A warm welcome to author Charlie Cochrane joining us today here at love bytes to talk about her new release “Broke Deep”, which is part of Riptide Publishing Porthkennack series.

Welcome Charlie 🙂

Broke Deep is the story that refused to sit down and take no for an answer, a tale that waited patiently in my works-in-progress folder for a setting and a context to do it justice. When the Porthkennack universe opportunity came along, Broke Deep bounced into my mind like the most insistent plot bunny, saying, “That’s my home! Write me there!”

 

Reader, I did.

The magic of Cornwall part 1

 

The imaginary town of Porthkennack is located on the very real North coast of Cornwall, which is the westernmost county in England and a place that’s as unlike the next county bar one—Dorset—as a piece of Cornwall cliff and Dorset vinny cheese are. Cornwall has its own language, its own slang and its own flag. It also has a separatist movement! It has quilkins (frogs), oggys (pasties) fizzoggs (faces) and many more. And most of all it has fantastic scenery and a wealth of both history and legends.

 

Just along from Porthkennack is the lovely town of Padstow, known for the traditional Obby Oss festival and more recently for the Rick Stein restaurant. Across the Camel estuary from Padstow is Rock, which used to be a delightful little holiday location before it became fashionable and turned into a sort of Kensington-on-sea with the inevitable Chelsea tractors and unwelcome rowdiness.

 

Years ago, when the area was still largely undiscovered, we used to stay at the St. Enedoc hotel, just outside Rock, behind which there was a challenging golf course (with a bunker rightly called the Himalaya). In the middle of said course was St. Enedoc’s church, which in Victorian times had to be literally dug out from the immense sand dunes which had engulfed it.

 

I’ve very fond memories of trudging around that course and a slightly less fond memory of being on the River Camel heading out on a pleasure cruise around the local islands. At the end of the estuary is a bank called the Doom Bar (after which a very tasty brand of cider is named) and when you cross the bar the calm waters turn extremely choppy. I was pregnant with my first child at the time and we bounced up and down so much on the waves I was scared the baby was going to come up through my diaphragm and leap straight out of my mouth. She didn’t, but I’ve been wary about small boats ever since and refuse to go out on them unless doped up on Stugeron.

 

Which makes me think of another occasion, when we went puffin watching off Wales and I was so full of anti-sickness meds that I ended up clambering all over the little boat, gesturing wildly and shouting, “I can see dolphins!” But that’s a story for another day…

 

 

 

About Broke Deep

 

Morgan Capell’s life is falling apart by small degrees—his father’s dead, his boyfriend dumped him, and his mother’s in the grip of dementia. His state of mind isn’t helped by his all-too-real recurring nightmare of the wreck of the Troilus, a two-hundred-year-old ship he’s been dreaming about since his teenage years.

 

The story of the Troilus is interwoven with the Capell family history. When amateur historian Dominic Watson inveigles himself into seeing the ship’s timbers which make up part of Morgan’s home, they form a tentative but prickly friendship that keeps threatening to spark into something more romantic.

 

Unexpectedly, Dominic discovers that one of the Troilus’s midshipman was rescued but subsequently might have been murdered, and persuades Morgan to help him establish the truth. But the more they dig, the more vivid Morgan’s nightmares become, until he’s convinced he’s showing the first signs of dementia. It takes as much patience as Dominic possesses—and a fortuitous discovery in a loft—to bring light out of the darkness.

 

Now available from:

Riptide Publishing.

Amazon

 

About Porthkennack

 

Welcome to Porthkennack, a charming Cornish seaside town with a long and sometimes sinister history. Legend says King Arthur’s Black Knight built the fort on the headland here, and it’s a certainty that the town was founded on the proceeds of smuggling, piracy on the high seas, and the deliberate wrecking of cargo ships on the rocky shore. Nowadays it draws in the tourists with sunshine and surfing, but locals know that the ghosts of its Gothic past are never far below the surface.

 

This collaborative story world is brought to you by five award-winning, best-selling British LGBTQ romance authors: Alex Beecroft, Joanna Chambers, Charlie Cochrane, Garrett Leigh, and JL Merrow. Follow Porthkennack and its inhabitants through the centuries and through the full rainbow spectrum with historical and contemporary stand-alone titles.

 

Check out Porthkennack!

 

About Charlie Cochrane

 

As Charlie Cochrane couldn’t be trusted to do any of her jobs of choice—like managing a rugby team—she writes, with titles published by Carina, Samhain, Bold Strokes, MLR and Cheyenne.

 

Charlie’s Cambridge Fellows Series of Edwardian romantic mysteries was instrumental in her being named Author of the Year 2009 by the review site Speak Its Name. She’s a member of the Romantic Novelists’ Association, Mystery People, International Thriller Writers Inc and is on the organising team for UK Meet for readers/writers of GLBT fiction. She regularly appears with The Deadly Dames.

 

Connect with Charlie:

• Website:charliecochrane.co.uk/
• Blog: charliecochrane.livejournal.com/
• Twitter: @charliecochrane
• Facebook profile page: facebook.com/charlie.cochrane.18
• Goodreads: goodreads.com/goodreadscomcharlie_cochrane

To celebrate the release of Broke Deep, one lucky winner will receive a goodie bag containing postcards, a notebook, a tea towel, candy and more, all from Charlie Cochrane! Leave a comment with your contact info to enter the contest. Entries close at midnight, Eastern time, on June 10, 2017. Contest is NOT restricted to U.S. entries. Thanks for following the tour, and don’t forget to leave your contact info!