Dreaming of Venice by T A Williams blog tour with guest post

Summary:

Find love, friendship and prosecco – in the magical city of Venice.

Life is tough for Penny. A dead end job in a London café, a boyfriend in Australia (what could go wrong?) and an art career going nowhere. But then Penny is approached with an extraordinary proposition.

It isn’t going to be easy but, if she can pull it off, she will turn her life around and at long last see the fulfilment of her dream – to visit Venice. And, just maybe, find true happiness with the handsome man of her dreams.

But can dreams come true?



Information about the Book

Title: Dreaming of Venice

Author: T. A. Williams

Release Date: 24th April 2017

Genre: Romance

Publisher: Canelo

Format: Ebook 

Goodreads Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34597482-dreaming-of-venice 

Amazon Link: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B06XN5V1YR

Author Info:

My name is Trevor Williams. I write under the androgynous name T A Williams because 65% of books are read by women. In my first book, "Dirty Minds" one of the (female) characters suggests the imbalance is due to the fact that men spend too much time getting drunk and watching football. I couldn't possibly comment. Ask my wife...

My background, before taking up writing full time, was in teaching and I was principal of a big English language school for many years. This involved me in travelling all over the world and my love of foreign parts is easy to find in my books. I speak a few languages and my Italian wife and I still speak Italian together.

I've written all sorts: thrillers, historical novels, short stories and now I'm enjoying myself hugely writing humour and romance. My most recent books are the What happens… series. What happens in Tuscany reached #1 in the Amazon.uk Romantic Comedy chart and What Happens on the Beach, the last in the series, came out in July. Chasing Shadows is still romance, but with the added spice of a liberal helping of medieval history, one of my pet hobbies. I do a lot of cycling and I rode all the way to Santiago de Compostela on a bike a few years back. This provided both the inspiration and the background research for Chasing Shadows.

I’m originally from Exeter, and I’ve lived all over Europe, but now I live in a little village in sleepy Devon, tucked away down here in south west England. I love the place.

Website: http://www.tawilliamsbooks.com/ Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/TAWilliamsbooks Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/TrevorWilliamsBooks

Guest Post:
Trevor (T.A.) Williams talks about why writing is so important to him.

Let’s start with a definition. What is a writer? At first glance, it’s pretty straightforward; a writer is somebody who writes things. For the sake of this post, we’ll ignore the clever people who write advertising slogans, poets, songwriters, journalists and whoever took the time and trouble to write that collection of smutty limericks on the wall of the toilet in the old pub I used to frequent. What we are talking about here are people who write books. I’ve been writing books since I was 14 and, seeing as I’ve just turned 68, that’s a hell of a long time. But I’ve only been an author since 2013. Know the difference? The received wisdom here in the world of those of us who write books is that you only become an author when your first book gets published.

So, although I spent fifty years writing the best part of a million unpublished words, the fact that none of my work got published until 2013 made me a second class citizen in the world of books, if I had only known it. It was only when my first book, “Dirty Minds” was read by an editor at Carina UK (now part of Harper Collins) and she offered me my first publishing contract that I suddenly became an author. That was, by the way, an amazing, life-changing day for me and I will always be immensely grateful to the lovely Clio Cornish for taking a chance on an old boy like me.

Anyway, what’s in a name? Being called an author or a writer is all the same to me. The fact is, I’ve always written as much for myself as for anybody else. Although I spent many a long hour composing begging letters to literary agents and publishers without success, it was the act of writing my books that worked for me. I had a pretty full-on day job for many years and for me, writing has always been a form of relaxation. I love losing myself in a world of my own invention, being able to choose what happens to the characters, where it all happens and even what they have for dinner. In this way, I can transform a cold winter evening into a sunny day on a sandy beach, and the mug of lukewarm tea beside me into a glass of vintage champagne.

It’s a great way of reminiscing about the past, remembering places and events buried in the mists of time. I have been fortunate in my life to have travelled a lot and to have met a host of interesting, funny and sometimes downright bonkers people. I saw a T-shirt recently which read, I’m an author. Be nice to me or I’ll put you in one of my books. I find myself doing it all the time. Oh so often, events I had forgotten or people who had retreated to the very back of my mind emerge from the shadows and

enter my books. As I write, I’m thinking about them and remembering the times we spent together.

My books are definitely Happy Ever After. That means, I want to feel happy with the ending myself. And as for the reader, the last thing I want is for somebody to get to the end of one of my books, reach for a bottle of vodka and a razor blade and end it all. What I want is for the reader to reach the last line with what one reviewer has described as “a silly smile on my face” and then head straight back to Amazon to buy another one. Apart from hopefully spreading a bit of happiness in an increasingly humourless world, it also makes sound business sense.

So, if you read any of my books, bear in mind that I have really, truly enjoyed writing them. If you read them and enjoy them, then that’s a real bonus for me.