Book Title: Fade to Blank (London Lies # 1)
Author: C F White
Publisher: Self-published
Cover Artist: Rhys Everly-Lawless
Genre/s: Contemporary M/M Romantic Suspense
Trope/s: Slow burn, hurt/comfort
Themes: Enemies to lovers, Revenge, Secrets, Mystery
Length: 78 000 words/ 280 pages
It’s the first book in a new series.
Book 2 is coming later in the year. Book 1 ends on a HFN for the couple.
Buy Links – Available on Kindle Unlimited
Universal Link | Amazon US | Amazon UK
A celebrity accused of murder. A writer needing his big break. The lies that tie them together.
Blurb
Accused of a murder he didn’t commit, vilified celebrity Jackson Young enlists the help of a rookie journalist to clear his name and write his biography.
Jackson has a secret though. One he must keep from becoming public. But Fletcher’s dreamy green eyes, Irish drawl and effortless charm makes it hard to suppress those long-buried feelings, even if it could compromise his innocence.
Uncovering the murky past behind Jackson’s rise to fame, Fletcher grows closer to a man he’d once declared as talentless, and their intense attraction starts to affect not only his professional integrity but the life he’d made since moving to London.
Falling for the subject of his book could be fatal for Fletcher, and Jackson should know better than to trust a journalist.
Fade to Blank is the first book in the London Lies trilogy set in 1999, and is a slow burn, enemies to lovers, hurt/comfort romantic suspense.
Thank you so much to Love Bytes for inviting me on the blog today to celebrate the release of my latest book Fade to Blank (London Lies #1)
I thought I’d offer you a chance to get to know some of the main characters in the book (and overall series) by letting you into my secret Character Inspirations.
I’m a big advocate for finding actors or real-life people/models who could play my main characters. It helps to keep them at the forefront of my mind and I’ll trawl through photos, videos etc to get into their mindset (hard life, I know lol). So I thought I’d share the inspirations behind a few of the main MCs in Fade to Blank and who they started life as in my mind.
Jackson Young
Once a child star, Jackson forges a career in television as one half of a presenting duo. He’s been in the public eye all his life starting as a child model, to becoming a teen heartthrob to then being the all-star cheeky, chappy presenting prime time television with his co-star Kris Sharpe. On the surface it looks as if he has it all. He’s engaged to marry Tallulah Payne, heiress to a hotel chain and the daughter of media mogul, Charles Payne. They are the golden couple. They have the world at their feet—or do they? It is Tallulah who is found dead at her home that she shared with Jackson and, as the only person there, he’s arrested on suspicion of her murder. That event spirals Jackson down a path of no return. He has to serve time awaiting to see if he can get a fair trial when stories in the press come to light about his instability, his anger issues, his alcoholism and his playboy past, cheating on Tallulah throughout their relationship. He’s desperate to clear his name, but he’s also bound to a secret that could jeopardise his innocence. Jackson’s a troubled man. One who has been manipulated and controlled his entire life.
It’ll take a lot for him to trust someone again.
Fletcher Doherty
Fletcher’s an Irish expat living in London. From a family of Donegal farmers, he’s as far removed from celebrity culture as is possible. But his journalism degree allows him to land a job at one of the newest online magazines, London Lights, where he’s paid to write celebrity gossip. He hates it, although he knows it’s the first step to the career he wants. He’s also in a relationship with an older man—thespian, Heston Monaghan. A man who treats him more like arm candy than an equal partner. He’s a little trapped, in life and in love. So when he’s given the opportunity to write Jackson Young’s biography, he can’t quite believe his luck. Having vilified the man in the press before, he’s surprised Jackson approached him at all. But knowing the potential a book of that nature could mean, he can’t turn it down. He’s desperate to prove his worth to Heston, to his family back home and to those who thought he’d never make it. Except, this story isn’t an easy one.
And his once childhood crush isn’t an easy man to crack open.
Diego Conti
Diego’s an Italian, working in security at the Meridian Hotel. Looks can be very deceiving. He’s gorgeous. He’s enigmatic. He’s after Fletcher. He also happens to work for the most powerful man in Britain.
Heston Monaghan
Heston is Fletcher’s boyfriend of two years. He’s fifty-two, so there’s quite an age gap, twenty-seven years to be exact. He’s a theatre actor with quite a long career behind him and he’s hitting the downward slide where the roles are drying up. So having landed the coveted role of Jay Gatsby in the West End musical, The Great Gatsby, he’s back on a high and he likes nothing more than to show off his man at every opportunity and to prove he’s not past it yet. If only he could persuade Fletcher to live the party lifestyle he was once famed for having…
Kris Sharpe
Kris was Jackson’s co-star and supposed best friend growing up together during their days as childhood actors on the same teen show. Once a dynamic duo, Jax & Kris, were British TV’s greatest star personalities but Kris severs all ties with Jackson after the death of Tallulah. He’s harbouring secrets himself and fears his own star appeal will suffer due to the speculation around Jackson’s guilt. He’s desperately trying to forge his own name, separate from the Jax & Kris hysteria. But he’s also one of the main sources for Fletcher’s no-holds-barred biography on Jackson Young. If only he’ll hear him out.
