#RomancingSeptember Day 28 The Vintage Cinema Club by @janelinfoot #books

Welcome to Day 28 of #RomancingSeptember

Our guest today is Jane Linfoot and her book The Vintage Cinema Club

Where is your home town?

Matlock Bath, Derbyshire, England

How long have you been writing romance?

I began to write romance five years ago.

What is your favourite sub-genre of romance?

I enjoy writing rom coms and chicklit

Where is your book set?

The Vintage Cinema Club is set in Derbyshire and France. Cue lots of country scenes, and summer heat.

Tell us what the Vintage Cinema Club is.

The Vintage Cinema Club centres on three friends, Izzy, Luce and Dida who share a wonderful retro shop in an old vintage cinema. We join them at the start of what should be a fabulous summer, as they celebrate the third birthday of their emporium, Vintage at the Cinema. But as fast as they’re popping the champers, everything they’ve worked for is unraveling, and suddenly three women are facing a full on fight to save what they love. And they call themselves The Vintage Cinema Club.

Introduce us to the characters.

My previous books have all focussed on “couple” relationships. With The Vintage Cinema Club I’ve had great fun broadening that view to explore the lives of a group of close friends instead.

 

Izzy, Luce and Dida, stars of The Vintage Cinema Club, are three very different characters, who run a vintage business together.

When we meet them they have been firm friends for years, and like a lot of friends, circumstances threw them together initially. Izzy and Luce became besties when Izzy came down in the world, left her private school, and landed at the local sixth form. Luce took pity on a traumatised Izzy, who she saw as under privileged, because she was so short of streetwise experience.

They teamed up with Dida at art college, where Luce and Izzy were working towards career qualifications. At the time Dida, as a first time mum, was saving her sanity with an art course. Luce and Dida’s friendship was cemented when they met again at antenatal classes. Like so many mums, their daughters growing up together made their bond strong, despite their different situations. Dida is loaded, and Luce struggles to make ends meet. Luce is a single mum with a tiny flat, whereas Dida is married – albeit to the husband from hell – and lives in a huge house. And Izzy is hooked on being a surrogate mum to her three twenty-something brothers.

Having been friends for so long means they know each other so well they sometimes feel they know what’s best for each other. In friendship there’s a fine line between interference and support, and it was great to explore the dynamics of that for Izzy, Luce and Dida. Sometimes friendly interference leads to big trouble, but the very best friends will always hang around to make good.

In real life people are often drawn to friends who complement their own qualities. Quiet girls hang out with extroverts, wild women will have a sensible friend to keep them grounded. The contrasts between the characters in this book were a great way of shining a spotlight on each of the individual women and their different lives. Izzy’s feisty side is tempered by Luce’s calm, but when it comes to business, Luce wishes she had a share of Izzy’s courage. And what will it take to crack Dida’s hard shell?

There are struggles, there are crises, happy times and heartfelt ones, and these all spark different reactions in each of the characters. And as the women push and pull each other through the book, they inevitably grow and change as a result of their experiences.

Give us a hint about the romance in this book.

All three women are bound together in their struggle to keep the wonderful business that means so much to all of them, but as they move through the book, despite their determination to remain independent, each woman travels on her own romantic journey, and finds her life has changed by the end. And the friends are all there to help, advise and interfere along the way.

What was your favourite part of this book?

I love the different qualities of each of the women in the book. I like writing about strong women, and I especially enjoyed writing about their interaction, as the women both clash and collide, sometimes ganging up on each other, but always working together. Their combined strength is an awesome power. I found the different combinations of three women in the scenes, and the progress of their relationships in pairs, singly, and all together, developed in a fascinating way, as the story played out. Often it felt as if they were acting completely independently, and I was simply the one recording what they did.

Having said that, I also love the way the book ends. I enjoyed writing all the characters, but I especially love Izzy’s story.

Tell us what you are working on at the moment.

I’m planning my next Derbyshire based romance

Where can readers find out more about you?

Author Page Facebook

Personal Page Facebook Happy to have friends

Twitter @janelinfoot

Pinterest Lots of Vintage Cinema Club character pages on Pinterest

Website: http://www.janelinfoot.co.uk

Buy Links:

HarperImpulse (all buy links)

Amazon UK

Amazon US

iTunes

Sainsburys

Nook

Google play

To find out more about Jane and all our guests go to Stephanie’s blog where she’ll be posting a second piece about Pamela later today http://stephanie-hurt.com/