An interview with a fictional character #Christmas #rocknroll @KiltieJackson @rararesources #currentaffairs #romance #win

…from the mind of a fictional character

a celebrity interview with

Pete Wallace

(a character from Kiltie Jackson's A Rock 'n' Roll Lovestyle: A Christmas Romance)

Dear readers, today we are discussing the topic of media intrusion into the lives of people in the public eye. Just how severe were the consequences of phone hacking and how did they affect those involved. Giving us his views on the matter, I am welcoming former singer from boy-band The Astons, and world number one solo artist, Mr Pete Wallace.

Pete, before we start, please can you tell us a little about yourself for the benefit of readers who were maybe not fans of The Astons.

Of course. I’m Pete Wallace and I’m a musician. I started off my career as one of the lead singers in The Astons when I was sixteen. I’m now a solo artist, aged 33 and I’ve spent most of my adult life in the public eye.

Pete, The Astons dominated the music scene for the best part of a decade, and were reported on almost daily in tabloid press. Would it be fair to say you courted the press attention in your younger days?

I think it would be fair to say the PR companies courted the press on our behalf. We were young and naïve and followed the guidance of those we believed knew better. We were told where to go, where to be, when to arrive and when to leave. We never considered that it was all engineered to maximise our exposure.

But surely you must have realised that being in the tabloids every day was no bad thing? It made you famous after all.

We were four lads who just wanted to make music. Of course we didn’t mind the trappings that came with becoming famous and successful but we never fully understood, at that time, the consequences that would accompany being ‘media darlings’.

And what would you say those consequences were Pete?

Predominately, the loss of one’s privacy. I can’t even begin to explain how it feels to look out of your window and see people raking through your rubbish bins, trying to find something they can report upon in their newspaper the next day. I mean, does anyone really want to know what my preferred brand of butter is?

Some would argue that people have a right to know.

I think there should be limits on what people have a right to know because, without them, people will never be satisfied and will always clamour for more. This results in those in the public eye being harassed more and more frequently in order to feed the beast that society is becoming. When all is said and done, most musicians and actors are simply trying to do a job which provides enjoyment to many people. When we choose to become entertainers, we don’t sign a document which signs away the rights to some kind of private life.

But the public are the people who pay for your music and watch the films. Without them, you don’t have a career.

It is fully appreciated that the general public are essential for our careers but being in the public eye doesn’t, or shouldn’t make us public property.

Further to the phone hacking scandal which came to light a few years ago, a number of cases are still being tried at this time. Were you affected by this?

Yes… Yes, I was. Well, my family was. (hesitation…) A very close friend of my father was caught up in the London bombings in 2005. My father knew his daily commute and knew immediately that he would have been in the area where one of the bombs detonated. He tried to call him many times and left several messages asking him to call back. When it was reported later that ‘a close family friend of Pete Wallace’ had been killed in the attacks, we were gobsmacked because very few people could have known this information. This resulted in my parents being hounded even further by the paparazzi who were doing all they could to dig up any snippet of information on the victims. This was the final straw for them and, not long after that, they began to make plans to move to Austria.

Were you affected in any other ways by this?

Well it pushed my family into moving to another country. This caused a breakdown in the close relationship I had with my parents. Something had shifted and it never felt quite the same after that. I also firmly believe that, had they not felt compelled to leave the country, they would still be alive today.

Are you referring to their death when you were in hospital?

That’s correct. Once again, the lies printed in the press caused them pain and upset. They died believing an untruth.

Would you like to expand further on that?

No thank you. It’s probably best that I don’t.

Fair enough. So, to finish, do you feel measures should be put in place that restrict what the press and media can report?

I feel that the ‘freedom of the press’ is taken too literally and that some boundaries need to be put in place. If public figures are merely being hounded because their picture on the front page helps to sell copies, then that has to be curbed. If there is a legitimate investigation going on where it is believed somebody is involved in say sexual exploitation or fraudulent activities, then these should be looked into thoroughly. The press need to use more common sense. They do a great job in exposing wrong-doings but they undermine their credibility when they report lies and untruths that caused untold damage to the lives of innocent people.

