Fossend Publishing

Fossend Publishing

Thursday 17 November 2016

The Boy Who Hugs Trees by Dougie McHale


Everyone has secrets but some can change your world forever.
Emily has a secret; 30 years ago the choices she made changed her world forever. And now, it resonates in the present, threatening to reveal its truth.
When Georgia removes her son, Dylan, from a prominent Edinburgh school, she relocates to the family home on the Greek island of Corfu. The discovery of her late mother’s diary immerses Georgia in her parent's troubled marriage, a story of love and tragedy.

Adam’s life has become predictable, something is missing, and it has to change. When he answers an advert to home teach a boy with autism, he hopes his life will take on a new direction and meaning. But he hasn’t bargained on falling in love.

Can Georgia and Adam continue to resist the attraction that draws them closer?
Nothing will prepare Georgia for the diaries final revelation which will force her to question everything she knew about her mother and everything she knows about herself.

The Boy Who Hugs Trees is an intimate, compelling and intensely moving love story that unfolds and reveals the profound impact of impossible choices.       


Q: Welcome back to the Fossend Publishing blog Dougie.  Can you give the readers a brief overview of your book, The Boy Who Hugs Trees.
A: It’s a pleasure and thank you for having me Chrissie. The Boy Who Hugs Trees is my second novel and like the first it is set in Greece, but this time Corfu. It flits from two time lines, the early 1970’s and 2008.
Georgia is a woman of substance, who lives in Stockbridge, Edinburgh with her property developer husband, Stephen. They have a son, Dylan, who attends a private school in Edinburgh. Dylan has autism, he is bright and likes to learn, but school is not a happy place for him.
Georgia decides to remove Dylan from the school and home tutor him. The family has a house in Corfu. It belonged to Georgia’s parents and passed to her upon their deaths. Georgia is convinced that Dylan will benefit from spending some time there. She sets about the task of employing a tutor. At the same time, Stephen’s business interests have taken him to Majorca, Spain, where he will spend several months on and off. The proposed move to Corfu intensifies the cracks that have been festering in their marriage, and as tensions rise, their relationship is tested when Georgia hires a male tutor.
Adam is a university lecturer, specializing in autism. His life has become unbearably predictable and when he applies to an advert to tutor a boy with autism on the island of Corfu, he hopes his life will take on a new direction and meaning. But he hasn’t bargained on falling in love.
The discovery of Georgia’s late mother’s diary immerses Georgia in her parent's troubled marriage, a story of love and tragedy that feels very familiar to her own. Within the diary there is a secret her mother kept for thirty years and with each page Georgia reads it will soon resonate in the present and threaten to reveal its truth.
As life at the house in Corfu takes on routine and meaning and Adam blends into the lives of Georgia and Dylan, he finds his feelings for Georgia grow with each day, but unsure of how Georgia feels he tries to suppress them. Stephen visits when he can, but each time he does his intolerance of having another man live with his family has devastating effects for them all. 
Can Georgia and Adam continue to resist the attraction that draws them closer?
Nothing will prepare Georgia for the diaries final revelation which will force her to question everything she knew about her mother and everything she knows about herself.

The Boy Who Hugs Trees is an intimate, compelling and intensely moving love story that unfolds and reveals the profound impact of impossible choices.       

Q: What inspired you to write The Boy Who Hugs Trees?
A: I wanted to write about a search for happiness and this is what the two main characters try to achieve. It’s a journey into the human heart that exposes the beauty and frailty of what it means to be human, to love, to hate, and to discover that the choices people make in the past can have devastating outcomes in the future.  

Q: Can you tell readers why you chose to highlight Autism in The Boy Who Hugs Trees?
A: There is that saying, you should write about what you know. As well as having a son who has autism, I am a children’s learning disability nurse with a postgraduate diploma in autism and I work with families who have children and young people with autism. I am also part of a team that diagnoses children and young people for autism. I didn’t want to portray the stereotypical image of autism that is often in the media. I wanted to show that people who have autism are individuals with their own personalities and characteristics who are not defined just by autism alone. So it was important to try and get over how someone with autism may experience the world around them, but equally Dylan, who is the young boy in the novel, has the same wants, and needs as every other person his age.      

