Katie in Love by Chloe Thurlow
Katie Boyd has nothing in common with Tom Bridge, the volunteer doctor she meets at a party – except in bed she finds a passion to match her own. Tom is intense, puzzling, a man who cares about others and compels Katie to question her own life drifting through the hip clubs and London party scene.
When Tom returns to his post in a Sri Lanka orphanage, Katie isn’t sure if their passion was lit by its brevity, or if love, unexpected and not entirely wanted, has edged its way into her life. Should she go back to being who she always was? Or follow Tom into the unknown?
Katie in Love is a compelling erotic-romance that will grip readers as they follow Katie’s journey to an ending they may have expected – but not in the way they expected it.
Brilliantly written and coolly self-aware, Chloe Thurlow was described by KM Dylan on Amazon as “…the Anaïs Nin of our times.” With Katie in Love – her sixth novel – Thurlow reveals a writer at the height of her powers.
Katie in Love is out in paperback and released digitally on 21 March
Books: http://bookgoodies.com/a/1503014908
Ebook: http://bookgoodies.com/a/B00S1SMMIG
Author Interview:
please tell us a little bit about your current projects?
I fell over on an icy day in the park and broke my little finger. Then I met a man – that’s a project in itself. My notes became a story. The story became Katie in Love, my new novel. It took 13 months to write and my heart and soul are pressed between the pages.
When was the moment that you knew you had to be a writer?
I wrote an essay on Jean-Paul Sartre at university and my tutor hated it. He said it was tedious, unoriginal and full of clichés. He was tough, unkind a complete bastard and he was right. He haunted me. Everything I wrote from that day on I edited, cut, rewrote and cried over. A year later, he persuaded me to write a short story for a magazine. The story was published. I saw my name in print and my fate was sealed.
Who gave you the one piece of writing advice that sticks with you to this day?
I have an uncle who writes. He said: No one knows why we do it, and when we do it, it’s rare that anyone wants to read it. We just have to keep doing it.
Describe the “perfect” hero. What about the “perfect” hero for you?
The perfect hero is someone who says and does the right thing even when others are against them, and they know they will have problems from doing it. Gandhi was the perfect hero, Nelson Mandella – and, of course, Brad Pitt as Achilles in the movie Troy.
What are some of your favorite pastimes? Do you have any hobbies or collections?
I have a large collection of shoes and culling them for me is like killing baby animals. I like to dance, swim and fast-walk. I would like to paint, but have less ability than a 5 year old, and I love sitting up late on warm nights drinking cava (Spanish champagne) and solving the world’s problems.
If your fairy godmother waved her wand and whisked you away to the location of your choice, which place would you choose, and why?
I would like to live in a white house on the Spanish Mediterranean with a red-tiled roof with iron balconies and bougainvillea climbing the walls. I would swim in the morning and have breakfast in a café – lots of hot coffee and an almond croissant. I would return to my quite room with pale light falling through half-opened shutters and write. I would study Spanish in the afternoon, swim again, walk in the hills at twilight, then I would drink cava under the stars and talk too much.
When it comes to food, are you the adventurous type who will try anything once, or do you prefer to stick to tried and true foods and recipes?
Mmm, that’s hard. I try to be adventurous, but I am secretly a bit conservative. I am a lousy cook, although I do a reasonable cheese omelette.
What is the one modern convenience that you cannot do without?
I guess it’s my laptop. We keep our lives, our photographs, in these little machines. They are like walking sticks, or iron lungs. Though, having said that, a pencil and a lined notebook has a way of gathering our thoughts in ways that seem more original and draw on hidden wells of the past.
What is this romance writer’s idea of the “ideal romantic evening”?
A movie and pizza with HIM whose character I borrowed and moulded for Katie in Love and for which HE has yet to decide whether he’s thrilled or disturbed.
How do you describe yourself? How would your family and friends describe you?
Mother and my best friend Lizzie Woodham, another writer, describe me as spoiled. Father thinks I’m wonderful and, most important, HE thinks I’m wonderful. At least I think he does. How would I describe myself: I always try to do what I say I am going to do. I work hard, suffer insomnia, which makes me grumpy in the morning and racy after drinking too much coffee. I believe we create our own destiny and try to be a nice person so that nice things come back to me. I feel lucky.
What is your favorite comfort food?
Chocolate.
What is your favorite season? What do you love about it?
Summer. Swimming in the sea. Not wearing clothes. The stars at night. The taste of the air.
What is the one modern convenience that you cannot do without?
Power showers.
What project are you working on next?
I am going to write a new novel. It is set in New York and Long Island. It’s about a woman with two kids who is nearly 40 falling for a man in his 20s. Katie in Love and my earlier novels use chunks of my own life. I want to write something that is pure fiction and way beyond my safety zone.
Any place we can find you in person or on the net this month or next?
There are a couple of things cooking for the end of March. The details will be on my blog at www.chloethurlow.com
AUTHOR BIO
I am the girl at the bar at 2.00 in the morning who looks like she should have gone home and maybe has no home to go to. I am an insomniac. I write my stories in the dead hours of night while the red eye flights lower over London and the lights come up in the glass-walled City banks.
Katie in Love is my sixth novel, an erotic romance that attempt to stretch the genre into areas of philosophy, art and politics. It’s about falling in love in an age where falling in love can be difficult, painful and misconstrued. It is a book about our times, for our times.
Other stuff: I am 29, a dangerous age for a woman, I feel. I live in London, sometimes Barcelona, where I study Spanish and can never seem to cast off my awful English accent.
You can find me at – www.chloethurlow.com
Email – chloe.thurlow@yahoo.co.uk
Twitter – @chloethurlow1
FaceBook – https://www.facebook.com/chloe.thurlow.5
