Deborah Cooke: Author

Today, my guest author is J.K. Coi, back for another visit to Alive & Knitting. Her previous posts here were The Art of Relaxation and The Surprise Hero.

Please welcome her back!

I have a holiday story out this year called FAR FROM BROKEN and it’s part of the A CLOCKWORK CHRISTMAS anthology, now available from Carina Press.

This was the first time I’d ever written something with a holiday theme of any kind (Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Easter, Arbor Day…)  It was nice to write it in the springtime because it gave me a surge of wonderful warm holiday spirit just when all the dreary rain was coming down (that might just have been the rum LOL), but I also wanted the book to appeal to readers beyond the Christmas season.

I think this story does that, because while it conveys a familiar Christmas theme—it’s also a theme people can relate to at any time of year. Strength. Forgiveness. Hope.

Have you ever been told a lie, or discovered that someone close to you kept a secret—the kind of thing that made you second guess whether you knew that person at all, if your relationship could survive the deception? Hopefully not. I like to think that people are basically honest. And yet, lies can be told – not with the intent of hurting anyone, but in an attempt to protect. Sometimes we tell ourselves that certain lies are harmless or they serve a greater good…or are those just more lies designed to make us feel better for our deception?

In FAR FROM BROKEN Jasper lies to his wife, Callie, about his involvement as a spy for the War Office…only to come home from his last mission to find that she’s been taken and tortured for information by his enemies. Now they have a long, hard road ahead of them, and forgiveness is harder to come by because of the difficult physical recovery Callie has undergone, made even more complicated by the fact that to save her life, she had to be fitted with mechanical limbs.

You’re wondering when I’m going to write a comedy, aren’t you?

Yes, I know. I write ‘em dark and angsty, but I can’t seem to help it. The characters who come to me are always damaged. Ah, but…FAR FROM BROKEN. There can be no light without shadow, right?

So, thank you for visiting with me! I’d love to offer a gift to one commenter today, so for a digital copy of FAR FROM BROKEN, please leave me a comment.

Tell me, have you ever told a lie because you wanted to protect someone from being hurt? Did it work, or were they only hurt worse when they discovered the deception? And what are your favourite holiday stories?

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