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Guest Post with Author Melanie Robertson-King


I would like to welcome Melanie Robertson-King as my guest blogger for the month of November. I first met Melanie at a Writers’ Ink meeting earlier in the year.



Thanks for inviting me to your wonderful blog, Sandra. I’m going to talk about the project I’m working on in this year’s NaNoWriMo. The working title is Second Chances.


This particular book has been a long time in the making. Originally, I had planned it to be a sequel to my debut novel, but when it was published by 4RV Publishing in 2012, this follow-up project wouldn’t work. It went off in a completely different direction and genre from my first book.


I relegated it to the dark recesses of my hard drive where it languished for a long time. After a “Eureka” moment, I pulled it out, dusted it off and thought I would re-work it into a standalone. The name of the heroine changed from Sarah to Katherine, the fluff eliminated that was no longer relevant to this new project, and it looked like it would work. The plot revolved around a helicopter ditching in the North Sea on a return flight from one of the offshore rigs.


Well, if after I started this “new and improved” version of the novel, a spate of helicopter ditchings occurred. Yikes! At that point, I couldn’t work on it. I felt too close to the subject. However; I amassed a great wealth of information as a result. I filled a 2” binder with printouts from various news articles and other data.


Again the project languished. I couldn’t bring myself to write it with everything being so raw for the families involved. While I couldn’t write, I outlined and refined the outline. This is the short synopsis.


Torn away from her first love, Jared Martin, in a family move to another country when she was a teenager, Katherine Murphy is devastated. Soon after her return to Aberdeen to attend University, she discovers Jared seemingly in a relationship with someone else. However; destiny has someone else in mind for Katherine – Colin Whithorn. They fall in love, marry and open a new and used bookshop. Their marriage comes to an abrupt end during the London bombings on July 7, 2005 when Colin is in the city on a buying trip for their store.


Devastated, she builds a wall around her heart determined not to let anyone in again who can hurt her – that is, until five years later when Jared walks into her shop. Despite him being her first love, he must tear down the barrier she’s created to protect herself. Given a second chance of a life with him, Katherine couldn’t be happier until another cruel twist of fate strikes and the helicopter he’s on returning from his job on an oil rig ditches in the North Sea. Will he survive the ordeal? Will they have a third chance at happiness? Or will Katherine have her heart broken yet again?


Author bio


A native of eastern Ontario, during her pre-school years, Melanie lived in a winterized cottage on the shore of the St Lawrence River. Prior to her starting school, her family moved to Brockville where she received her education, including a post–secondary degree in Computer Programming.


Growing up as an only child, Melanie was an avid reader, and remains so to this day. It was through this love of the written word that she knew that one day she would become a writer. When she wasn’t talking about her dream of becoming an author, she wrote stories and began honing her skills at an early age.


Melanie’s father was a Scottish national, who came to Canada as a ‘Home Child’ through the auspices of The Orphan Homes of Scotland. She promised herself that one day she would travel to her father’s homeland to see where he was born and raised. That first trip was in 1993 and she’s not looked back since, having returned to the “auld country” a further seven times and is looking forward to trip number eight. On one of her many trips to Scotland, Melanie had the honour of meeting Princess Anne (The Princess Royal).

Melanie began her professional writing career in non-fiction. Eight of her articles have been published, with one being an international feature cover article. At the same time she continued to develop her writing voice: short stories (both fiction and non–fiction) as well as novel length work.


Melanie’s debut novel, A Shadow in the Past, was published by 4RV Publishing in the summer of 2012. Melanie even made the trip to the Kansas Book Festival in September to celebrate the launch of her novel and met her publisher and editor face–to–face for the first time, along with two other authors from the publishing house.


Other works by Melanie include a compilation of short stories, The Consequences Collection; a children’s chapter book geared to ages 7–11, Tim’s Magic Christmas; a short novel set in a fictitious Eastern Canadian haunted house, The Secret of Hillcrest House; and Shadows From Her Past (the sequel to her debut novel). Her short story, Cole’s Notes, was included in EFD1: Starship Goodwords – a cross genre anthology (Carrick Publishing, 2012).


Author links



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