The Hot Pink Typewriter: Guest Post: Romy Sommer, author of The Trouble with Mojitos

It's always a pleasure to have our friend Romy Sommer stop by The Hot Pink Typewriter, and today she's chatting about the heroine of her second Harper Impulse release, THE TROUBLE WITH MOJITOS. (How fun is that title?)

Turquoise blue waters. Sandy white beaches. Mojitos... Film location scout Kenzie Cole has found herself in paradise. Working in the Caribbean for a week is just what she needs to escape the long line of exes in her closet. Though the last thing she expects is to be picked up at the resort bar by a disgraced former Prince!

Luckily for Kenzie, exile is suiting the man formerly known as Prince Fredrik very well. And it’s not long before his rugged, pirate charm is proving hard to resist.

But Rik’s been spending his time in paradise exorcising demons of his own and he has danger written all over him. If Kenzie was sensible she’d run a mile instead of lose herself to lust - although, they do say sometimes you have to get lost before you can be found....

Introducing Kenzie Cole, heroine of The Trouble with Mojitos, by Romy Sommer

Kenzie has definitely been my most difficult heroine to date. I struggled to get to know her and had several false starts on this story before I really understood her conflicts and what motivated her.

There were only two things I knew about her before I began:

(1) she’s petite and fragile-looking, looks younger than she is, and has ginger hair.

(2) she works as a film location scout.

On everything else about her life she was strangely reticent and I’d nearly reached the end of The Trouble with Mojitos before I uncovered the secret she holds closest to her heart. Trust me, that secret came as quite a surprise to me!

Kenzie lives in London where she shares a flat in Shoreditch with her BFF Lee. Lee’s an art director in the movie business and encouraged her to become a scout.

What does a location scout do? Kenzie takes the director’s brief then goes out looking for locations that match the image in the director’s head. She negotiates permission to film the locations, takes photographs, then sends the pictures back to the director and his production team for approval. If the director likes what he sees, she helps set up the shoot before handing over to the Location Manager who handles the actual shoot logistics.

It’s a fun job, and Kenzie is determined to be a success at it. After a series of bad relationships, all she wants to do is focus on her career. She doesn’t want a man upsetting her plans, and especially not another bad boy – enter Rik, oozing bad boy appeal...

For what happens next, read The Trouble with Mojitos, available from Harper Impulse from 17^th October.

Join the release date party for The Trouble with Mojitos on Facebook on 17^th October here. There’ll be virtual cocktails, fun games, eye candy and give-aways!

EXCERPT from The Trouble with Mojitos:

“A mojito, please.”

Kenzie sagged against the bar counter, not caring that her order sounded desperate or her body language suggested impatience. She needed alcohol, and she needed it now.

The benefit of an empty bar was that the drink came reassuringly quickly, poured from an ice cold jug ready and waiting, and complete with swizzle stick and paper parasol. She ditched both and tossed the drink back.

“Rough day?” The dreadlocked bar tender leaned on the scarred wooden counter.

“You don’t know the half of it.”

“Want to talk about it?”

“Thanks, but I didn’t come here to talk.” She’d done enough of that all day. Talk, talk, talk, and still nothing to show for it. Now she understood how used car salesmen felt. Used.

It was enough to drive a girl to drink. Or at least to the resort’s beach bar, since hitting the mini-bar in her hotel room was just too sad to contemplate.

She didn’t drink alone. For that matter, she didn’t usually drink. Not these days.

Beyond the thatched cabana, the sky flamed every shade of pink and orange imaginable as the sun set over the white sand and surf. But here inside the bar was dark, shadowy and strangely comforting after a day of white-hot heat.

“She’ll have another.”

She turned to the wryly amused voice, and wished she hadn’t as she spotted the dark figure at the shadowy end of the long bar. Great. The resident barfly, no doubt. As if she needed another reason to hate this resort, this island, and the whole stinking Caribbean.

“I can order my own drinks, thank you.”

The shadowed figure shrugged and turned his attention back to his own drink. “Suit yourself.”

What was it with the men in this place? Didn’t think a woman could order her own drinks, didn’t think a woman could do business, wouldn’t even give her the time of day. She ground her teeth, the effects of the first drink not quite enough to blur the edges of her mood. “I’d like another, please.”

She ignored the deep-throated chuckle down the other end of the bar as the barman removed her glass to re-fill it.

The second drink followed the first a little more slowly, and this time she took a moment to savour it. Now she felt better.

But she was still screwed.

Neil had known it when he sent her out here. He’d known she’d be stone-walled, he knew he’d set her an impossible task, and still he’d sent her. He’d expected her to fail. Perhaps even wanted her to fail.

There were days when her past seemed very far behind her. And then there were days like today, when it seemed she’d never escape the follies of her youth.

“Sod him!”

“That’s the spirit.” The stranger at the other end of the bar slid from his bar stool, out of the shadows and into the yellow lamplight.

In another time and place he might have looked gorgeous, but in low-slung jeans that had seen better days, black long-sleeved tee, with hair in drastic need of a cut, several days’ worth of beard, and darkly glittering eyes, he was devastating.

Pirate devastating. Bad boy devastating.

Kenzie swallowed. Double great.

ROMY SOMMER
I’ve always written stories for myself, but didn’t even think of being an author until I realised that being over thirty and living in a fantasy world was a little odd. Writing those same stories for other people makes it a lot more acceptable!

By day I dress in cargo pants and boots for my not-so-glamorous job of making movies but at night I come home to my two little Princesses, in Johannesburg, South Africa, where I live, and I get to write Happy Ever Afters. Since I believe every girl is a princess, and every princess deserves a happy ending, what could be more perfect?

You can follow Romy on Twitter, Facebook,Goodreads or on her blog.