Pete, thank you for being here today and for sharing your thoughts with us.

Thank you for having me as your guest.

Introducing...

A Rock 'n' Roll Lovestyle

So who exactly is Sukie McClaren?
A Christmas-loving Cat lover? A Sound of Music Fanatic? A Fiercely Independent Woman?

She is all of the above. And when she is sent to Salzburg for a business trip a few weeks before Christmas, she thinks all her dreams have come true. As she packs her suitcase, the only things on her mind are Christmas markets, lots of snow and finally seeing the Doh-Ray-Me steps. Becoming the new best friend of the world’s hottest rock-star doesn’t even get a look in.

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Pete Wallace is a reclusive, reluctant, rock-star and the world’s Number One, best-selling, male solo artist. It’s been three years since his last tour and he’s now preparing to go back on the road again. A week in Salzburg, schmoozing with the music press, is one of his worst nightmares. 

He can’t wait for it to be over.

When Pete and Sukie meet, it is the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Lonely for too long, he begins to remember how it feels to be happy and, for the first time in six years, Christmas feels special again. 

Eduardo di Santo however, whose kid sister suffered life-changing injuries at a Pete Wallace concert, is all set on getting revenge. When Pete’s new tour is announced, he begins to make his plans. Plans that will culminate in Pete's demise.

Will Pete and Sukie’s new friendship die before it has a chance to flourish?

A Christmas tale full of love, laughter, friendship and revenge.

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Kiltie Jackson grew up in Glasgow, Scotland but currently lives in Staffordshire.

Kiltie first began writing 'A Rock 'n' Roll Lovestyle' over ten years ago. The project was shelved on Chapter Seventeen as she felt the story wasn't flowing as she would like it to.

In her own words "The images in my head would not come out of my fingers!" Fast forward to November 2016 when, having finished reading Lizzie's Christmas Escape by Christie Barlow, she read more about the author and was inspired with how Christie herself came to be a best-selling author.

In that thunderbolt moment, Kiltie knew - with a deep certainty- that she needed to reacquaint herself with 'A Rock 'n' Roll Lovestyle' and begin writing again. She did this in January 2017 and found the words flowed faster than she could type them. Finally, the time was right for her to write her novel.

She currently has a further ten plots and ideas stored in her file (it's costing a fortune in USB drives as each story has its own memory stick!) and the ideas still keep on coming.

She now lives her life around the following three quotes:

"I love having weird dreams, they're great fodder for book plots!"
"Why wait for your ship to come in when you can swim out to meet it?"
"Old enough to know better, young enough not to care!"

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When fictional characters move from books to the REAL WORLD. @rararesources @janeowenauthor

Rants from the mind of a fictional character

by

Kelly Cunningham

(a character from Jane Owen's The Bitches of Suburbia)

Kelly Cunningham did not like current affairs, did not like watching the news, reading the papers or listening to the radio.  Kelly’s mother had said, on many occasions, that there were two things one should never discuss in polite company:  religion and politics and seeing as the news mainly consisted of events caused by or involving religion or politics, it frightened Kelly a little bit, it made people so very, very angry.  She still watched it though.  Like most people she could remember quite clearly where she was, what she was wearing even, when she’d turned on the news and seen the Diana’s crumpled wreck of a car in the Paris underpass and the national hysteria that had followed it had shaken her to the core.  Kelly’s mother had also been a great believer in the stiff upper lip, one simply didn’t fall apart like that, certainly not at funerals.  The same could be said of 9/11.  Like most Europeans who’d grown up with terrorism, she’d recognised it immediately for what it was and her heart broke for the Americans whom she assumed, probably correctly, would be irrevocably changed by this attack on home soil. 