Q: Like your first book The Homecoming, The Boy Who Hugs Trees is set Greece. What made you choose to write about Greece again?
A: Although my books are standalone novels, they have a common theme, and that is they are mostly set in Greece and in particular, the Ionian Islands and that was a conscious choice I made right at the start when I was writing my first novel. I had the idea of writing a trilogy, but I didn’t want to be restricted to the same characters or story lines so the concept of making the books set on the same group of islands was formed. I haven’t marketed the novels as a trilogy, but in my head they are. I should call them ‘The Ionian Trilogy.’ 

Q: Did writing The Boy Who Hugs Trees involve any research?
A: It did actually. Although I have been to Corfu, when it came to writing about the island I still had to research about the capital, Corfu Town and the island in general. Google is a lifesaver. During the novel, Georgia’s husband, Stephen, gets involved in drugs trafficking so I had to make myself familiar with the drugs trade in Greece, Spain, and the Balkans. Scary stuff. Also, as part of the novel is set in the early 1970’s I needed to make that period in the novel as authentic as possible so I researched that time period in Corfu as well. 

Q: What do you enjoy the most about writing?
A: I love the creative process. I get a lot of satisfaction from writing words that become sentences, paragraphs and finally chapters that have the potential to connect with the reader by conjuring images within their minds eye with the possibility to evoke potent emotions, laughter, sadness, empathy etc.  I like to observe human behavior and mannerisms. I often listen to how people speak and watch the gestures they use to communicate with one another. It informs my writing and characterization. I love the feeling I get when I’m satisfied with a piece I’ve just written.
To know that people are actually reading my books, meeting the characters, and hopefully emotionally responding to them and their story is quite humbling actually.

Q: What do you dislike the most about writing?
A: I don’t dislike anything about writing, how can I dislike something I love?   

Q: Tell the readers something interesting about yourself that others may not know.
A: My favourite classical instrument is the Cello.

Q: What’s next for Dougie McHale? 
A: Another book. A few years ago I saw a painting by an artist called Lena Sotskova. I knew that one day I would write a book with that painting as its inspiration. I have ideas forming in my head. I know it will have two time lines, one in the early 1900’s and modern day. Of course, it will be set in Greece on an Ionian island, but I’m not sure which one. The story will lead me to the particular island.  Since it takes me about a year from start to finish, it won’t be published until late 2017. 


Quick fire round
Beach or countryside – Both
EBook or paperback – Paperback
Classic or modern – Mostly classic
Notebook and pen or computer A bit of both really
Sun or Snow – Sun 


About the author












In a past life Dougie has been a dockyard worker, student, musician and song writer, playing in several bands, performing live and recording music. He has a degree in Learning Disability nursing and a post graduate diploma in autism. Dougie lives in Dunfermline, Fife, with his wife, teenage daughter, older son and hyper active golden retriever. He is interested in identifying with a physical place and the feeling of belonging therefore Edinburgh and especially Greece are prominent in his writing.  Dougie has written two novels, inspired by a love of all things Greek, her islands, people, landscapes, sea, light and ambience all of which are important themes and symbols in his writing.

To learn more about Dougie McHale go to his website or follow him on facebook.  

Sunday 6 November 2016

What happened to Rose by Helga Zeiner


Book Description

A mystery so shocking it needs to stay hidden

Carola’s life is perfect – or so it seems. Her husband, her friends, her staff don’t see the emptiness of a loveless existence. Every day is the same, until the day when she has enough. Without warning she leaves her home country of Germany to start a new life in the Canadian wilderness. 
But she is not equipped to handle the hardships of a lonely existence in a remote cabin. A five-day snowstorm brings her close to her breaking point. Searching for means to survive, she discovers the written confession of the previous cabin owner who wants to clear his conscience by admitting to a terrible sin he committed involving a girl called Rose.
When the storm subsides, Carola begins to ask questions but nobody is willing to talk. Nobody wants to tell what happened to Rose, but Carola becomes obsessed with finding out the truth.

