As February is the month of love, I have had a host of wonderful romance authors stopping by to share flirty extracts from their novels!
Today, I am pleased to welcome Jane Cable to my blog, who is #SharingTheLove with an extract from her novel, The Cheesemaker’s House … over to you Jane!
The Cheesemaker’s House
“When newly divorced Alice moves to Yorkshire, she meets her neighbours from the present and the past…
My mental image of a Yorkshire builder was a rotund man in a cloth cap who would exhibit a great deal of sucking of teeth when confronted with my barn. I certainly didn’t expect Richard Wainwright to be tall, dark and handsome with a couple of days of designer stubble and a gold hoop in his left ear. But then I didn’t expect a naked swimmer to be reading the lesson in church either. It’s clear I’m going to have to abandon my southern prejudices sooner rather than later if I’m going to fit in here. But I still can’t help feeling we should all be running around downing mugs of tea you can stand a spoon up in, not drinking skinny lattes.
In this aspect of his behaviour Richard doesn’t disappoint. I am already making the second pot when he reappears from his prodding and poking in the barn, drapes his long body against my kitchen doorframe and says “I can do it, but it’s going to cost you.”
“I expect it to cost me,” I grin at him. “It’s a wreck I want to turn into a luxury holiday pad – I know that won’t come cheap.”
He wanders into the kitchen and sits down at the table. “I’ll need to do a proper quote, but I reckon in the region of twenty grand. It’s a lot of money – take you a while to get it back.”
“I’ll get it back when I sell though.”
“Oh, so that’s your game is it; buy – do up – sell – quick buck.” He looks disapproving.
“No. It’s not my game. It’s my insurance policy in case I don’t like it here.”
He stretches back in his chair and picks up his tea. “So why did you come? I’m curious.”
“Well, you mustn’t tell anybody, but I’m on the run from an international drug smuggling cartel and I thought they’d never find me in Great Fencote.”
“Hmm… I wouldn’t be so sure. You don’t know what evil walks the streets of Northallerton. Only last week someone was prosecuted for putting the wrong sort of yogurt pot in their recycling bin – it was all over the papers.” We both burst out laughing.
“Seriously, love,” he carries on, “if you don’t want to say then that’s your business. No-one around here’s going to mind.”
“I was just trying to make it sound more exciting than it is. My husband ran off with his secretary, that’s all.”
“It happens. My wife left me for a pen pusher at the council. Said she’d had enough of muddy boots all through the house. Each to their own, I suppose.” He shrugs.
“The funny thing is,” I continue hesitantly, “that when it happens to you, you feel like it’s never happened to anyone else. When someone else says it, you realise just how common it is.”
“Human nature, love. We’re not cut out to be monogamous. We get bored and we move on, that’s all there is to it. Still, if you get lonely and fancy a shag…”
“Let’s see what sort of builder you are first,” I snap. Maybe a little too tartly, so I put on a smiley face and continue “I want to know if the muddy boots are worth it.”
Richard roars with laughter.
Thank you for sharing your extract Jane, The Cheesemaker’s House is on my to be read list! And as my mother-in-law is a BIG fan I am happy to have gained daughter-in-law points just by knowing you 🙂
Discover more about The Cheesemaker’s House:
When Alice Hart’s husband runs off with his secretary, she runs off with his dog to lick her wounds in a North Yorkshire village. Battling with loneliness but trying to make the best of her new start, she soon meets her neighbours, including the drop-dead gorgeous builder Richard Wainwright and the kindly yet reticent café owner, Owen Maltby.
As Alice employs Richard to start renovating the barn next to her house, all is not what it seems. Why does she start seeing Owen when he clearly isn’t there? Where – or when – does the strange crying come from? And if Owen is the village charmer, what exactly does that mean?
“I desperately want to find out about Owen; a fascinating character… the gift here is to make you want to read on.”
Jeffrey Archer
Publisher: Matador
Genre: Romantic Suspense
Buy the book Amazon UK | Amazon.com
About the author:
Jane Cable has writing in her blood. Her father, Mercer Simpson, was a poet; her cousin, Roger Hubank, a novelist; Roger’s uncle, John Hampson was also a novelist and fringe member of the Bloomsbury Group. And it’s even rumoured that John Keats is somewhere back in her family tree.
She has always scribbled. But it took until she was in her forties to complete a full length manuscript. And then another, and another… Writing stories became a compulsive hobby. She could lose herself in her characters, and longed for readers other than her mother and close friends to be able to do the same.
It was reaching the final of The Alan Titchmarsh Show’s People’s Novelist competition, with The Cheesemaker’s House, in 2011 which made her take her writing seriously. The novel went on to win Words for the Wounded’s independent book of the year award in 2015.
Jane’s second book, The Faerie Tree, also published by Matador, is a second chance novel revolving around a couple who meet twenty years after a brief affair only to discover that their memories of it are completely different.
Jane is over the moon to have recently signed a contract with Sapere Books for two novels to be published in 2019. The first will be a re-issue of her novel Another You, which disappeared when Endeavour Press went into liquidation. The second is a new romance slipping back to World War Two, set in the Lincolnshire heartland of Bomber Command.
Discover more about Jane Cable here: Twitter | Facebook | website
I am hugely grateful to all of the wonderful romance authors who have stopped by my blog #SharingTheLove.
I hope you’ve enjoyed reading the extracts as much as I have and that in amongst them you’ve been able to discover some new romance reads. xx
Carol Thomas writes contemporary romance novels, with relatable heroines whose stories are layered with emotion, sprinkled with laughter and topped with irresistible male leads. Discover more here.
That excerpt has made me want to push the book right up to the top of my tbr list. I have it on Kindle. Sounds like a real reason to ignore housework!!! Thanks for the appetiser.
That’s great, Angela. x