Loving Without Limits: Damaged Goods by Susan Mac Nicol #interview #giveaway

Welcome all!

Today I’m very lucky to be interviewing Susan Mac Nicol, author of Damaged Goods

Hi Susan, thank you for agreeing to this interview. Tell us a little about yourself and your background?

I’m a British author, living in a gorgeous thatched cottage in a village called Shalford, not far from London. I’m married, with two grown children and just celebrated my 32nd wedding anniversary. My husband must be a saint to put up with me for so long. I’ve been writing for just under three years now, and love every minute of it. I have a day job, which gets in the way of what I want to do-writing- but that’s life.

I lived in South Africa for thirty years, before coming back to the UK nearly sixteen years ago. I love living in England, it’s an amazing place to live.

How much research do you do?

I’m passionate about research. I believe that delivering the best possible effort to get things right for a reader when you’re writing about subjects that you may have not experienced personally is paramount. They deserve accuracy and realism. I visited a lighthouse on the Norfolk coast when I wrote Worth Keeping. I stayed in a circus when I decided to write a story set in one, a story called Living on Air. For Double Alchemy, I visited all the London locations where the book was set so I could see them for myself, including the ponds where Cade swam. I consulted neurologists when I wrote a book about Jax in Damaged Goods and his visual impairment. So research is important to me.

Do you work to an outline or plot or do you prefer just see where an idea takes you?

I am a pantser, preferring to see where the book takes me. I do have a rough idea of how to start the story, but from then on, it becomes a free for all. I sit down, I write and the story and the characters take me where I need to go. I do a timeline document where I keep track of the important events and dates, so I don’t trip myself up.

Who designed your book cover/s?

I’m really fortunate in that my publisher has this whizz kid called Chris Keeslar, who is wonderful at designing my covers and making sure it reflects the story. Chris is also the Editor in Chief of Boroughs Publishing Group and a busy man. So the fact he takes time out to make me feel really happy when he does a book cover for me is incredible. The covers always seem to reflect the essence of the story and look hot and sexy no matter what. I’m rather fussy about my covers and I get to have a 100% say in everything that goes down.

Do you think that the cover plays an important part in the buying process?

I do think the cover is important. It’s what draws the reader’s eyes to think ‘Hmm, I rather fancy the look of that.’ It doesn’t have to be naked men or glistening torsos, sometimes a book cover can be simple but effective and still pull people in. People tend to be rather visual and sometimes you do judge a book by its cover. Font, images, placement and visual appeal all make it a design process that determines whether people will buy that particular book. Dean F. Wilson wrote rather a good post about book covers here.

What is your favourite quote?

My favourite quote is by an American economist and author, Thomas Sowell. ‘Life does not ask what we want. It presents us with options.’ I don’t believe that we are destined towards a certain path, I believe we can make decision to affect our own futures. I think we can rise above adversity and change our lives for the better. It’s all down to one person- me, myself and I- to change the future.

Title: Damaged Goods

Author: Susan Mac Nicol

Series: Men of London #7

Release Date: April 28th 2016

Genre: New Adult MM Contemporary Romance

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BLURB

Touched by tragedy, love is an elusive dream never to be realised by eighteen-year-old Jax Grady--until he discovers is secret admirer and receives the sweetest gift he could ever desire.

THE SWEETEST GIFT

Tragedy and horror shaped Jackson Grady's life, leaving him orphaned and scarred. At eighteen he's ready to claim his future, but who could love his disfigured face and damaged soul? Definitely not a big, burly, beautiful Irish Traveller who is entirely the stuff of dreams.

Dare Rowan didn't mean to become obsessed with the blue-eyed man he first saw across a field, but that porcelain skin and innocent air demanded another meeting. Jax has the face of a wounded angel, and the rest of the young man is as heart-breakingly perfect. Jax is beautiful in every way and teaching him about love and life will be something Dare will embrace. Like unwrapping and savouring the candy at the shop where he works, Dare will show this young man everything Jax desired but never thought he'd have, and take Jax to new highs while he holds him through the lows. Between them, they’ll find out just how sweet life can be.

EXCERPT

He wasn’t stalking his fantasy. He wasn’t. Dare clamped his lips together mutinously as he hunkered down behind a towering oak. The tree lay on the outskirts, in the garden of a large Georgian house. From a distance, Dare watched as the beautiful blond man he’d been observing, thank you very much, tenderly placed what looked like flower bulbs in the rich soil. The man—whom Dare had first called Angel, though he now knew his name was Jax thanks to the younger kids playing in the garden yelling to him—leaned over. His pert jean-encased backside pushed out into the air and Dare swallowed, mesmerised by the enticing sight. A pang of guilt washed over his skin at the sneaking knowledge that yes, he could actually be deemed a stalker.

“I’ve only watched him a few times,” Dare murmured under his breath. “It’s not like I’m some pervert checking through the windows. I mean, the guy is in plain sight and there’s no boundary fence, so why shouldn’t I look? Anyone would. God, he’s gorgeous. A flawed angel with those blond curls and blue eyes.”

His wistful voice echoed in the quiet of the forest surrounding the large house called Castaways. It was some sort of place for homeless kids, Dare thought. He’d found this vantage point by accident one day when he’d been out gathering bits of greenery for his boss, Sally, an eccentric seventy-year-old woman who owned the sweet shop he’d managed for the past three years.

Some weeks ago, Sally had decided she wanted to display certain wildflowers in their place of work. She was also heavily into aromatherapy at the moment, so she sent Dare out each week to pick new blossoms and plants to further her ambitions to be a “flower child,” as Dare teasingly called it. He hadn’t minded. It had become a pleasant routine to take the short tube ride to Camden to perform what Sally loftily called his “ecological duties.” This secluded part of the woods around the area was the best place she knew of to find the flowers. Dare had caught sight of the beautiful man in the garden tending to a bunch of what looked like unruly kids, and now, having seen his Angel, Sally could send him out every day and Dare wouldn’t mind.

“But that would make me a stalker,” he said to himself. “So I’m not one now—yet.” He huffed and ducked back behind a bush as Jax turned to stare fixedly in his direction from underneath his wide-brimmed straw hat, an item Dare found rather endearing.

Read the Men of London series: Amazon | Boroughs Publishing | Goodreads

COMING SOON ~ HARD CLIMATE (MEN OF LONDON #8) PRE-ORDER: Boroughs Publishing | Goodreads

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About the Author

Susan Mac Nicol is a self- confessed bookaholic, an avid watcher of videos of sexy pole dancing men, geek, nerd and in love with her Smartphone. This little treasure is called ‘the boyfriend’ by her long suffering husband, who says if it vibrated, there’d be no need for him. Susan hasn’t had the heart to tell him there’s an app for that…

She is never happier than when sitting in the confines of her living room/study/on a cold station platform scribbling down words and making two men fall in love. She is a romantic at heart and believes that everything happens (for the most part) for a reason. She likes to think of herself as a ‘half full’ kinda gal, although sometimes that philosophy is sorely tested.

Lover of walks in the forest, theatre productions, dabbling her toes in the cold North Sea and the vibrant city of London where you can experience all four seasons in a day , she is a hater of pantomime (so please don’t tar and feather her), duplicitous people, bigotry and self-righteous idiots.

In an ideal world, Susan Mac Nicol would be Queen of England and banish all the bad people to the Never Never Lands of Wherever -Who Cares. As that’s never going to happen, she contents herself with writing her HEA stories and pretending, that just for a little while, good things happen to good people.

Sue is a PAN member of Romance Writers of America and is a member of the Romantic Novelists Association in the UK.