EverWriting @ Leigh Verrill-Rhys

My editor at Avalon Books has just told me that Wait a Lonely Lifetime will be published two months earlier than originally scheduled. Avalon Books releases 60 titles a year, the majority of which are romance novels. Wait a Lonely Lifetime will be in the April releases so I’ll be editing/proofreading the book early in 2012.

The opening of the novel begins in the early spring and Sylviana’s first attempt to contact Eric is on the 10th of April. The timing of this release couldn’t be better.

She is in San Francisco and he is somewhere in Europe. They haven’t seen or heard from each other in 15 years.

Much of the inspiration for this novel came from my brief visit to Firenze (Florence) at the end of September 2008, moments before the banks lost our confidence and a full year after I had decided that writing was too important to me to be abandoned.

At the time, I was working on another contemporary novel, Salsa Dancing with Pterodactyls, but the three days I had – with three of my sisters – in this Tuscan city with its ancient Etruscan fortress, proved to be the starting point of a fantastic journey to publication.

While I was reading the first draft of Salsa Dancing with Pterodactyls to my youngest sister, Sylviana and Eric’s love story was building in  the back of my mind. I made certain I didn’t miss any details of my experience in Firenze because I knew I had to write about the city – and very soon.

Nearly every landmark, historic event and character, street and bar was etched into my mind’s eye. Before long, the story emerged, populated by characters who came fully-fledged from the stone walls and Michaelangelo’s statues.

I first wrote about the inspiration for Wait a Lonely Lifetime in two blogs: Four Foxes and One Hound here on WordPress in April 2011 – with many thanks to Jeff Salter for the invitation – and at Avalon Authors on Blogspot in May this year: my first blog as a contracted writer.

And to think, in August 2007, I was contemplating shredding all my work!