The
Bitter End
About
the Book
Paul finally has his life back on
track. After losing his wife, Helena in a horrific car crash, he has found love
with Sally and moves into her country cottage.
As a former high-ranking Naval
Officer, Paul now works as Head of Security at MI5.
Paul has no memories from before he
was ten years old. An accident left him in a coma for 9 months. But
was it really an accident?
Soon Paul starts to have flashes of
childhood memories, all involving his childhood friend, Owen.
Sally introduces him to her friend,
Juliet, the owner of a craft shop. Paul is shocked when he is introduced to
Juliet’s partner, his old friend Owen.
Flashes of memories continue to haunt
Paul, particularly the memory of his first wife Helena burning in the car
crash.
As dark things start to happen, and
local people begin dying in horrific accidents, Paul must face his past and
will end up fighting for his life.
Guest Post
Today I have a lovely post from one half
of the duo who wrote The Bitter End. Welcome
to my blog Ann Evans. Grab a comfortable
seat and would you be so kind as to tell me about how you came to write the
book with Robert.
First
of all, my co-author for The Bitter End,
Rob Tysall, wanted me to write the
story that he’d thought up. After all, I’m the writer in our
writer/photographer team. For more than 20 years we’ve worked together on
magazine articles. His writing has mainly been poetry and song lyrics (he’s
also a singer and percussionist). But his story ideas know no bounds.
The Bitter End had been
our talking point for four years! But I honestly thought it was too dark for me
to write. Finally, however, I made a start and drafted a few chapters. When he
read them, as predicted, it wasn’t how he had envisaged it. But it was a start
and so we continued working on the story as a collaboration.
We
talked through each scene, listened to each other’s ideas, discussed every
sentence, every word in fact. If either of us wasn’t happy with a word or
phrase, we worked on it, until we were both in agreement – and amazingly we didn’t
fall out. In fact. Some of the most
tragic and intense scenes would reduce us to fits of laughter as words and
ideas ran away with us.
The
practicalities of a collaboration, at least in our case, is that just one
person does the typing, that keeps the style ‘uniform’. This was me as I’m a
much faster typist – and better speller. And I really needed to be quick on the
old keyboard as once his imagination is let loose, I’m hard pressed to keep up
with his dictation!
It’s
always a good idea for a writer to read their work aloud, but often when
working alone, you don’t. Having a joint writing project like this meant that
everything got read out, time and again. And being able to discuss the plot
with someone else provided a stack of events and dramas that perhaps one person
alone would not have thought of.
For
example, when halfway through the book, Rob said: “You know (character) has to die, don’t you?” And I gasped: “What? No! You can’t kill (character)!” But
he just nodded and said: “Yes you
do.” I admit I was reminded of the famous Stephen King quote: “Kill your darlings.”
So,
we’re hoping that our collaboration with The
Bitter End has produced a book that readers will enjoy. And we’re very
grateful to Bloodhound Books for taking a chance on us and publishing our book.
Well don’t know about you, but I
enjoyed reading that and must admit sounds intriguing about how things came
about.
About the Authors
If the above wasn’t enough,
I know can tell you a bit more about each of the authors.
ANN EVANS
Ann Evans was born and bred in
Coventry, West Midlands, and started writing just for fun after giving up her
secretarial job to have her three children.
Having
caught the writing 'bug' there was no stopping her, and as her children grew
up, she continued to write for a variety of genres. She spent 13 years at her
local newspaper as a Feature Writer as well as working freelance on magazine
articles.
She
also writes books for children, young adults, reluctant readers and some
romance. (Ann Carroll) Her first adult crime novel, Kill or Die was
published in 2017 by Bloodhound Books.
Having
worked with writer/photographer Robert D. Tysall for many years through
magazine work, Ann and Rob teamed up to write the supernatural thriller, The
Bitter End – Ann’s first collaboration with another writer. This
will be published by Bloodhound Books in the summer of 2018.
ROBERT D. TYSALL
Robert Tysall was born and brought up
in Rugby, Warwickshire, and played the sport the town is famous for in his
youth, until he discovered a passion and talent for photography, music and
writing poetry and song lyrics. His career so far has been a busy mix of being
lead vocalist and percussionist in bands plus working as a professional
freelance photographer.
He is
currently in a 60s, 70s & Beatles duo, and lives in Warwickshire with his
wife, Heather. He has two grown up children. Rob is multi published on the
photographic side of things with countless magazine articles, generally working
alongside writer Ann Evans.
For
many years he has dabbled with ideas for stories and finally the time felt
right with this book. It seemed a natural turn of events for both Rob and Ann
to team up and write The Bitter End together.
With
his debut novel completed, now there’s no stopping him, and two more book
collaborations with Ann are currently in the pipeline.
To connect with the Authors
Links for each of the authors are under
the About the Authors section above.
Check out the rest of the blog tour
with these fabulous blogs:
My thanks to Ann Evans for joining me on my blog today and for sharing A Writing
Collaboration with me about how both Robert D Tysall and Ann came to write the book. My thanks also to the publishers Bloodhound Books and also Sarah Hardy for my spot
on the blog tour. I’m off to check the
other blogs out now to see what their thoughts are.
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