Friday 25 September 2015

Synopsis of my novel CYPRUS BLUES

It is 1973 and the idylic island of Cyprus is a magnet for tourists with its offer of wonderful weather, beautiful scenery, a relaxed way of living and all that sun, sand and...sex.

 But Kate has come on holiday for a very different reason. She wants to get as far away from home as possible before starting her first teaching job back in England. But she hasn't counted on meeting charasmatic Jack, an expat artist, who has lived on Cyprus for several years. Kate is beautiful but innocent,  Jack is a fun-loving  hedonist, with more conquests than is good for him. Can the two of them ever have a lasting relationship?

And then there's Ellie, a Greek Cypriot, who has lived all her life in london, but has come to Cyprus to marry the charming Tony. It might be an arranged marriage but Ellie has great hopes for the start of a new life well away from her controlling mother. Tony is a Greek Cypriot from a small village in the mountains who has escaped poverty and through ambition, hard-work and a sizable dowry from Ellie's mother, is doing very well for himself. He has opened the first supermarket on the island and merely sees Ellie as a useful workhorse. But can he ever love her the way she loves him? And can he conceal from her the fact that he is part of the Eoka B terrorist group who are plotting to overthrow the President of Cyprus?

As the lives of these four become intwined, there is growing political unrest on the island, with both America and Turkey ready and willing to intervene. Is war inevitable given all the provocations and can these four survive such an outcome? And will not only they but also Cyprus ever be the same?

This novel is now available on scribd

Sunday 20 September 2015

CYPRUS BLUES - MY NOVEL

A big thank you to my technical manager, John Knutson, who has posted the revised version of my first novel, Cyprus Blues, onto the e-book site Scribd, plus a beautiful photograph of Kyrenia Harbour, which we took when we went to Cyprus a few years ago. (You can read the report that I wrote of my first visit to the Turkish occupied Northern Cyprus after nearly 30 years if you type in the title "Drinking our way round Cyprus.") 

Anyway, if you want to read the novel, you can find it scribd on Scribd.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

I am now working on my second novel – a murder mystery set in a school in Winchester – Winchester Blues. I'm having a lot of fun writing it because I'm basing a lot of my characters on people that I know/knew and situations in schools that I've experienced. It's definitely pay back time!