#BlogTour Snowflake by @HeideGoody and @IainMGrant #NewRelease

I’m delighted to be part of the blog tour for Snowflake by Heide Goody and Iain Grant. You might have spotted the cover reveal I shared a while back (if not, click HERE), but today I’m over the moon to share an extract from the novel itself. Enjoy.

There’s a lot of different ways to get dumped.

I’ve been dumped in person, like when Leo Bickers in year five told me he preferred Yu-Gi-Oh cards to kissing girls. I’ve been dumped by text, too many times: ‘It’s not you it’s me’, ‘Get a grip and grow up’, ‘I forgot to tell you I’m married, soz’. (You know, the usual.) And I’ve been dumped by letter. Gareth, who I thought was going to be my Mr Perfect, wrote me the sweetest letter. I’ve still got it somewhere.

But I reckon very few people have been dumped by letter, by their parents.

And it had started out as such a lovely day.

Coming home after a trip, there’s nothing like it, is there? I’d been travelling since the transfer bus picked us up outside the Akrogiali Resort at five in the morning (that’s five in the morning Greek time) and my heart lifted when the taxi finally pulled up at home. The streets of suburban England are dark compared to the wide streets and whitewashed buildings of Crete, but I’d really missed the trees. Funny that. You don’t realise how many trees there are in Britain, even in the cities, until you go and visit one of the browner bits of the world. Trees lined the streets of home like a guard of honour to greet me.

It takes a fortnight away to make you really appreciate what matters in life: the trees, my own bed, home-cooked food, and someone to pay the taxi for me. I know I should have kept some money back, but I got caught up in the holiday mood. I just had to give the lads at the Ikarus Bar a special tip on my last night. I also gave an extra ten euro note to Bemus, the poor little boy who sat outside the Akrogiali every day. And I had to buy some souvenirs. Had to.

Back home now, the taxi driver fetched my bag out of the boot.

“I’ll pop my bag inside and pay you in just a minute,” I said to him. He sat back down in the driver’s seat.

I put my key in the lock but it wouldn’t fit. This happens sometimes, particularly since that time I used my key to open a tin of tuna (it was an emergency; the stray cat in the garden looked really hungry). No worries, I’d use the spare key. There’s a stone in the front garden that’s a different colour to all the rest.

I lifted the stone and groped underneath. No key? There was something in its place though, an envelope.

Lori

It was addressed to me. Well I love post as much as the next person, but I needed to get inside, so I thumped the door as I took out the letter and read it.

Lori,

You know how we always talked about down-sizing and moving off grid once you and Adam were old enough? Well, we’ve gone and done it. You’ll notice that the locks have been changed. We promised Mrs Llewellyn we’d do that when we moved out.

I mouthed those words again, testing their meaning. I tried them out loud. “Moved out?” I stared up at the door. Blue gloss paint with scratches around the lock. It looked the same. I stepped back. The whole house looked the same. I thumped the door again and read on.

We’ve thought long and hard about this, and done some real soul-searching, and decided that now was the right time both for us and for you.

I’m sure this has come as a bit of a surprise but it’s an exciting surprise, isn’t it?

We’ve hardly been able to contain ourselves. This is such an opportunity, as much for you as it is for us. We didn’t want to tell you about it at the time because you might have got cold feet (do you remember that time when you refused to go on stage at the ballet recital?). We didn’t want you to worry and we didn’t want you causing a scene by trying to change our minds.

Look at this as your big chance. We spoke to Adam. As you know, he’s away on his lecture tour of the States. He’s said you can stay at his flat on Silver Street for a few days while you look for your own place. We’ve had all your things sent over there. Don’t worry. We’ve not binned anything. The combination to the key safe is Nanna Shap’s birthday.

We have provided a little something extra for you though. We had a word with Pat and Dom. They said that the job at the museum really worked out for Melissa and the application forms are all on-line so we filled one out for you. We couldn’t remember if you got a D or an E at GCSE Maths, so we played it safe and put you down as a C. Your interview is at 5 pm on the seventeenth. That is the day you get back, isn’t it? The interview is with a Mr Rex McCloud at the big museum and gallery. Wear something nice!

Knock ‘em dead, sunbeam

Mom and Dad xxx

There was no address on the letter – not at the top, not at the bottom, not on the back of the envelope. They’d left me and not told me where they’d gone.

“She’s not in,” said the man.

“Who?”

“Mrs Llewellyn,” said the man, pointing at the house.

He was a handsome if intense looking fellow not much older than me. Having said that, he was wearing corduroy trousers and a tweedy looking jacket so it was sort of like he was an elderly-gent-in-training.

“This is terrible,” I said.

“Can I help?” said the man.

“I’m looking for my parents,” I said.

“They don’t live there,” he pointed out.

“I know,” I said, shaking the letter at him. “I can read.”

Blurb:

“Lori Belkin has been dumped. By her parents.

They moved out while she was away on holiday, and now, at the tender age of twenty-five, she’s been cruelly forced to stand on her own two feet.

While she’s getting to grips with basic adulting, Lori magically brings to life the super-sexy man she created from celebrity photos as a teenager.

Lori learns very quickly that having your ideal man is not as satisfying as it ought to be and that being an adult is far harder than it looks.

Snowflake is a story about prehistoric pets, delinquent donkeys and becoming the person you want to be, not the person everyone else expects you to be”

PRE-ORDER from Amazon UK or Amazon US

Check out the other stops on the Blog Tour:

If you want to get involved in the launch of Snowflake you can join Heide and Iain at their virtual launch party on 20^th July 2018 between 7 pm and 9 pm (GMT), click HERE.