Turn The Page: I thought I knew you

Luke Reilly’s whole life is mapped out. His father wants him to work in the family business. Tessa wants him to marry her. But he has already broken out of the straight jacket they’ve put him in. And he’s about to get found out.

Can he mend what he’s broken?

Does he want to?

Will he leave and chase the dream, or stay and do what everyone expects?

I THOUGHT I KNEW YOU – Main Characters

Luke and Tessa.

Luke is a showman. He’s the lead singer in Stadium and the driving force behind the band. He’s full of energy, bossy, charismatic and good looking, in a ‘blond skinny way,’ according to Tessa.

He wants people to like him and sometimes that gets in the way of his dreams. He wants to have a career in music, but his father expects him to take over the building business and he doesn’t want to let his father down.

He feels trapped into doing things he doesn’t want to do. But he’s not sure he’s good enough to succeed in music and is starting to think he will keep working for his father and eventually take over the business. And he’ll marry Tessa the way she wants him too, because she’s fun, beautiful, sexy and he’s pretty sure he loves her. He’s been going out with Tessa for six years, now they are engaged, and he doesn’t want to hurt her. But sometimes he’s envious of the way the other guys in Stadium can move from one girl to the next without causing resentment.

Tessa is studying fashion design. She’s earned the money to put herself through the course by modelling. Tessa has no doubts that she loves Luke. Everything about him appeals to her, the way he looks, the way he acts, how exciting it is to be with him, and she loves watching him on stage and listening to him sing.

She knows he’s cheated on her in the past, when they were younger. Then she felt too unsure of herself to confront him about it and thought she only deserved what he was willing to give her. All her life she’s seen her mother fight with one man after another and doesn’t want to live like that.

But now she’s older and more confident she expects more from Luke. She expects to be the only female in his life for a start. Life is good for her, she’s been offered her dream job, she’s engaged to her childhood sweetheart and soon they’ll get married. Everything is going the way she wants it to.

Then Luke gets the chance he’s always dreamed of and it looks like he’s planning on grabbing it with both hands.

I live in Paeroa, a small town in New Zealand, with my husband and a black labrador. Most of my books are set in my home town, simply because it has a rich history, and the streets already have names, so do the rivers and the mountain nearby, and the neighbouring towns also have names, so I save time on world building.

I have been writing for seven years. Before that I was a teacher, then a kitchen designer, and for a year, the creator of resources for drug education. But now writing is what I do.

I love creating books about ordinary people doing interesting things. The characters in my story are just a little better looking and more charismatic than in real life, but they think and feel like normal people.

My books cover many genre, action adventure, scifi, historical fiction, and romance. Up until now you won’t find a vampire or werewolf in any them, but in the future, that can’t be completely ruled out.

I wrote Scavenger Hunt to enter it in a national competition, just to see if I could write. It won the competition and really it has all gone on from there.