Today, I'm welcoming fellow Crooked Cat author - Zanna Mackenzie - who has come along to share her brand new release of yesterday!
Congratulations on yesterday's launch, Zanna. What's your book about?
Zanna: Hi, Nancy. Many thanks for hosting me on your blog today!
My novel, published by Crooked Cat, is called How Do You Spell Love? Here’s the details:
Make A Wish…
Kat can’t help wishing there was more to life than this.
What happened to her dream job? What happened with Nathan?
Summer is wondering where her life is going too… battling
the developers of a controversial housing estate and working out why boyfriend
Rob is increasingly distant.
When the developers win the battle and move into town
everyone’s life is turned upside down.
Kat meets building site project manager Alex. She enjoys his
company far too much, even though he’s on the town’s most hated list.
Summer meets Tom who has plenty of relationship troubles of
his own, so things could get really complicated.
Soon everyone is keeping secrets, lives change and hearts
are broken. Is everything falling apart, or does life just work in mysterious
ways…
There’s
a sneak peak of the book below and it can be purchased in paperback and ebook formats
now on:
How Do
You Spell Love?
Kat pushed the last of the cottage cheese and shrimp
sandwiches into the cool box and slammed the van door shut. As if her life
wasn’t enough of a disaster zone as it was – no money, lousy job, losing
Nathan, having to move back home to live with her parents – now this had to go
and happen. Plus, of course, it didn’t help that today she was feeling
shattered after spending half the night chanting some ridiculous protection
spell in the middle of the allotments with Summer.
Cringing as a van full of builders stopped at the nearby
traffic lights, Kat braced herself for the inevitable. After the standard-issue
wolf whistles had drifted across from their van, next came the leered,
“Wouldn’t argue with that, love!” as one of them nodded towards her sparkling
clean van, parked neatly at the curb. The words “A Bit of Crumpet on the Road”
emblazoned down the side in deep purple, glittery lettering. Not for the first
time Kat cursed her boss Janice for calling her bakery-cum-deli that name.
Kat sighed, well it certainly drew comments from the public
and from their customers, not always welcome ones, but as Janice was always
keen to point out, any kind of publicity and attention was, in her eyes, good
publicity and attention.
Pulling her navy and white striped apron more tightly around
her T-shirt and shorts, Kat ignored the builders and climbed into her van to
begin that morning’s deliveries. As she indicated to pull out into the busy
street in Luisborough, she mulled over the bad news – that she was to add the
controversial Netherton Meadows housing development to her daily sandwich
round.
Netherton Meadows. Yippee. If Summer found out, she’d surely
be ostracised for fraternising with the environmental enemy. This was a
development that pretty much everyone in Luisborough had fought against for
getting on towards a year. It had been the focus of STW campaigns. It went
against everything that Kat believed in environmental-wise. Everyone hated the
Netherton Meadows developers. Except, it seemed, Janice, who was perfectly
happy to, in her words, ‘supply yummy builders with yummy sandwiches.’
Lost in thought, Kat just managed to spot the approaching
traffic lights had turned to red and hastily slammed a foot on the brake. The
van lurched to a halt and several boxes of crisps and one of the cool boxes in
the back tipped over. Damn. It was shaping up to be one of those days.
Ten minutes later she pulled into the car park of Printing
Phenomenon, hauled some baskets and a box from the van and headed for the
reception area. It was getting towards late July and was another one of those
blazing hot days that made every little thing feel as though it required a huge
amount of effort. The kind of day the people of the UK are so unaccustomed to, where
all you want to do is get a large, cool drink and collapse into a deckchair for
a long snooze.
Two hours later Kat had visited all her usual drops, was
extremely hot and bothered, and could put off going to Netherton Meadows no
longer.
Driving through the assorted vans, machinery and portacabins
Kat parked next to a building marked as being the Site Office and hit the
button on the dashboard. Tinkling chimes filled the air as Kat climbed from the
driver’s seat and made to open the back doors of the vehicle. It was
embarrassing enough that the van had the company name in large lettering along
its side but, just to make sure that it received maximum exposure – and
achieved maximum embarrassment – Janice had had some irritating chimes fitted
to the vehicle too. Kat was under strict instructions to sound the chimes when
she called at all of the sites where people came out to the van; such as they
were about to at Netherton Meadows.
A man came down the steps of the office with a grin on his
face and walked towards her. “Hi, you must be Kat.” He wedged a clipboard under
his left arm and offered a hand to shake. “I’m Alex. Project manager for the
site.”
