Sunday 8 July 2018

BLOG TOUR ~ A Summer Scandal by Kat French

Hi Everyone,

Today is my stop on the Blog Tour for A Summer Scandal by Kat French where I have a guest post on Essential elements of a Summer beach read. I was thrilled to be asked by Sabah Khan from Avon Books to take part along with some other fab book bloggers. You can find out who else is taking part in this fabulous Blog Tour at the end of this guest post so without further ado, here it is:

Essential elements of a summer beach read.

I’ve written a summer release for the last five years, and across those books I’ve learned some tips to really help to give a book that super-summery feel.

Set it close to a beach. Set your story in a seaside town or on a beach for an insta-summer feel. A Summer Scandal is set in Swallow Beach, a seaside town just along the coast from Brighton with an old pier as its star attraction. Walks on the beach, the sound of the sea… all of those things help give a story a holiday read feel. The beach is a real focal point in A Summer Scandal, much of the book is set on the pier

Include summery cocktails and drinks. Summer time drinking is light, fizzy and colourful. Give your characters a favourite tipple, or invent a drink that they love to make them stand out. My release last summer was called The Bed and Breakfast on the Beach, and it was literally gin-soaked, as the three friends who bought the ramshackle Bed & Breakfast on the little known island of Skelidos discovered a gin distillery in their cellar. Not only that - they’d inadvertently become the custodians of the islands beloved and unique gin recipe. Throw in a boy band coming to the island to hide away for the summer and a temperamental Greek businessman, and you have all of the ingredients for a high stakes summer of love, laughter and disaster.

Turn up the sunshine. If you want your book to sizzle, set it somewhere hot, or alternatively have a good old British heat wave. People lose their clothes, their heads and their tempers in the heat - use that to create sparks between your characters!

Romance your readers. Let the romance go wild! Sunshine equals sexy; put your characters into compromising positions, throw as many temptations at them as possible and finally, let them succumb. Build up a good head of steam, lots of will they / won’t they, make your readers scream at the page for your characters to get together before you let them. And when you do let them, go all out. Set the scene, light the touch paper, and give them the kind of night that belongs in all the best romance movies.

Throw in some funny. I always give my books quite a big ensemble cast, because it allows for humour to be built in. Have a secondary character or two that is there to add comedic value; an eccentric, a bohemian, someone alternative with a unique way of looking at the world. I had a lot of fun with One Hot Summer; the row of cottages is peopled by an ageing ex-porn star, a Wiccan woman with a talking bird and an artist who paints the local farmers in the nude. Throw in a sexy cowboy and a heartbroken girl, and the stage is set for humour, love and high jinx.

And there you have it, the recipe for beach read in the sunshine.

A Summer Scandal is released on June 28th 2018.


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