Will Rose finally get justice? If you love mystery and suspense, with an added romance bonus, this new novel by an Amazon bestselling author will keep you turning the pages all night long.


Q: Welcome to the Fossend Publishing Blog Helga.  Can you give the readers a brief overview of your Book, What Happened to Rose.
A: Hello, and thank you for inviting me to this interview. My new novel is an intense mystery about a little girl called Rose stolen from her family and place into a new home deep in the Canadian wilderness. I don’t want to explain too much – the nature of a mystery is to keep things hidden as long as possible, right? 

Q: Can you tell us a little bit about yourself, and when your interest in writing began.
A: The day I read my first book – I was about nine, and my dad gave me the 80 volume collection of a German writer called Karl May – I fell in love with books, and with the idea of storytelling. Soon after, I began to experiment with words. My poor family suffered through exhausting times of having to listen to my literary trials and errors.

Q: What prompted you to write What Happened to Rose?
A: Believe it or not, but I had a vision of the incident of Rose’s disappearance while I walked along the shore of a picturesque lake in the Rocky Mountains. I saw it so clearly, I researched later on in newspapers and historic archives if such a crime actually happened. I found no reference, but like my protagonist Carola, I became obsessed with finding out Rose’s fate.

Q: What challenges did you face when writing What Happened to Rose?  
A: To have the story so close and so clear in my mind became a bit overpowering. All my books have part of my life woven into the storyline, but none are as ‘autobiographic’ as Rose’s story. My challenge was to separate fiction from fact when I had to leave the computer and come back into this world.

Q: Do you have any specific writing routines?  
A: Before I start, I count myself down from ten to zero. Then I imagine a door opening to my very private writing palace. I enter it, close the door, and voila – I’m in the zone.

Q: What is the best thing about writing?
A: Being in the zone.

Q: What is the worst thing about writing?
A: Having to leave the zone.

Q: Do you do a lot of research for your books?  If so how important is research for you?
A: Research is a major part of all my books. I research as much as possible in advance, usually locations, historic dates etc. I travel to all the places I write about. But while writing, my story often takes me to a place or date I’m not very familiar with, so I need to research as I write along.

Q: Do you read?  If so what type of books do you read? 
A: A lot. I love psychological thrillers, like Gone Girl.

Q: Do you have a favorite author?  If so, who and why?
A: I still love Stephen King.

Q: Tell the readers something interesting about yourself that others may not know.
A: I did a skydiving course in a British military camp in Netheravon. Three weeks, being trained and jumping with the finest soldiers, some of them holding world records in skydiving. I loved it.

Q:  What’s next for Helga Zeiner?
A: Going into the editing stage of my next book, called ‘The Shadow Master’ … and building a new home for us. A cottage even deeper in the woods than our current home.

Quick fire round
Sweet or savoury – vanilla ice cream sweet
Beach or countryside – countryside, but with a lake
EBook or paperback - EBook
Classic or modern - Mixed
Sun or Snow – snow in the sun

About the Author

















Helga Zeiner is a German born Canadian author. She left her home town Augsburg at age eighteen to explore the world. In the following fourteen years she has lived and worked in Australia and Asia, writing in her spare time.
Several of her thrilling novels have been on the Amazon bestseller list and enjoy an enthusiastic fan base. 
She now lives with her husband on a country estate in the wilderness of British Columbia, devoting all her time to writing.
Helga Zeiner has published five novels in German and two in English. She is currently writing her third English thriller
To learn more about Helga visit her website or follow her on facebook, twitter, LinkedIn and goodreads.

