Single Titles chats to Choc Lit author Jane Lovering about her brand new novel Please Don’t Stop the Music, writing romantic comedy and intriguing mix between chocolate and romantic fiction!
Could you please tell us something about your book, Please Don’t Stop the Music?
Please Don’t Stop the Music is the story of Jemima Hutton who is determined to build a successful new life and keep her past a dark secret. Trouble is, her jewellery business looks set to fail – until enigmatic Ben Davies offers to stock her handmade belt buckles in his guitar shop and things start looking up, on all fronts.
But Ben has secrets too. When Jemima finds out he used to be the front man of hugely successful Indie rock band Willow Down, she wants to know more. Why did he desert the band on their US tour? Why is he now a semi-recluse?
And the curiosity is mutual – which means that her own secret is no longer safe …
What originally gave you the idea for Please Don’t Stop the Music?
I like exploring characters, their deep dark secrets and their reasons for keeping them, because I am incredibly nosey. The idea for a book which was set around secrets sort of crept up on me, and once I’d decided on what those secrets were I was so involved with the story that I couldn’t not write it! The actual idea was very organic, it started with my hero, Ben and his central, life-changing secret, then I created Jemima, whose secrets are very different but still rule the way she lives her life, and it was great to explore the way that these two interacted. They both define themselves through the secrets that they keep, and their relationship means that they have to think about themselves differently. All very psychological.
Please Don’t Stop the Music is a contemporary romantic comedy. What made you decide to write a book in this particular sub-genre?
I believe that comedy makes the most effective medium to carry serious messages without making them feel depressing or downbeat. Make the reader laugh and they will follow your story wherever it may lead, even if that place is dark and quite difficult to read about, besides, life itself is funny,and I love to point this out in my novels!
Do you find it easy or difficult to write humour?
‘Funny’ is my default setting, which must be incredibly annoying for my friends and family, I’m one of those people who always has the snappy answer and has to have the last word in every conversation, so I find that it is natural to me to write that way. As long as the humour is managed carefully; I have to make sure it’s not allowed to get away and run the whole book. I like the conversational kind of humour, the witty one liners and the clever come-back rather than the slapstick or the set-piece.
Your publisher, Choc Lit, publish books that feature the hero’s point of view. How do you manage to make your male characters realistic and believable? Is writing from a male perspective challenging or something that you find relatively easy?
I don’t have too much of a problem writing the men, strangely enough, but then I do write men that tend towards the ‘beta’ hero type, not big alpha males with testosterone to spare. Men and women don’t think that differently, men can be more driven and single minded but they have the same emotions and the same desires as women – they just don’t often say things out loud that they think to themselves, in case it’s not ‘manly’. As to how realistic and believable they are, well, you’ll have to ask my readers.
Any advice for aspiring writers?
Read. Absolutely. Everything. Even books that are way outside your comfort zone, outside your genre, outside your field of interest. Read. It will inform your ‘voice’, broaden your mind and give you a whole set of psychological outlooks which will stand you in good stead in your writing. And write. Don’t talk about it, do it.
Who are your favourite authors?
Argh, I knew you were going to ask me that! I don’t have many ‘auto buy’ authors because I read absolutely everything I can get my hands on, but I do read all Terry Pratchett’s novels, anything by Jenny Colgan, Jasper Fforde, Marian Keyes and, to my enternal and undying shame, all the Doctor Who novelisations…
If you weren’t a writer, what would you be?
A wreck. I am honestly rubbish at everything else.
What’s coming next for Jane Lovering?
My next novel, Starstruck, will be out from Choc Lit Publishing in the autumn, I’ve got another novel about accidental witchcraft waiting in the wings, and my WIP featuring an astrophysicist and mysterious lights in the sky, so I’m managing to keep busy.
Thanks for chatting to us, Jane! Jane’s fabulous new novel, Please Don’t Stop the Music is out now. If you want to find out more about Jane, visit her website at http://www.janelovering.co.uk