Tuesday 26 November 2019

New Release Spotlight and Guest Post: A Forgiven Friend by Sue Featherstone and Susan Pape



A Forgiven Friend: Lies, Loss, and Love, But Always Friendship by Sue Featherstone and Susan Pape
Readers often want to know whether our characters are based on real people.
Absolutely NOT.
Any resemblance to anyone living or dead is purely coincidental.
Unless, of course, there actually is a real, living Heinz 57 person, who is an amalgamation of all the bits and pieces of the various people – passers-by, fellow train travellers, customers in the supermarket check-out queue – who’ve contributed a hairstyle, a quirky laugh or a penchant for knitted waistcoats to our characters.
No, the men and women peopling our pages are definitely figments of our imagination – although I’ve always pictured Teri Meyer, one of the central characters in our Friends trilogy, as looking very similar to US Desperate Housewives star Teri Hatcher. They’re both tall, slim and elegant – although our Teri is a blonde rather than a brunette.
But in all other respects, they’re as different as chalk and cheese.
One Teri is a successful, award-winning actress, the other is a failed university lecturer. One was voted the world’s sexiest woman by readers of popular magazine FHM, and the other – although several of our male characters think she is pretty hot – has never been an FHM contender. One hails from Palo Alto, California, and the other comes from Yorkshire.
It’s possible that Teri Hatcher shares our Teri’s passion for expensive, high-heeled shoes – Louboutins, for preference – but, equally, most women, if offered a choice, wouldn’t turn up their noses at a pair of beautifully-crafted heels.
Although Lee Harper, our other central character, who prefers chunky boots, might struggle to manage more than a couple of steps…
Not unlike me.
And Teri’s obsession with expensive leather totes is pure Susan.
But, that’s okay. The writer’s code – which includes a healthy respect for this country’s libel laws – means that while Susan and I don’t have any qualms about endowing our characters with aspects of our own personality traits, we’d never dream of modelling them on friends or family.
We do occasionally borrow real-life incidents. There are scenes in all three of our novels that are loosely based on something that has happened to one or other of us. Or something we’ve overheard on a bus or a train – people should talk more quietly if they don’t want us to eavesdrop – or sometimes just a glimpse of a woman in a purple fleece…
But, in every one of these cases, we do what I always think of as the Roald Dahl George’s Marvellous Medicine trick, where a simple premise – a special medicine for George’s horrible grandmother – is exaggerated to its logical conclusion. So, Granny’s medicine contains every pill, potion and lotion George can find with predictably explosive results.
While we don’t have any actual explosions in A Forgiven Friend, and we don’t aspire to Dahl’s absurdities either, we do exaggerate.
What would you do if you’d collected three speeding tickets and were desperate to avoid a driving ban?
In A Forgiven Friend Teri, naturally, tries to persuade best friend, Lee to commit perjury and ‘take’ the points on her behalf. When Lee refuses, Teri has what in Yorkshire we call a massive ‘strop’, declares their friendship at an end, and targets her wealthy new boyfriend instead.
He too is reluctant to acquire a criminal record, so Teri falls out with him as well.
Next she wonders if the boyfriend’s chauffeur, a reformed ex-con, might have connections who could help out…
Of course, it’d never happen in real life. Who’d go to such lengths to keep their driving licence? Oh, wait, wasn’t there an MP and his wife who –?

Friendship will always come first.

There’s only one way out from rock bottom and that’s up, and Teri Meyer is finally crawling out from the worst time of her life – no thanks to her best friend Lee. But no matter, she’s finally found love – real love with a real man, a successful man, a man who accepts all her flaws. Teri’s never felt like this before, and yet it’s changing her in ways she doesn’t understand.

And there’s only one person who can help, one person who truly understands Teri.

It seems that no matter how hard Lee Harper tries, there’s a battle awaiting her at every turn these days, and she’s tired. And as if she needs the extra stress, Teri continues to create constant and unnecessary drama. But Lee’s the only one who really knows what’s going on under Teri’s hard, convoluted exterior, and that’s why she’s always been there for her.

But the question is: will Teri be there when Lee needs her most?

The brilliant and entertaining final book in the unique FRIENDS trilogy dishes out another dose of rib-tickling mayhem for our favourite thirty-something professional women.

Amazon UK      Amazon US 

Breaking Price News!!

A Falling Friend (book 1) will be FREE from November 18 - 22 (UK, AUS and US)








A Forsaken Friend (book 2): 99c/p from November 18 - 25 (UK and US)





Biographies: Sue Featherstone and Susan Pape
Sue Featherstone and Susan Pape are both former newspaper journalists with extensive experience of working for national and regional papers and magazines, and in public relations.
More recently they have worked in higher education, teaching journalism – Sue at Sheffield Hallam and Susan at Leeds Trinity University.
The pair, who have been friends for almost 30 years, wrote two successful journalism text books together – Newspaper Journalism: A Practical Introduction and Feature Writing: A Practical Introduction (both published by Sage), before deciding to turn their hands to fiction.
The first novel in their Friends series, A Falling Friend, was released in 2016. A Forsaken Friend followed two years later, and the final book in the trilogy, A Forgiven Friend, published on November 19.
Sue, who is married with two grown-up daughters, and the most ‘gorgeous granddaughter in the whole world’, loves reading, writing and Nordic walking in the beautiful countryside near her Yorkshire home.
Susan is married and lives in a village near Leeds, and, when not writing, loves walking and cycling in the Yorkshire Dales. She is also a member of a local ukulele orchestra.
They blog about books at https://bookloversbooklist.com/


Follow them on Twitter: @SueF_Writer and @wordfocus