Sunday 27 March 2011

Meet Hannah Gillespie

This is how I imagined my heroine Hannah from my current release THE WEDDING DATE. Fun, smart, ambitious, though maybe not quite so put together as the gorgeous Amanda Peet here. Here's a little taste of what she's about...

‘Hannah!!!’

She frantically searched the small crowd awaiting the arrivals of loved ones from behind a chicken wire fence. With their matching long thick straight dark brown hair, pale skin, shiny baubles, and head to toe pink get-ups Hannah’s mother and her sister stood out from the small chilly rugged-up crowd like flamingos in a flock of pigeons.

As though seven years hadn’t passed, as though she didn’t have an amazing job, and a great apartment, and cool friends, and real confidence in where she’d landed, Hannah’s hand went straight to her hair only to remember she’d done nothing with it that morning, and now standing on the windy tarmac it was making a fly for freedom in just about every direction possible.

In about five seconds flat she went from respected ace assistant to TV wunderkind to skinny, tomboy shuffling a soccer ball around the backyard while her glamorous mother sister shopped and groomed and giggled about boys.

Her mother pushed through the crowd, opened a gate that probably meant she was breaking about half a dozen aviation safety laws, and headed her way. Hannah knew the grown-up thing to do was walk towards her, waving happily, but she was so deep into meltdown mode she began to physically back away.

And that’s when she felt an arm slide beneath her poncho to settle gently but firmly in the curve of her back. The wall of warmth that came with it stopped her in her retreat like nothing else could have.