertise them!!

With this in mind, I blogged about my first novel , ‘Farholm‘, set on an imagined island just off the mainland. where two deaths may not be as accidental as they seem. ‘Flipside‘, set in Oldham, Lancashire, is a murder mystery – a serial killer is randomly attacking women. ‘The Stalking of Rosa Czekov‘ – well, the title gives a massive clue about what’s happened before the story even starts! ‘Loving Judah‘ is about a couple whose lives are shattered by the death of the husband’s son, Judah which pulls them apart rather than bringing them together. In ‘Night Vision‘, Beulah Cameron’s marriage is in crisis because of her husband’s unfounded jealousy when she discovers he has past secrets, and a missing brother. The Double Act, is difficult to completely categorise – murder, violence, love-story, betrayal, mystery, yes all of these!

I’d wanted to write about a family for a long time – although my family was very small, mum, dad, and my sister, and now my own family is similar, me, husband, son daughter, I am very close to my extended family, of four cousins, their husbands/wives/partners, children and now grandchildren, plus other cousins who very dear to me. As I was thinking about this with a view to writing, I became a very active fan of an American band and somehow they morphed into my imagined family, the Portbraddons. My family has an annual Christmas party where the cousins come together and I imagined the Portbraddons, their wives and children coming together at their grandmothers very large house to spend the festive period together. One of them brought a girlfriend, and it is through her eyes the story of what happens to them over the following twelve months unfolds. There is a lot of emotional drama, a lot of falling out, unexpected alliances, until a horrific incident forces them to reunite.

Here’s the blurb:

“Lucky Portbraddon… a rather rascally ancestor of my late husband, or so family legend has it, was a favourite friend of the Prince Regent, apparently, but Lucky made, not lost, his fortune…”
A few days before Christmas, as the Portbraddon family gathers at their grandmother’s big house up on the moors, the last of the cousins drives through a blizzard to join them:
…There was a severed dog’s head stuck on the gatepost. There’d been a few seconds pause in the driving snow and in those few seconds, lit by their headlights, she glimpsed the wolf-like creature, maw gaping, tongue lolling, teeth bared in one final gory snarl. Then the blizzard obliterated the stone beast and everything else in a seething maelstrom…
A near-death experience does not seem an auspicious start to their family get together, but the cousins determine to celebrate as they always do.
However as the old year ends and the new begins it seems their good fortune is about to run out. An unexpected death, a descent into madness, betrayal… and as the year progresses other things befall them, a stalker, an attempted murder, a patently dodgy scheme for selling holiday homes in a dangerous part of the Caucasus… Maybe the Portbraddons are not so lucky… except there is also love, a new home, reconciliation, a spiritual journey, music.. .
One thing remains true, whatever difficulties arise between them, whatever happens, family is family, family first… “They’re like a big bunch of musketeers, all for one and one for all!”

… and here are links if you want to buy the book: