Isabella Connor (Liv Thomas)

I was born in the south of England, where I've always lived, despite having an affinity for the north, and even more of an affinity for Ireland.

My life has always been pretty ordinary - husband, children, dog, Sainsbury's - but I've always had a passion for writing. I never had the confidence to submit anything, but I ventured into the realm of fan-fiction, which helped to feed my ambition. Maybe I could have been E L James if I'd made my Faramir centred stories a tad more erotic...

Anyway - to cut to the chase, I met Val Olteanu on a Lord of the Rings website, and we got together (despite being on different continents) to collaborate on a novel, Beneath an Irish Sky, which was accepted by Choc Lit Publishing. It's a tale of long buried secrets and lies and a clash of cultures, when tragedy brings a young Irish Traveller to a wealthy part of Cheshire, where he encounters - not for the first time in his life - narrow minded bigotry.

It's been quite a journey.  Being more than a bit naive about the industry, we thought there was a minimum number of words required, so the first draft of our novel finished at 240k words. We then spent the next two years losing 120k words, to make it the 120k (give or take a few) words that it is today. We 'lost' the equivalent of a whole book! You live and learn!

Val and I write under the one name of Isabella Connor, and have completed a second novel for Choc Lit, An Irish Promise, a story which deals with bullying, and its effect on both the bullied and the bullies. 

There is romance in both novels, but we don't really consider them to be romances - more of family dramas.

Beneath an Irish Sky is set in two locations, the north of England, and Ireland. An Irish Promise is set in Ireland (apart from one brief part in England), in a fictional village in Galway. It was originally located in the same English setting as BAIS, but Choc Lit requested that we move it to Ireland, and we always do as we're told. Well, nearly always. There is a very tenuous link between the two novels - so tenuous that we've not yet met anyone who has guessed it.

Check out my blog if you're remotely interested in what I have to say - and feel free to offer suggestions (clean only please) as I'm not an expert blogger, so all tips gratefully received.

Thanks for visiting 

- Liv Thomas