Rogue's Angels Present:The Near Miss by Fran Cusworth

Please welcome Fran Cusworth author of The Near Miss.

Fran will be awarding an eCopy of The Near Miss to 3 randomly drawn winners via rafflecopter during the tour, and choice of 5 digital books from the Impulse line to a randomly drawn host.

The Near Miss

by Fran Cusworth

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GENRE:  General Fiction

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INTERVIEW:

1. What or who inspired you to start writing?

I was a big reader from early on, and writing grew from that. If you read enough, I think you feel the urge to join the ‘conversation’ and have your say. I wrote from childhood, and I wrote two full novels as an adult which went unpublished before my third one was picked up. As a young mum I started writing about family life, relationships, the humour and craziness around marriage and small children and careers. It was what I was living and I couldn’t find enough written about it, in a way that honoured how precious it was as well as capturing the drama and occasional terribleness of it.

2. What elements are necessary components for this genre?

Relationships, honesty, friendships, things at stake.

3. How did you come up with your idea for your novel?

I was at my local ice cream shop on a heatwave day and a small child ran onto the road and was nearly hit. It was very frightening for everyone involved and I started imagining lives for them all beyond this day; how they might become friends or enemies and change each other’s lives, with it all stemming back to that one moment.

I was also thinking a lot about following a dream, and how it could be a slightly selfish thing to do within a marriage when other people had to make sacrifices for the dream-follower. In The Near Miss, Grace wants only another child and to pay off the mortgage, but her husband Tom is an inventor with one grand idea after another, and he has a passion to pursue these ideas, at her expense. You can see how it could strain a marriage, but it is also how great things get made and done.

4. What expertise did you bring to your writing?

I have been passionate about writing novels for all my life, and I know that in a young family those passions are not really the highest priority! I have experienced that internal and external conflict myself. I think it must be hard to be married to a creative person who would prefer to write a novel or invent something new, than get further ahead on the mortgage. To the partner, they can feel like they’re sharing all the risk without any of the benefit.

5. As far as your writing goes, what are your future plans?

I’m writing a time travel book in which the characters are humans with a few fairy features – fantasy is not really my thing, so I’m not sure where this is coming from! However at heart it has my usual staples; relationships, family, although with a little more drama and maybe even some violence! I honestly don’t know, it could be a passing thing.

6. If you could be one of the characters from this book, who would it be and why?

If I could be one of the characters in The Near Miss it would be Melody. She’s pretty zen, and feels pretty in tune with the universe, which is why she’s an interesting friend for Grace, who is quite neurotic and anxiety driven. Melody is a wise old soul, and at the scene of the accident she enters Grace’s life in a way which not only saves a child, but which over time, shows Grace another way to be.

7. Do you belong to a critique group? If so how does this help or hinder your writing?

I have three dear writer friends who read my work, and I read theirs. I value their feedback enormously and feel very lucky to have them. More importantly even than that is just the friendship of other writers as you ride the ups and downs of the publishing world.

8. What is the best and worst advice you ever received? (regarding writing or publishing)

Best: If something seems to enormous to achieve, you haven’t yet broken it down into small enough steps. Keep breaking. Otherwise phrased as: How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

Worst: Anything overly critical is bad advice. Constructive feedback is great; anything that crushes your spirit or confidence should be cast aside.

9. Do you outline your books or just start writing?

I’ve tried both. I generally write spontaneously for about 40,000 words, then I start outlining.

10. How do you maintain your creativity?

By having breaks away from it, and not having my paid work in a writing field. And by reading a lot.

11. Who is your favorite character in the book. Can you tell us why?

I love Eddy, who is driving the car at the scene of the accident in the first chapter. I love him because he is a good person, a too-good person who can’t stop giving of himself and who gets taken advantage of for that. He’s a man who is quite in touch with himself, although it doesn’t bring him confidence for a long time, but I do love the journey of change he goes on, when he grows into himself.

BLURB:

Grace, hardworking and tired, wants another baby. But she's dealing with debt, a manic 4-year-old and a jobless husband determined to make his inventions into reality. Can they both get their way, or will competing dreams tear their marriage apart?

Eddy analyses risk for a living, but his insecurities have brought his own life to a halt. He won't let go of the flighty, unfaithful Romy, but will he ever risk believing in himself?

Melody is trying to raise her son Skip in the city while holding true to her hippie lifestyle. But will past mistakes and judgement from other parents force her to leave her beliefs behind?

This is a story about real life aspirations, and whether you can chase your dreams at the same time as raising children and paying the bills. It's about friendship, and how the people you meet in a moment can change your life forever.

