Helllllo Everyone!
Sorry for the delay! Not really sure what happened. I had it scheduled to post for Thursday, and to me, it looked like it had! Then I realized that it wasn't up! :o
But, alas, our Thirsty Thursday Quencher is here for
How do you Spell Love? for your reading pleasure! I want to thank the fabulous Zanna Mackenzie for taking the time to stop by and provide a post!
Thanks!
~K.C.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Many thanks for hosting me on your blog
today!
My novel, published by Crooked Cat, is
called How Do You Spell Love? Here’s the
details:
Make A Wish…
Kat can’t help wishing there was more to
life than this. What happened to her dream job? What happened with Nathan?
Summer is wondering where her life is going
too… battling the developers of a controversial housing estate and working out
why boyfriend Rob is increasingly distant.
When the developers win the battle and move
into town everyone’s life is turned upside down.
Kat meets building site project manager
Alex. She enjoys his company far too much, even though he’s on the town’s most
hated list.
Summer meets Tom who has plenty of
relationship troubles of his own, so things could get really complicated.
Soon everyone is keeping secrets, lives
change and hearts are broken. Is everything falling apart, or does life just
work in mysterious ways…
There’s
a sneak peak of the book below and it can be purchased in paperback and ebook formats
now on:
*Amazon UK
http://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Do-You-Spell-Love/dp/1908910771/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1361800360&sr=8-2
*Amazon USA
http://www.amazon.com/How-Do-You-Spell-Love/dp/1908910771/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1361800417&sr=1-3&keywords=zanna+mackenzie
How
Do You Spell Love?
Kat pushed the last of the cottage cheese
and shrimp sandwiches into the cool box and slammed the van door shut. As if
her life wasn’t enough of a disaster zone as it was – no money, lousy job,
losing Nathan, having to move back home to live with her parents – now this had
to go and happen. Plus, of course, it didn’t help that today she was feeling
shattered after spending half the night chanting some ridiculous protection
spell in the middle of the allotments with Summer.
Cringing as a van full of builders stopped
at the nearby traffic lights, Kat braced herself for the inevitable. After the
standard-issue wolf whistles had drifted across from their van, next came the
leered, “Wouldn’t argue with that, love!” as one of them nodded towards her sparkling
clean van, parked neatly at the curb. The words “A Bit of Crumpet on the Road”
emblazoned down the side in deep purple, glittery lettering. Not for the first
time Kat cursed her boss Janice for calling her bakery-cum-deli that name.
Kat sighed, well it certainly drew comments
from the public and from their customers, not always welcome ones, but as
Janice was always keen to point out, any kind of publicity and attention was,
in her eyes, good publicity and attention.
Pulling her navy and white striped apron
more tightly around her T-shirt and shorts, Kat ignored the builders and
climbed into her van to begin that morning’s deliveries. As she indicated to
pull out into the busy street in Luisborough, she mulled over the bad news –
that she was to add the controversial Netherton Meadows housing development to
her daily sandwich round.
Netherton Meadows. Yippee. If Summer found
out, she’d surely be ostracised for fraternising with the environmental enemy.
This was a development that pretty much everyone in Luisborough had fought
against for getting on towards a year. It had been the focus of STW campaigns.
It went against everything that Kat believed in environmental-wise. Everyone
hated the Netherton Meadows developers. Except, it seemed, Janice, who was perfectly
happy to, in her words, ‘supply yummy builders with yummy sandwiches.’
Lost in thought, Kat just managed to spot
the approaching traffic lights had turned to red and hastily slammed a foot on
the brake. The van lurched to a halt and several boxes of crisps and one of the
cool boxes in the back tipped over. Damn. It was shaping up to be one of those
days.
Ten minutes later she pulled into the car
park of Printing Phenomenon, hauled some baskets and a box from the van and
headed for the reception area. It was getting towards late July and was another
one of those blazing hot days that made every little thing feel as though it
required a huge amount of effort. The kind of day the people of the UK are so
unaccustomed to, where all you want to do is get a large, cool drink and
collapse into a deckchair for a long snooze.
Two hours later Kat had visited all her
usual drops, was extremely hot and bothered, and could put off going to
Netherton Meadows no longer.
Driving through the assorted vans,
machinery and portacabins Kat parked next to a building marked as being the
Site Office and hit the button on the dashboard. Tinkling chimes filled the air
as Kat climbed from the driver’s seat and made to open the back doors of the
vehicle. It was embarrassing enough that the van had the company name in large
lettering along its side but, just to make sure that it received maximum
exposure – and achieved maximum embarrassment – Janice had had some irritating
chimes fitted to the vehicle too. Kat was under strict instructions to sound
the chimes when she called at all of the sites where people came out to the
van; such as they were about to at Netherton Meadows.
A man came down the steps of the office
with a grin on his face and walked towards her. “Hi, you must be Kat.” He
wedged a clipboard under his left arm and offered a hand to shake. “I’m Alex.
Project manager for the site.”
