Ooooh, I’ve been interviewed! Thanks lovely lady! xx
Author: Natalie
Happy Birthday and a cover reveal!
So the lovely folk at WordPress reminded me this morning that my website is three years old today! How is that even possible? Maybe this is what parents mean when they say time goes so quickly. I remember when I first started, I was worried nobody would even find the site and now, I’ve got over 2,000 followers – totally cray-cray!
To make the day even more special, Becca’s Books, kindly did a cover reveal this morning, for Wanderlust. It’ll be released this summer and is book 2 of the Pull series. I cannot WAIT for this one 🙂
When Selina gets dumped in a viral YouTube video, there’s only one thing she can do: withdraw her savings, quit her temping job and leave. Vowing never to fall for guys like her ex again, she swaps London for Ibiza and finds herself volunteering in Colinas Verde. With its alternative, relaxed lifestyle, sunny skies and deep blue sea, it’s the perfect place to start her backpacking adventure and forget the humiliation she left behind. If only it weren’t for Alex.
Berlin born Alex is travelling solo, and with good reason. In the wake of a promising rock climbing career cut short due to injury, he’s left a trail of disappointment and broken hearts behind him. Determined not to make the same mistakes again, he opted to volunteer in sleepy Colinas Verde over hedonistic Southern Ibiza and with only one week left, it was a choice that paid off, until Selina showed up.
New housemates Selina and Alex are both determined to change, but in a place where people come and go and relationships are intense, old habits die hard.
Two backpackers. One week. What happens in Ibiza…
❤
Eeeeeek! It’s publication day!!
Today is kind of surreal. It’s the day I never really imagined would happen when I was writing Together Apart. At best, I hoped to get a few sales – maybe enough to buy a new pair of shoes at the end of the year. Instead, I’m now finding myself celebrating the day it’s being re-released by an actual publisher. And not just any publisher, but one of the biggest names out there.
To say it’s beyond cool is an understatement, really and I’m going to celebrate with a ginormous mojito 🙂 Thanks to everyone who’s supported me so far. Today is simply a dream come true!
Oh, and here’s some info about the book (duh!) 😉
When Adam proposes to Sarah, the last thing he expects is to be single and heartbroken less than forty-eight hours later. But Sarah has a secret, and she’s willing to sacrifice everything to keep it.
Going through a break-up is hard enough but having to live together afterwards is even worse, especially when it’s a break-up neither person wants. For Adam, only ways to deal with it are drinking and partying. For Sarah, it’s keeping her distance and her secrets.
Against a backdrop of lies, betrayals and passion, the delicate threads holding Sarah’s secret begin to unravel when her past and present collide.
Romantic, intense and heartbreaking, Together Apart explores what it really means to love and be loved.
Love and Wanderlust
Hmmmmm. So they say you should write what you know. Well, I’ve taken some inspiration (it’s most definitely not all real) and my new short story this summer will be about two backpackers who meet in Ibiza over the course of one week. Here are the main characters…more info to come soon!
Sorry, not sorry.
So I read an interesting blog post on Becca’s Books yesterday. It was asking whether fictional romance gives readers unrealistic expectations when it comes to love. My answer was that it did, without a doubt. But it wasn’t a simple yes/no answer. I don’t know how many films I’d watched or books I’d read when I thought to myself ‘Yeah, yeah. Whatever. That would never happen in real life.’ That’s why they’re in fiction, right? But then I realised, I’m a writer, and I write about love. And I’m adding to this problem. I felt a flash of guilt, but it didn’t last long. The reason? Because things like that do exist.
Ok, so we now know that this photo was of two random people kissing in the street and not an actual couple, and ok, movie-like love doesn’t happen to everyone every day. I’m a skeptic about most things, but not when it comes to love. This is why I love my job, because I don’t think love is something you should compromise on.
In Together Apart, Adam loves Sarah without question. Even as he begins to uncover her past, it’s a love that never waivers. Does he like her all the time? No. She’s a pain in the ass, a secretive woman who’s broken his heart, but he still loves her. And in my new book, Love You Better, there’s Smith, the guy who was just plain awful, someone you should most definitely steer clear of, and yet, he still manages to get under Effie’s skin.
To me, the art of writing anything with a love story in it, is that it has to be realistic. Yes, readers want escapism, but they also want something they can aspire to. And what makes a great love story great, is that in the end, the couple are together despite everything that gets thrown at them. They don’t have to organise a flashmob in Central station, or fly halfway around the world before they realise they’re in love to do it.
What made the answer to the question posed in the blog more grey than black and white, was that I’m now in one of those relationships. Remember my post about falling in love while travelling? Being honest, that post was the skeptic in me, the part of me that has this ‘yeah, yeah, whatever’ reaction to the standard romance novel/romcom happy ending. What happened after I wrote that post, was that he went off to Nepal as planned, while I went to Thailand. I never dared to dream that he would join me in Thailand afterwards, or that we would travel to Cambodia together. And I definitely didn’t dare to imagine that I’d be invited to go to his brother’s wedding the week after we both landed back in our home countries, let alone visit his hometown. But that’s what happened, and that’s where I am as I write this post – in Germany, sitting in his mum’s garden while he does some DIY.
I can’t tell you how many times I’d get frustrated with the Hollywood happy ending when I’d date guys who’d cheat, go back to their exes or just drop off the face of the earth. It seemed too realistic to imagine ‘romance’ as it was in the books I loved being real, until I found myself in the situation myself.
And that’s why I’ll continue to write the stories I do. To me, these stories should be something to aspire to, whether we get them or not, instead of something to keep us down and believe that happiness is something that only happens in fiction.
After all, isn’t there a famous quote that to be a good writer, you should write what you know? So, yeah. Expect more of these stories from me. And I’m sorry, but I’m not sorry.
x
Natalie K. Martin 