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EXCERPT:

He turned up the air-conditioning. He needed fresh air, the car was stuffy, but the aircon would not be optimised if he opened a window. Romy should have finished her waitressing job by now, and be heading to their modest, three-bedroom brick home in a nice street, in a desirable area. No doubt checking her phone as she did every hour, for a message from the acting agency; the message that never seemed to come. Not a failed actress, as Eddy’s surly father had once called Romy behind her back, to Eddy’s indignation. Just someone who dreamed of a bigger life.

Romy had complained less about her menial job in recent weeks, newly distracted as she was by an event which had shaken both their lives. She had cheated on Eddy and slept with her yoga instructor — just a one-night stand, but still; sex, true, penetrative sex, with another man. It had shocked them both, after five years of monogamy. Romy had confessed to him within days of the act, and then proceeded to confide in all of their friends with an endearing and handwringing honesty, which made people murmur soothing things like ‘Don’t be too hard on yourself’. Advice which Eddy privately thought was well-intentioned, but not, it appeared, desperately called for. There appeared no danger of true, heartfelt self-flagellation on his girlfriend’s part.

For himself, he reflected that, had he seriously contemplated such a possibility in riskanalysis terms, he would have dramatically underestimated the likelihood of its occurrence, but probably could have guessed its consequence — the level of his pain — at about right. He was gutted. He would rather have endured a physical beating to his body than the agony of this intimate betrayal. Almost as bad had been her need to share the titillating details with all of their friends, even if it was in a spirit of self-recrimination. But such soul-baring was typical of Romy.

She had even blogged about it.

However, he had survived the infidelity, and the subsequent broadcasting of it to half of Melbourne and general cyberspace. Things were healing. They would get through. And maybe, just maybe, moving to the next level of commitment would help.

Driving now along the main street, Eddy slowed. He was drawing near the strip of shops which clustered near the train line, and traffic here was always a stop-start affair. Cars pulled out of parallel parks; pedestrians darted into the centre of the road and quivered on the white line, waiting to dash to the other side. A bus heaved itself out from a stop like some massive, weary beast and blocked his vision. Eddy politely let the bus in, and two more cars took advantage and darted in front of him into the stream of traffic.

‘You’re welcome,’ Eddy told them dryly. He pressed down on the accelerator and set off.

Up ahead was an ice-cream shop; the busiest outlet in the street, of course, on a day like this. The sort of crowd the TAB drew on Melbourne Cup Day. People spilled from the door; others moved towards it. They held cones and tubs with spoons. A little girl emerged at the edge of the crowd and stepped onto the road. Eddy watched her, wondering what he could make for dinner. Maybe something on the barbecue outside, not the stove, so as to keep the house cool— The child darted onto the road, right in front of his moving car. Eddy saw the streak of her white dress like a torn page, and in one frozen moment he saw the child’s laughing face, all mischief and loveliness, at the lower edge of the window. He slammed hard on the brake, the

ABS fluttering beneath his feet to stop the car fishtailing. The child’s dress had scalloped edges, and she held a cone topped with pink ice cream, and her face was too close.

‘Shit!’ he shouted.

But in that last second a woman in a green dress appeared; thin, with golden hair in long ropes, and long brown arms that shot out and snatched at the child. Bystanders’ ice creams fell or melted unseen down their fingers, people’s faces distorted in gothic, open-mouthed denial. No!

Every face was turned towards him. Movement everywhere. There was the plastic crunch of a second car accident somewhere in the traffic behind him. Had he hit the kid?

Eddy flung open his door. The hot air pushed in as he leapt out into the heat.

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AUTHOR Bio and Links:

Fran is a writer based in Melbourne, Australia. She worked as a newspaper journalist for twenty years, and recently had a midlife career crisis and retrained as a nurse. She won the Guy Morrison Prize for Literary Journalism in 2013. She is married with two children and she once lived in a commune, like Melody, and at another time she desperately wanted a second child, like Grace. Like Tom, she has pursued a few foolish dreams, and like Eddy, her courage has at times failed her. This is her fourth novel.

http://www.francusworth.com/

https://twitter.com/FranCusworth

https://www.facebook.com/fran.cusworth.7

 Buy link:  http://www.amazon.com/Near-Miss-Fran-Cusworth-ebook/dp/B013O98WT4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1443036707&sr=8-1&keywords=the+near+miss+Fran+Cusworth

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GIVEAWAY INFORMATION and RAFFLECOPTER CODE

Fran will be awarding an eCopy of The Near Miss to 3 randomly drawn winners via rafflecopter during the tour, and choice of 5 digital books from the Impulse line to a randomly drawn host.

http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/28e4345f1352