A massive thank you to Love Bytes for hosting me today, and for giving me the opportunity to talk a little about my debut release: a YA LGBTQ romance about coming out, falling in love, and making mistakes. It’s an honour to be here!
From the moment Luke Savage, the seventeen-year-old narrator of ‘Caught Inside’, took form in my mind, I knew several things about him. I knew he was an only child, came from a single-parent family, and lived on the rough side of Brookminster, the fictional English city where many of my stories will be set. I knew he possessed a lazy charm, affording him his pick of girls, but that he had yet to lose his heart to anyone. Most of all, I knew he cherished a burning passion for surfing.
You might suppose this last trait, being such an intrinsic part of Luke’s character, springs from a personal obsession—that, like my protagonist, I scraped together every hard-earned penny to buy myself a first-rate board, heading to the coast every chance I get to catch the waves. Wrong. For one thing, I’m no water worshipper. I’ve always had a wary respect for the sea, and generally feel happier on dry land. For another, I scarcely have the balance to ride a bike, let alone stay upright on a surfboard. My one short-lived attempt at water-skiing demonstrated as much all too clearly!
So, even as I began my first draft, I was trawling the internet in the hopes of filling the monumental gaps in my knowledge. Before long, I was being introduced to an entire new language. I had enormous fun perusing this glossary of surfing terms. So many fantastic phrases—ankle snappers, mushburger, wiping out… The one that immediately leapt out at me, however, was “caught inside”, referring to a potentially dangerous situation when a surfer is too far in with the waves breaking farther out, and which inspired the title for the book.
With the lingo under my belt, it was time to dig deeper and get into specifics: namely, what board should Luke ride? My research took me to BoardShop.co.uk a comprehensive online store selling everything from wetsuits to kayaks. However, a fleeting browse was enough to tell me I was hopelessly out of my depth. Parabolic rails? EPS foam composite core? Head spinning, I enlisted the help of the wonderful customer team. I described Luke’s age, the fact that he’s six feet tall and well built, and is an intermediate to advanced surfer. Within half-an-hour I had a reply, recommending the Firewire FST Spitfire as the perfect board for my hero.
Most importantly, I’ve strived to capture the essence of surfing, to understand what drives surfers to do it again and again. Fortunately for me, several people have been generous enough to share their surfing experiences. While I imagined the exhilaration, the rush that comes with the feeling of flying. What I didn’t anticipate was that it generates such a sense of peace. Almost every surfer talks of leaving all negativity behind, their mind wiped clean of everything but the present, nothing existing save for themselves and the ocean. It’s this blend of exultation and wellbeing in particular that I’ve tried to portray in ‘Caught Inside’. Whether or not I’ve succeeded, I’ll let you, the reader, decide…
About Caught Inside
Blurb
Luke believes he has his life figured out…and then he meets Theo.
It should have been simple—a summer spent with his girlfriend Zara at her family’s holiday cottage in Cornwall. Seventeen-year-old Luke Savage jumps at the chance, envisioning endless hours of sunbathing on the private beach and riding the waves on his beloved surfboard. He isn’t interested in love. Though his rugged good looks and lazy charm mean he can have his pick of girls, he has no intention of falling for anyone.
Nothing prepares Luke for his reaction to Theo, the sensitive Oxford undergraduate who is Zara’s cousin and closest friend. All at once, he is plunged along a path of desire and discovery that has him questioning everything he thought he knew about himself. No one, especially Zara, must find out; what he and Theo have is too new, too fragile. But as the deceit spirals beyond their control, people are bound to get hurt, Luke most of all.
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About Jamie Deacon
Jamie lives in a tranquil spot close to the River Thames in Berkshire, England, and has always been just a little out of place—the only redhead in a family of brunettes; an introvert far more at ease with dogs than with people; a connoisseur of simple pleasures in a society intent on the quest for wealth and fame. Despite an outward cynicism, Jamie is a romantic at heart, and, when not immersed in a book, can mostly be found writing emotional stories where young men from all walks of life are thrust headlong into the breathless, euphoric, often painful whirlwind called love.
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Awesome! Thanks for sharing!