“Hi,” mumbled Kat, spotting a group of
hard-hat-clad builders advancing towards her with hungry expressions on their
faces.
“Right, lads,” Alex turned towards the men.
“This is Kat and she’s very kindly agreed to venture onto this site to bring
you all your lunch. Don’t give her any hassle, OK?”
The men laughed and then nodded. “Sure,
Alex. You’re the boss.”
Fifteen minutes later it seemed that all of
the team at the development had made their sandwich, crisp and drink selections
and sloped off to devour them in the sunshine. Only one of the builders, a
portly man who must have been twenty years Kat’s senior, had pushed the
boundaries a little, despite Alex’s earlier warning. As he’d selected a smoked
salmon and cream cheese roll – a choice that had surprised Kat somewhat, having
pegged him as a ham and cheese kind of guy – he’d asked Kat if she’d fancy
joining him for a drink sometime. She’d politely declined his offer, saying
that she had a boyfriend. No need to tell him that, technically, she and Nathan
were no longer an item. No need to tell him why either.
Just as Kat slammed the van doors shut,
Alex re-appeared from his office.
“Thanks, Kat. I hope none of them caused
any trouble?” he asked, taking off his yellow hard hat and running a hand
through cropped dark brown hair in an agitated fashion.
“No, they were all fine.” Kat forced a
smile, struggling to tuck an escaped tendril of curly blond hair back into her
ponytail. God, it was hot today. “Thanks for being so gentlemanly about their
behaviour.”
He grinned back at her. “No problem. I know
what they can be like and as soon as I saw you getting out of the van I thought
I’d better intervene. I’ve had enough problems getting a company to even
contemplate coming to this site without them scaring you off on the first day.”
“Problems? Why do you think that is?” asked
Kat, sensing an opportunity to make sure this man was fully aware just how much
the people of Luisborough were still against the development.
“Because they hate us around here,” he
said, shrugging matter-of-factly.
“And that doesn’t bother you?” Kat was now
leaning against the van, noting that Alex seemed, somehow, a bit different to the
rest of the team on the site. He had a jaded air about him despite the fact
that he was clearly much younger than most of the others. Kat couldn’t help
noticing that he was also extremely good looking.
“Yes, it bothers me but what can you do?”
He sighed. “A job’s a job in this day and age. We all have to make a living,
don’t we?”
Softening a little towards him, Kat nodded
and rolled her eyes. “Tell me about it.”
He moved to stand next to her, propping
himself against the van. Kat hadn’t realised until that moment just how tall he
was. “Take you, for instance. I can’t imagine it was your lifelong ambition to
drive around in a van with that name on the side of it. You must get no end of
grief.”
“I do but I need to earn some money to get
my life back on track, so here I am.”
“Is this your first job?” he asked, setting
his hat and clipboard on the roof of the van and looking at her intently.
“Pretty much. I recently finished a degree
in environmental science and geography at university.” She added, trying to sound
optimistic, “I’m waiting for my dream job to come along. In the meantime I work
at the deli for a pittance and spend the rest of my time volunteering in a
charity shop in town.”
“Dream job, eh?” He turned towards her,
brown eyes looking at her in a genuinely interested way. “What would your dream
job be, then?”
Kat smiled. “That’s easy. I’d love to work
on a project like a nature reserve. Helping to preserve the environment, look
after the wildlife. The charity shop where I volunteer is the Save the World
one. My boss there, Summer, is a good friend and a great campaigner against
developments like this.”
Aware that she was telling him things that
she hadn’t really spoken to anyone about since Nathan, she quickly turned away.
He was a complete stranger. A stranger who stood for everything she was
against. He was the enemy, supervising the building of a development that she,
and many others, had fought to try to prevent.
Reaching onto the van roof to hand the hat
and clipboard back to Alex, she said, “I’d better be going.”
“Sure. Thanks for coming out here.” He
started to walk away but then paused, turned back towards her and added, “See
you tomorrow, then?”
Kat nodded. As she drove off, she felt more
flustered than when she’d arrived. Unfortunately she had a growing suspicion
that it had nothing to do with the hot weather or having to bring food to the
development against her will. Rather, she suspected, it had much more to do
with meeting Alex the site manager. Not a good sign at all.
------------------
Author
bio
Zanna Mackenzie lives in the UK with her
husband, 4 dogs, an ever expanding library of books waiting to be read, and a vegetable patch that’s home to far too many weeds.
Being a freelance writer and editor of
business publications is her ‘day job’, but at every opportunity, she can be
found scribbling down notes on scenes for whatever novel she’s working on. She
loves it when the characters in her novels take on minds of their own and start
deviating from the original plot!
Formerly a travel agent and therapist (she
has qualifications in clinical aromatherapy, crystal healing, naturopathic
nutrition and herbalism) she loves walking the dogs and gardening – that’s when
she’s not writing or reading!
Zanna has written two novels, The Love
Programme and How Do You Spell Love.
Find out more about Zanna at:
www.zannamackenzie.blogspot.co.uk
www.zannamackenzie.co.uk
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