Fletcher drew troubled eyebrows in. “Are you okay?” he asked.
“Okay? Okay?” Jackson breathed out a laugh that was more a release of pent up anguish. He’d always been taught to laugh in the face of adversity. He hadn’t been able to do much of that lately. Any flicker of amusement seeping out when in Flaymore would only have been captured by an inmate wanting a name for himself and used against him in the media. He rubbed his stinging eyes. “My girlfriend is dead. Someone strangled her whilst I was passed out in the other room. The world thinks I did it. I’ve spent six months inside because I wasn’t granted bail. This morning I wasn’t told that I was free because they believed I didn’t do it. They just couldn’t prove that I did. I can’t quite see how I would be okay after all that. Do you?”
Perhaps that was too blunt. Too much, too soon? Perhaps all this seeking the truth was coming across more selfish than he’d anticipated. It was. But the world was pointing at him. So he needed to prove his innocence to force people to look at who might have killed her, instead of allowing them to tie the noose around his neck.
And on that thought, his heart almost stopped. So the desperation kicked in. “I need you. Your help.”
Fletcher softened before him. “Okay,” he said. “Go on. Why would I, the fella you tried to knock out due to one bad review, want to write another article about you?”
“I want more than an article. And you’ll have a ready and waiting readership for this. It’ll rocket you to a fortune you never knew existed.”
“Wind your neck in, lad, that’s a touch arrogant there.”
“Arrogance doesn’t equal guilt.” Jackson leapt up from leaning against his bike, new found energy resumed. “Nor does it equal untalented.”
Fletcher glanced away, flicking his gaze back just as quick. “What are you talking here, then? A featured piece?”
Jackson forced a smile. “A full exposé of Jackson Young and why he isn’t the man he’s been depicted as in the media of late.”
“So this is all about you? Not… Tallulah?”
Jackson sucked in a breath at her name. It still stabbed at his heart, strangled his chest, erupted bile into his throat. He wondered if it would ever stop.
Scrubbing fingers across his perspiring forehead, Jackson had to find the right way to explain what he needed. What he had to do before it was too late and this was all hidden under the carpet as so many of the lies and manipulations already had been. He wasn’t sure how far he should go. How much he should admit he knew. There was the whole story. And there was his story.
“I was arrested for something I didn’t do,” he settled on. “I’ve been painted in the media as a monster. Pretty much all my friends and family have abandoned me because they believe people like you.”
“People like me?”
“People with the ability to write words and print them for the public to read, to believe and to act upon.”
“I never wrote about what happened to her. I’ve avoided talking about you, or her, since.”
“I know. Now I want you to.”
Jackson waited for the faint glimmer of understanding to work its way across Fletcher’s face. He had to know this would be the ultimate scoop for him. A writer, a journalist, a gossip columnist…whatever the man claimed to be, if he took this opportunity he could retire.
“I don’t write news. I write…gossip.” It sounded a lot like he hated to say that word, and his gaze blinked away from Jackson toward the glass frontage of London Lights HQ.
“I don’t want you to write for a paper. I don’t want this to be news, or gossip. This is the truth. My truth.”
“I’m not sure my editor will buy into it.” Fletcher sighed. “And if she did, she’d pass it onto the more seasoned journalists.”
“I don’t want your editor. I don’t want this in your poxy magazine.” Jackson spat the word, nodding toward the office block in contempt. He wanted nothing to do with any of that. Especially not London Lights. “This has got to be independent.”
“I don’t understand. I thought you wanted an exposé?”
Jackson stepped forward, a hair’s breadth from Fletcher, so close he could taste the man’s coffee breath. “Ever want to write something different? Something good. Something that could make a name for yourself away from the trash rags? Don’t you want to see your name on a shelf?”
“What type of shelf?”
“A book shelf. I want you to write my biography. So if you ever wanted your fortune handed on a plate, Fletcher Doherty…” Jackson held out his arms. “It’s here.”
Brought up in a relatively small town in Hertfordshire, C F White managed to do what most other residents try to do and fail—leave.
Studying at a West London university, she realised there was a whole city out there waiting to be discovered, so, much like Dick Whittington before her, she never made it back home and still endlessly search for the streets paved with gold, slowly coming to the realisation they’re mostly paved with chewing gum. And the odd bit of graffiti. And those little circles of yellow spray paint where the council point out the pot holes to someone who is supposedly meant to fix them instead of staring at them vacantly whilst holding a polystyrene cup of watered-down coffee.
She eventually moved West to East along that vast District Line and settled for pie and mash, cockles and winkles and a bit of Knees Up Mother Brown to live in the East End of London; securing a job and creating a life, a home and a family.
After her second son was born with a rare disability, C F White’s life changed and brought pen back to paper having written stories as a child but never the confidence to show them to the world. Now, having embarked on this writing journey, she can’t stop. So strap in, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.
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