Hiding away from a disastrous
past, Megan McLeod is getting along nicely in her job as housekeeper at a
university field centre in Majorca. But the arrival of geological researcher,
Tim Stone, throws everything into disarray — because Tim was the father of the baby she lost some
years before and the two of them had parted very messily indeed.
As if having Tim on the scene wasn’t bad
enough, he's there with his new partner, Holly. But when in the course of his
research he comes upon something extremely nasty along the cliffs of north
Majorca, he’s forced to turn to Megan for help.
He had to get to the
bottom of the valley before the river became impassable. If it hadn’t already.
The wind fought him all
the way, seizing him like a maniac and refusing to let him go, dragging him
this way and that as it wished. By the time he reached the dip, the water had
risen as he’d
feared, rushing past him with increasing ferocity. He paused, holding onto a
fence post to keep himself upright. He had to get this one exactly right, judge
his own strength against that of the water, work out how deep it was and how
much he dared, where the balance lay between certain death and almost certain
death.
Tim was never one to
swither between this and that; decisions came easily to him. He’d chance it. Certain death
lay on this side of the river, not the other. As he took his first steps
towards the point at which he judged the water to be lowest and slowest, he
stopped. Two spears of light appeared on the other side of the valley. Car
headlights.
He cursed, silently
because he hadn’t
the breath to curse out loud. This introduced another set of dice to roll for
his survival, because he couldn’t
cross without being seen. Who were they? If Holly had realised what a situation
he was in, if Megan had guessed, if either of them had called the police, then
he was saved. But if that car was the Range Rover from Las Truchas, then the
balance of probability shifted his safety back to this side of the river.
Friend? Foe? He was a
scientist and used to making decisions on the basis of knowledge that was at
best incomplete; but he’d
never had to bring his scientific judgement into play for such high stakes as
this. He’d risk it.
Interesting romantic suspense with two ex-lovers torn apart by misunderstandings. Tim believes that Megan betrayed him by aborting their child, and Megan believes that Tim abandoned her when he found out she was pregnant. Of course the truth is not as simple as that. Megan makes Tim seem like a selfish jerk who doesn't care about anyone or anything other than his work, but as we get to see a different part of him as the story progresses and he interacts more and more with Megan. Their romance is put on back burner while they deal with dangerous neighbors who feel threatened by a discovery Tim makes while exploring a cave. I found the ending pretty predictable, but overall the book was very enjoyable.
Location, Location, Location
So I can’t help it. I’m a writer. Everywhere I go I
take a notebook in case inspiration strikes me — a person, a snippet overheard on a train. But the
only near-inevitability about being a writer is that a new place will open my
eyes to a new perspective and, probably, a new story.
I say ‘near-inevitability’ because in all honesty there
are one or two places where inspiration either got lost in a concrete maze or
else never visited at all. (I’m sorry, Milton Keynes.) But as a general rule I can
see a story in a Highland village or in a maze of half-derelict workshops seen
from the train in one of the more dismal parts of the English Midlands.
I write romance, and some
places are definitely better suited to it than others. It’s easy to imagine your
heroine losing her head under the the touch of Mediterranean sunshine and a
glass or two of local wine that in its to see her succumbing to a blistering
easterly wind and a nice hot cup of cocoa, even if the latter is probably more
realistic and someone, somewhere, will have succeeded in setting a romance in
just such a place. (And maybe I’ll do it myself one day.)
In my first novel, Thank You
For The Music, my heroine flees to the island of Majorca to escape from a
bereavement and a broken romance. My current novel, No Time Like Now, is
is also set there, but in a different part of it. In the first Abby runs for a
little bit of pampering on holiday; in the second our hero and heroine are both
working in the slightly harsher environment of the island’s northern hills.
The first is straightforward
romance so a bit of pampering fits the bill. The second is romantic suspense,
and an unforgiving landscape fits that too. Steep cliffs, spiky vegetation, dry
rivers that can suddenly become raging torrents and caves whose dark depths
might offer a haven or hide a villain — you won’t find any of those in Milton Keynes.
I’m sure there are other elements to it. The main one is
that I go on holiday, or to new places not on holiday, looking for new things
and new experiences and that’s what stimulates creativity. The other thing is that
I have the time to mull things over and I’m in the right farm of mind. Which is why when I was
in Majorca last year and I looked out at the hills I didn’t see beauty. I saw villains…and a hero and a heroine
pitted not only against their own emotions but against the elements and their
surroundings…
Jennifer Young is an
Edinburgh-based writer, editor and copywriter. She is interested in a wide range
of subjects and writing media, perhaps reflecting the fact that she has both
arts and science degrees. Jennifer has been writing fiction, including romantic
fiction, for a number of years with several short stories already published. No
Time Like Now is her second published novel; her first novel, Thank You For The
Music, is also set on the Balearic island of Majorca.
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