Since then, rolling news and smart phones had brought a whole new level of anxiety to her life.   Twenty four hour coverage of every dreadful fire or mass shooting or car bomb came with eye witness reports filmed on an iPhone.  Nowadays people actually filmed as they hid from machete wielding maniacs or lone psychopaths with automatic weapons and it made it all so real, so close but it wasn’t even this so much that upset Kelly, it was the slightly shaky footage of people crying outside a burning tower block, people holding each other tight as they sobbed in front of pop up shrines of cellophane wrapped flowers, helium balloons, candles and teddy bears.  It was the individual stories of loss and fear that made the tears roll down her cheek.

Recently, even the politics had started to scare Kelly.  She was sure she would never be able to quite forgive David Cameron for calling that referendum, a referendum that had divided a country in a way not seen since Cromwell, that had brought to the surface hitherto hidden feelings of resentment that Kelly, nice middle class suburban housewife that she was, had had no idea were festering in the nation’s bosom and the hatred felt by some Remainers towards the Leavers had left her feeling sick to her stomach.   A dinner party with some of Martin’s work colleagues had ended disastrously when, fuelled no doubt by French wine, a discussion about Brexit had resulted in a guest and the host almost coming to blows.  She and Martin had made their excuses and left, not even bothering to stay for dessert.

All this paled into insignificance however, when compared to the threat of nuclear war, even more so because it all seemed to be happening on Twitter.  That was something else that made Kelly Cunningham’s head spin:  social media and the speed with which it had become another weapon in a politician’s arsenal.  She wasn’t quite sure had the world had come to point where world leaders could insult each other and threaten to obliterate each other using 160 characters or less but she was fairly sure her mother would not have approved of this impolite conversation.

No, Kelly Cunningham did not like current affairs, not one little bit.

Introducing...

The Bitches of Suburbia

Nothing much ever happened on Horseshoe Lane - why should it? It was, after all, just a normal suburban backwater with the usual cross section of growing families, ageing pensioners, the occasional singleton and a brace of curtain twitchers.

The arrival of celebrity couple, Heavenly and Travis, however, changes all that. This glamorous pair bring about a summer of competitive party throwing and ambitious home improvement projects that will have disastrous and completely unforeseen consequences.  

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 Neighbours who’ve got by for years with just the occasional chat over a garden fence about the unseasonable amount of rain or the state of next door’s garden are slowly united by suspicion as a husband goes missing, a much loved cat turns up dead on a doorstep and Enid from Number Seven is found badly injured at the foot of the cliff.   

Could one person be responsible for all of this? Could that person be the strange and unlikeable Hilary Jones from Number Nine? There was only going to be one way to find out and it was going to involve a lot of whiskey….

In this her wonderful follow up to ‘The Rock Star Known as Horse’, Owen’s riveting new story finds a murky side to the suburbs, a side where petty jealousies and neighbourly rivalries can escalate out of all control with calamitous results, all intricately observed with her usual dark humour firmly to the fore.  

About Jane Owen

Jane's first novel, Camden Girls, was published by Penguin twenty years ago and quickly became an international cult bestseller published in many languages including Japanese, Spanish,German, Hebrew, Italian and Dutch.  She'd already spent many years working in the film business working alongside stars such as Christophe Lambert, Andi McDowell, Daryl Hannah and James Remar before switching to the music business and working for bands such as The Who, Robert Plant, ZZTop and many more.  Eventually, even that got boring and that's when she wrote Camden Girls.  

After publication, life became interrupted by an unfortunate traffic accident and Jane moved out of London to Sussex and slowly returned to writing.  Her novels don't fit into any specific category and, frustrated by endless rejections along the lines of 'You write beautifully but we don't know how to sell this book' she started self publishing.  Rave reviews gave her the confidence to keep going and believe in what she was writing.

She's still in Sussex, sharing her life with her musician partner, three horses and a dog and divides her day between writing and riding.  

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Words from WWBB: Would your character like to voice their thoughts like Kelly Cunningham? Would you dare to let them have their say on current affairs from where they are in the world? Check out HERE for more details, and join us from November through to Christmas where characters are allowed free rein!

Don't let Kelly be alone!

Click here for more details!!!