I’m very pleased to welcome Mollie Blake to Linda’s Book Bag to celebrate The Secret At Arnford Hall. Mollie has kindly agreed to write a guest post all about escapism through fiction.

The Secret At Arnford Hall was published by Black Opal Books in February 2017 and is available for purchase through the links here.

The Secret At Arnford Hall

A Cheshire Love Story

He lived in a nightmare. His son brought him daylight. Can this woman be his breaking dawn?

Gabriel Black didn’t give a damn about the world. Until, that is, his seven-year-old son enters his life for the first time. The young boy brings daylight into the darkness of Gabriel’s world. But a single parent needs a distraction. And this single parent has no limits when it comes to getting what he wants…

She’s built a new life for herself on the ruins of the old, but this man can destroy everything she’s worked so hard to gain…

Grace McGuire lives with a dark secret—one that, if revealed, will destroy her new life. Then her world collides with that of forceful Gabriel Black, a multi-millionaire with a secret of his own—a secret Grace is determined to uncover, for her sanity and all she holds dear.

Escapism Through Fiction

A Guest Post by Mollie Blake

First of all I would like to thank Linda for giving me this opportunity to be a part of her blog. In another life as a finance director, I wrote board reports about numbers and performances, with confidence. However, as an author who has written five books in as many years, I am still nervous when it comes to writing guest posts to be read by people I don’t know.

I think the reason for that can be summed up in the topic – Escapism Through Fiction. Writing romantic thrillers laced with sexy scenes for readers I don’t know, doesn’t bother me at all.

Having always been a reader of fiction, stories consumed me from an early age. I can hear my dad telling me to get my head out of a book when, as a young girl, I would shut out the world to the extent of ignoring my mum calling me to dinner. I wasn’t in the bedroom I shared with my sister in our small terraced house. I was at the private boarding school in Enid Blyton’s Mallory Towers where girls slept in dormitories and went pony riding, and were chauffeur-driven in Rolls Royces. The books of my childhood didn’t inspire me. They didn’t even leave me desperate to write a story of my own. They simply took me away from my simple little home to a world of excitement. It was torture to shut the book and eat my Sunday lunch.

Perhaps you want a diversion from all that’s going on around you, be it the stresses of a job or the monotony of life in the home. Or you’re looking for something new, but you can’t put your everyday life on hold and run away for a while – and let’s face it, who can? Then a book is the perfect substitute. I’ve been on a donkey around Cameroon, I shared the rise in society of Pierre Bezukhov in War and Peace, I’ve lived through dangers with Jack Reacher, I blushed at the “naughtiness” in Shirley Conran’s Lace, and I cried for Jane Eyre. And these “diversions” are only a drop in the vast ocean of literary vessels which carry you to some place wonderful, or simply some place else. Some stories can even make you feel glad you’re you and not one of the hapless characters.

My journey of “escapism through fiction” didn’t happen overnight, but it did happen in a way that led to more than just reading a book. I left the world of finance, not to escape it, but to enter whole-heartedly into the world of a full time mum. However, after a few years, that world wasn’t enough. I needed another challenge in my life. I wasn’t cut out for full-time motherhood but I wanted the flexibility to be at home for my child when he needed me.

Instead of merely reading to escape some of the boredom of doing the housework, again, I decided to create my own stories to lose myself in.

I create characters I cherish, dangers I’m frightened of, emotions I want to share, and sexy scenes I…well, I like.

When I attend book readings I always tell my audience that I want to provide escapism for the reader, pure and simple. I’m not giving advice or offering help, although I’m always happy to connect with wannabe authors. But I do hope to inspire women. For example here’s one of the strap lines I use on my website:

Stories about confident women, who stand out in a crowd, not afraid to be different. Women who get what they want.

My aim is to take the reader to another place and hopefully grip them right to the end of the book. One reviewer of The Secret At Arnford Hall wrote

“I … really didn’t like Gabriel Black at all, to the point of feeling I didn’t want to read about him anymore … Even though I considered giving up on the book in the first few chapters something kept drawing me back to it … I did actually want to know what the big secret was. I’m so glad I did stick with it … By the end I could not put it down …”

So wherever you choose to escape to, indulge yourself in a great book and come back to reality refreshed. Maybe even inspired to try something new…

About Mollie Blake

Mollie Blake is the happily married mother of one son and lives in the UK.
Having left a former life as finance director of a privately owned multi-national in order to look after her son, Mollie has gone on to develop a passion for writing romance laced with danger and spiced with steamy scenes.

She is a creative and explorative writer, and has a strong desire to make her readers eager to meet her characters and unravel plots to discover their secrets.

With a love of romance, an enjoyment of the thrill of danger, and an intense desire for scenes of passion and sensuality, Mollie has written five books so far, all under contract with her American publisher Black Opal Books.

You can follow Mollie on Twitter, visit her website and find her on Facebook.