Guest Interview With Morton Gray

This week I am very pleased to welcome Choc Lit author, Morton Gray, onto the blog. I first met Morton at my very first RNA Conference at Lancaster in 2016 where she and her friends made me feel very welcome. With her novel, Christmas at the Little Beach Cafe, (Borteen Secrets Book 5) coming out tomorrow, 17th November, I was delighted that she found time to answer some questions about her writing and the new book.

Welcome, Morton! Please tell us a little about yourself and your writing. 

I’m Morton Gray and I write romance with a mystery to solve for Choc Lit. I started writing seriously following the birth of my second child. I went to a writing class, where I tried lots of different types of writing, I discovered that I wanted to write novels. After that, I joined the Romantic Novelists’ Association’s wonderful New Writer’s Scheme. The scheme gives you a critique of a novel for each year you are a member and this helped me to develop my writing to the point where I began to shortlist in writing competitions, eventually winning Choc Lit Publishing’s Search for a Star competition in 2016.

Christmas at the Little Beach Café is your fifth novel to be published by Choc Lit and your second Christmas book. Where do you get your inspiration?

Very interesting question, because most of the time I have no clue where my ideas come from! I seem to start with a character and a setting and take off from there. I’m not a planner, so part of the pleasure for me is to see how the story develops from my starting point. 

For Christmas at the Little Beach Café, I had a clear picture in my head of my hero, Justin Sadler and a backstory which resulted in him hating Christmas. From there, I had a ‘vision’ of him catching a red hat on the beach, which had blown from the head of an unknown woman. Then, I was off … who was the woman and what had led her to be at that place at that particular time?

Borteen Bay is a location you return to in your books. How important is the setting? Is it based on a real place?

I like to base my books in the same fictional seaside town of Borteen. This allows me to have characters from my other books making guest appearances in my current story and readers seem to like that too. Borteen is not actually a real place, but its imaginary streets are very clear in my head. I have even drawn a map of the location. I guess it is an amalgamation of my favourite seaside places.

Can you summarise your new novel in just a few sentences?

The back of Christmas at the Little Beach Café says:

Run away to the little beach café this Christmas ...

Five years ago at Christmas, solicitor Justin Sadler made the decision to leave his comfortable existence behind and move to the coast. Since then, he’s tried his best to ignore the festive season and, as he sits in the little beach café and reflects on that fateful night when his life was turned upside down, he expects his fifth Christmas alone to be no different to any of the others since he made his escape.

But when he encounters a mystery woman on the beach, he soon realises he may have found a fellow runaway and kindred spirit. Could Justin finally be ready to move on and let Christmas into his life again?

Oh and watch out for guest appearances of Ryan the seagull, who appears on the cover.

 

Do any of your family’s Christmas traditions appear in your novel? 

Again a good question. We have a very traditional Christmas I suppose. I send Christmas cards to loads of people at the beginning of December and put up my trees. In this house, we usually have three! I love Christmas decorations and the stories of past Christmases they remind me of.

We usually have my mother over for Christmas lunch. My husband thankfully cooks, as I tend to get very flustered preparing that sort of meal. My sons were both living at home last year, but one has recently bought a house with his girlfriend, so I’m not sure if they will come to us for lunch or want to cook in their own home. My sister and her family normally join us in the afternoon for present giving.

One family fun thing (which isn’t in the book) is the tradition of getting Bubléd and Boyled. Let me explain – my eldest son was once given a full-size cardboard cut-out of Michael Bublé as a secret Santa present at work. At Christmastime Michael appears in the most unexpected places – in your shower, in dark rooms, just behind the front door and it doesn’t matter if you know he will be there it scares you! We now also have a full-size cardboard Susan Boyle too and she is equally as good for making you jump out of your skin! 

So, to answer the original question, maybe only my love of decorating for Christmas is included in the book.

Where do you write best? When do you write best – a lark or an owl?