“Hi,” mumbled Kat, spotting a group of hard-hat-clad
builders advancing towards her with hungry expressions on their faces.
“Right, lads,” Alex turned towards the men. “This is Kat and
she’s very kindly agreed to venture onto this site to bring you all your lunch.
Don’t give her any hassle, OK?”
The men laughed and then nodded. “Sure, Alex. You’re the
boss.”
Fifteen minutes later it seemed that all of the team at the
development had made their sandwich, crisp and drink selections and sloped off
to devour them in the sunshine. Only one of the builders, a portly man who must
have been twenty years Kat’s senior, had pushed the boundaries a little,
despite Alex’s earlier warning. As he’d selected a smoked salmon and cream
cheese roll – a choice that had surprised Kat somewhat, having pegged him as a
ham and cheese kind of guy – he’d asked Kat if she’d fancy joining him for a
drink sometime. She’d politely declined his offer, saying that she had a
boyfriend. No need to tell him that, technically, she and Nathan were no longer
an item. No need to tell him why either.
Just as Kat slammed the van doors shut, Alex re-appeared
from his office.
“Thanks, Kat. I hope none of them caused any trouble?” he
asked, taking off his yellow hard hat and running a hand through cropped dark
brown hair in an agitated fashion.
“No, they were all fine.” Kat forced a smile, struggling to
tuck an escaped tendril of curly blond hair back into her ponytail. God, it was
hot today. “Thanks for being so gentlemanly about their behaviour.”
He grinned back at her. “No problem. I know what they can be
like and as soon as I saw you getting out of the van I thought I’d better
intervene. I’ve had enough problems getting a company to even contemplate
coming to this site without them scaring you off on the first day.”
“Problems? Why do you think that is?” asked Kat, sensing an
opportunity to make sure this man was fully aware just how much the people of
Luisborough were still against the development.
“Because they hate us around here,” he said, shrugging
matter-of-factly.
“And that doesn’t bother you?” Kat was now leaning against
the van, noting that Alex seemed, somehow, a bit different to the rest of the
team on the site. He had a jaded air about him despite the fact that he was
clearly much younger than most of the others. Kat couldn’t help noticing that
he was also extremely good looking.
“Yes, it bothers me but what can you do?” He sighed. “A
job’s a job in this day and age. We all have to make a living, don’t we?”
Softening a little towards him, Kat nodded and rolled her
eyes. “Tell me about it.”
He moved to stand next to her, propping himself against the
van. Kat hadn’t realised until that moment just how tall he was. “Take you, for
instance. I can’t imagine it was your lifelong ambition to drive around in a
van with that name on the side of it. You must get no end of grief.”
“I do but I need to earn some money to get my life back on
track, so here I am.”
“Is this your first job?” he asked, setting his hat and
clipboard on the roof of the van and looking at her intently.
“Pretty much. I recently finished a degree in environmental
science and geography at university.” She added, trying to sound optimistic,
“I’m waiting for my dream job to come along. In the meantime I work at the deli
for a pittance and spend the rest of my time volunteering in a charity shop in
town.”
“Dream job, eh?” He turned towards her, brown eyes looking
at her in a genuinely interested way. “What would your dream job be, then?”
Kat smiled. “That’s easy. I’d love to work on a project like
a nature reserve. Helping to preserve the environment, look after the wildlife.
The charity shop where I volunteer is the Save the World one. My boss there,
Summer, is a good friend and a great campaigner against developments like
this.”
Aware that she was telling him things that she hadn’t really
spoken to anyone about since Nathan, she quickly turned away. He was a complete
stranger. A stranger who stood for everything she was against. He was the
enemy, supervising the building of a development that she, and many others, had
fought to try to prevent.
Reaching onto the van roof to hand the hat and clipboard
back to Alex, she said, “I’d better be going.”
“Sure. Thanks for coming out here.” He started to walk away
but then paused, turned back towards her and added, “See you tomorrow, then?”
Kat nodded. As she drove off, she felt more flustered than
when she’d arrived. Unfortunately she had a growing suspicion that it had
nothing to do with the hot weather or having to bring food to the development
against her will. Rather, she suspected, it had much more to do with meeting
Alex the site manager. Not a good sign at all.
Great excerpt, Zanna. Thank you for sharing and best wishes with sales of your brand new story.
Slainthe!
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