Thursday 3 November 2016

Awaiting Bliss by Elle Henry


Q: Welcome to the Fossend Publishing blog Elle. Can you give the readers a brief overview of your book, Awaiting Bliss.
A: The novel Awaiting Bliss is all about finding your inner happiness. Letting go of any drama in your life by living your best life and becoming your best self. The main character Allison Jacobs has endured many trying times in her romantic life. An atypical people pleaser—Allison realises she will never find that unexpected happiness until she becomes one in her own skin. For once she decides to forgo proper etiquette and live life.

Q: Can you tell us a little bit about yourself as an author.
A: Surprisingly, I’m very aloof and introverted. I may even come off as shy in some social settings. On the exterior I’m well put together, however, on the inside I’m a ball of nerves. A bit of a dork—I love anything Victorian. An avid bibliophile, I can spend hours in the day reading. It’s the best part of being an editor. I get to read get stories!

Q: What prompted you to write Awaiting Bliss, which is contemporary romance?
A: Awaiting Bliss is actually the very first manuscript I’ve ever drafted. The story itself is almost five years old. Allison was my very first character creation, and like many writers I was very protective of her story. I did introduce her in Pieces of Me; however, I wasn’t ready to tell her complete story yet. I needed to grow some more as a writer. 

Q: Did you face any challenges when writing it?  
A: The sexual content was out of my comfort zone as a writer. I wanted a challenge with this novel. It’s very steamy and adult without being raunchy. At the end of the day the story is romantic and tasteful. 

Q: What type of writer are you. Are you a plotter or Pantser? 
A: A little bit of both now. In the beginning, I would definitely say I was a pantser. I would grab a pen or my MacBook and let inspiration find me. Now, I see that having an outline is very important when it comes to the flow of a story. I don’t necessarily plot every scene, but I do have an idea of what the chapters will look like. Best of both worlds!

Q: Do you have any specific writing routines?  
A: Yes, I ALWAYS write in pyjamas! I don’t why but it has become tradition. Every since the first book, I’ve written in pyjamas it’s sorta of a good luck thing for me. Also, I need my Twinings Earl Grey tea. 

Q: Writing can be hard work, what do you do to relax, or when you need to step away from the computer for a bit? 
A: Manicures and pedicures are a must in my life. I like going to get pampered every couple of weeks—leaving all my real world problems; behind even if it’s own for a couple of hours

Q: What is the best thing about writing?
A: Going on the journey with your characters. You maybe the author; however, the characters drive the story. Awaiting Bliss started in a very different direction. I’m glad these characters forced me outside of my comfort zone. 

Q: What is the worst thing about writing? 
A: Editing and Revision. Never edit your work, it’s the best advice I can give. 

Q: What’s next for Elle Henry?
A: I’m planning on completing book two Awaiting Desire due out Valentine’s day and The Beautiful Ones, the follow up to More Than Words. 

Quick fire round
Sweet or savoury - Sweet
Beach or countryside - Beach
EBook or paperback - Paperback
Classic or modern - Classic
Sun or Snow - Snow

About the Author

























Elle Henry is an Amazon bestselling author, her works include two Poetry and Story Collections: Pieces of Me and Epiphany, novels More Than Words and Awaiting Bliss Anthologies Nightmarish Eve and Black, Blue and Purple Pain. Her education includes BA and MA in English and Creative Writing. Aside from her writing, she is a blogger for Hype Orlando “Candidly Elle”. She’s an Editor and writing consultant for self-publishing writers through her company Tres Chic Edits. Elle credits her inspiration from some of her favorite authors such as the Bronte sisters, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Daphne Du Maurier, Sylvia Plath and Stephen King. In her spare time, she enjoys traveling, reading and visiting museums. Originally from Orlando, Elle now lives with her family in Pennsylvania.  


To learn more about Elle visit her website, or follow her on Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest or Goodreads