I have trained myself to write almost anywhere. I am happy to write longhand into notebooks or straight onto the computer. I’ve written on buses, trains, as a passenger in a car, on carparks, waiting for appointments, once while waiting to be sent to the operating theatre for an operation, even in the bath! I can write at any time, sometimes typing onto my phone in the middle of the night if I can’t sleep, but I suppose I’m more productive in the mornings as a general rule.

What are you working on at present? 

I’m actually working on my Christmas 2021 book, again set in Borteen. This one is a bit different, as there is an older couple and a younger couple in the book. The story starts when Buzz, who runs the Borteen crystal shop, believes that he sees his wife, who disappeared twenty years before, on the beach. He quickly realises that the girl he has seen wearing his wife’s wedding dress is much too young to be his lost wife, but who is she?

What would a reader expect when they pick up a Morton Gray novel? 

I like to say that I write romance with a mystery to solve. I write hard won happy ever afters with a lot of twists and turns along the way.

Thank you, Morton, for an interesting insight into your writing and the ideas behind your new novel. Good luck with the sales of Christmas at the Little Beach Cafe.

Author Bio:

Morton lives with her husband, two sons and Lily, the tiny white dog, in Worcestershire, U.K. She has been reading and writing fiction for as long as she can remember, penning her first attempt at a novel aged fourteen. She is a member of the Romantic Novelists’ Association and The Society of Authors.Morton previously worked in the electricity industry in committee services, staff development and training. She has a Business Studies degree and is a fully qualified Clinical Hypnotherapist and Reiki Master. She also has diplomas in Tuina acupressure massage and energy field therapy. She enjoys crafts, history and loves tracing family trees. Having a hunger for learning new things is a bonus for the research behind her books.

Morton’s latest release is Christmas at the Little Beach Café published as an e-book and audio download on 17 November 2020.

Her debut novel The Girl on the Beach was published after she won the Choc Lit Publishing Search for a Star competition. This story follows a woman with a troubled past as she tries to unravel the mystery surrounding her son’s new headteacher, Harry Dixon. The book is available as a paperback and e-book.

Morton’s second book for Choc Lit The Truth Lies Buried is another romantic suspense novel, The book tells the story of Jenny Simpson and Carver Rodgers as they uncover secrets from their past. This book is available as an e-book, paperback and audiobook.

Christmas at Borteen Bay was Morton’s first Christmas novella. It is set in her fictional seaside town of Borteen and follows the story of Pippa Freeman, who runs the Rose Court Guesthouse with her mother, and local policeman Ethan Gibson, as they unravel a family secret as Christmas approaches.

Bestselling Sunny Days on the Beach, is her fourth novel for Choc Lit. Again set in Borteen, this book is the story of what happens when craft shop owner, Mandy Vanes takes in an abandoned teenager, Nick Crossten and the repercussions when Graham Frankley, a gin distiller, arrives in town to say he has received a letter telling him he is Nick’s father.

You can catch up with Morton on her website www.mortonsgray.com, on

Twitter - @MortonSGray, her Facebook page – Morton S. Gray Author - https://www.facebook.com/mortonsgray/ and

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/morton_s_gray/ 

Purchasing links for The Girl on the Beach at http://www.choc-lit.com/dd-product/the-girl-on-the-beach/ e-book and paperback

Purchasing links for The Truth Lies Buried at http://www.choc-lit.com/dd-product/the-truth-lies-buried/ e-book, audio and paperback.

Purchasing links for Christmas in Borteen Bay at https://www.choc-lit.com/dd-product/christmas-at-borteen-bay/ e-book and audio

Purchasing links for Sunny Days on the Beach at https://www.choc-lit.com/dd-product/sunny-days-at-the-beach/ e-book, audio and paperback

Purchasing links for Christmas at the Little Beach Café at https://www.choc-lit.com/dd-product/christmas-at-the-little-beach-cafe/ e-book and audio.

Thank you for reading. What do you like best about returning to a familiar setting in a book? 

You may also follow me on @JanBaynham and on my Jan Baynham Writer Facebook page.