Weak at the Knees (guest post by Jo Kessel, excerpt and GIVEAWAY)

                                           



Today I have the pleasure of hosting Jo Kessel and featuring her new release, Weak at the Knees, which is Jo’s debut novel in the new adult, contemporary romance genre – a story about love, loss and relationships, set between London and the heart of the French Alps.  

Jo decided to let us in on a few of her secrets...

10 THINGS MOST PEOPLE DON’T KNOW ABOUT ME

1.  I have really curly hair, but I spend most of my life straightening it and when people I know well see me with my hair in its natural ringlet form, they think I’ve spent hours attacking my mane with a curling tong! I don’t know why I don’t like my hair natural – people say it suits me, but I guess I don’t think it does. Whenever I’m in a hot, humid climate I get what I call ‘Caribbean hair’ (do you remember the scene from Friends when Monica’s hair goes hilariously wild when they’re on the Caribbean?!) Well, no joke, that’s exactly how my hair reacts to humidity. And when that happens, I don’t even bother to straighten it. It’s not worth it, because all my hard effort is undone in a flash.

2.  I’m a yoga fanatic. Most people who know me know this, but what they don’t know is that I can do an excellent ‘head balance’. It’s the closest I get to looking like an acrobat from Cirque de Soleil. I get up into the position with control, keeping my legs straight, and once completely upside down I can split my legs, twist my torso and get into a whole load of weird looking positions. It’s my one and only party trick.

3.  I play the flute. It’s not the sort of instrument (like a guitar or piano) which you can easily play in public, by getting it out and strumming or tinkling away on the ivories, which is why not many people know I play it. But I used to actually be quite good at it, much better than I am now. I’ve got horribly rusty and my mouth starts to ache if I play it for any length of time because my muscles are out of practice.

4.  I went to Music College. While I was still at High School I won a place at one of London’s top music academies which ran Saturday school for young musicians. And that’s how I chose to spend my weekends - my girlfriends couldn’t believe it and they thought I should be going out with boys instead! I studied flute and piano. When I was 18 I had to make a choice between going to University and continuing at Music College to become a professional instead. But I just don’t think I was good enough to ever have really made it as a classical musician.

5.  I grind my teeth at night. I’ve never heard myself doing it and I keep telling my husband to record me. It’s apparently the most deafening, odd noise which is impossible to recreate awake. My sister (who’s a dentist) has heard me and thinks I must be ruining my teeth by the sounds of things. When I go away with the children and share a room with them, they hear me. They think the noise sounds like I’m scratching the sheets with my finger nails.

6.  I used to be a Gothic. You wouldn’t know it from the way I dress now, but when I was a student I used to dress in all these weird black clothes, wearing my hair incredibly long and backcombed and bright red lipstick.

7.  I’m very short. People don’t realise this because I usually wear high heels. Actually, they’re more like wedge heels, because regular high heels give me back ache.

8.  I’m a terrible cook. I’m that mother at school who, when there’s a cake sale on, buys ready baked cakes from the supermarket and dresses them up as her own. I usually buy chocolate fairy cakes with icing, melt a hole (using a teaspoon dipped in boiling water) in the middle and stick in a sweetie for decoration. They sell like hot cakes (excuse the pun!)

9.  I’ve got a shoe collection to rival Imelda Marcos. Well, ok, perhaps I don’t have that many, but I have a serious addiction. I acquire shoes which I sometimes don’t even ever wear because they’re too uncomfortable and yet I never give them away, because one day I might just wear them. Plus now my youngest daughter uses them as dressing up clothes. There are several high wedges which she has her eye on for when she grows up.

10.  I’m obsessed with hanging my washing out in the garden. This is a mixture of wanting to be environmentally friendly (i.e. not putting the drier on) and between loving the smell of clothes that have been dried outside. I always watch the TV weather forecast in the morning (you have to be careful putting washing out with the weather we have in London!) to see if it’s feasible.


Thank you for sharing Jo!  I used to love wearing high heels to add to my short stature but alas the knees and ankles don't tolerate them any longer!




BLURB:  

“We got so busy living life that we forgot to live our dreams.”

Danni Lewis has been playing it safe for twenty-six years, but her sheltered existence is making her feel old ahead of time. When a sudden death plunges her into a spiral of grief, she throws caution to the wind and runs away to France in search of a new beginning.

The moment ski instructor Olivier du Pape enters her shattered world she falls hard, in more ways than one.

Their mutual desire is as powerful and seductive as the mountains around them. His dark gypsy looks and piercing blue eyes are irresistible.

Only she must resist, because he has a wife – and she’d made a pact to never get involved with a married man.

But how do you choose between keeping your word and being true to your soul?





EXCERPT

Late afternoon Olivier and I are playing with interlocked fingers, sitting side by side on the balcony step, basking in the sun.

“I’ve been thinking about your birthday. Is there anything in particular that you’d like to do?” he asks.

I shrug.

“I don’t think so. Birthdays are no big deal and twenty-seven is hardly one of the big ones.”

It’s getting dangerously close to thirty and my life is still not exactly sorted. He rubs it in.

“There’s only three more years to go until you join my decade! Look, forget about it being your birthday. Let’s just say we’ve got an evening to spend together to do something a bit different. What would you like to do then?”

I’m not brave enough to ask what’s going to happen to us, to ask whether he’s going to have left his wife by then, or whether he’s expecting me to stay as his bit on the side. But perhaps I won’t need to. Because if I can summon enough courage to tell him exactly what I’d really like to do for my birthday, his answer will probably tell me all I need to know. There is something I’ve been desperate to do since we got together, but it’s not been possible seeing as our affair has to be kept secret. It doesn’t seem much to ask and for most couples it’s the simplest thing to do. I can’t bear to look at his face, to see his expression or to read his reaction, so I fixate on our fingers instead, making pretty puppet patterns.

“Actually, there is something I’d like to do,” I say. “I’d like to go out and eat at a restaurant, just you and me.”

He’s silent for the longest moment. His fingers stop moving and so, it feels, does my heart.

“Do you know how difficult that is for me Danni?”

His face is tight and serious when I look up and drown in his clear blue stare. I can barely breathe. It feels like the question mark hanging over our relationship and future has just jumped off the page, quadrupled in size and wrapped itself tight around my windpipe.

AUTHOR INFORMATION:

When Jo was ten years old she wrote a short story about losing a loved one. Her mother and big sister were so moved by the tale that it made them cry. Having reduced them to tears she vowed that the next time she wrote a story it would make them smile instead. Happily she succeeded and with this success grew an addiction for wanting to reach out and touch people with words. Jo lives in London with her husband and three children where she works as a TV and print journalist. She tells life stories and can often be found travelling the globe researching the next big holiday hotspots for readers to enjoy. Since becoming a mother anything even remotely sad makes her cry. She’s a sucker for a good romance and tear-jerker movies are the worst. She’s that woman in the cinema, struggling to muffle audible wails as everyone else turns round to stare.

P.S Jo’s pretty certain one of her daughters has inherited this gene.          


Weak at the Knees U.S. Amazon buy link

UK buy link

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