Painted Faces. I take it from the lyric, I can paint my face and stand very, very still, from the song “Perfect Fit” by The Dresden Dolls.

A few different places, lots of movies, but mainly
from my own obsession with gender identities and my love of creating
characters that go against the grain.

Adult Contemporary Romance.

For Nicholas, the male lead, I’d pick Ewan McGregor. I love the look he has in Moulin Rouge as well as his singing voice, since Nicholas is also a singer. For Fred I’d probably say (if I could turn back time lol) a young curly haired Kate Winslet. I added some pics below to show how I imagine them, and a brilliant scene from Moulin Rouge with Ewan McGregor singing, because let’s face it, who doesn’t want to listen to Ewan McGregor sing? It’s also one of my favourite movie scenes from a musical ever!

Q5: What is the one sentence synopsis for your book?

A story of friendship, passion and blossoming love, between a young Irish woman and a drag queen from New Zealand.

Self-published.

In all, about two months. But this time frame was spread out, as I started the novel, but then I had to stop writing it so that I could go and finish another book I’d been working on.

This is perhaps my main fear about the book, because although it’s a romance through and through, I don’t know if there’s a novel I could compare it to exactly, and these days people want clearly defined novels so that they can know whether or not they’re going to like it. It’s a bit Bridget Jones-y I suppose, but with more graphic sex scenes. There might be something out there that’s more similar, I just haven’t discovered it yet.

The movies The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Stage Beauty were big influences.
Also, Breakfast on Pluto to a certain extent. All of these films contain portrayals of male characters similar to Nicholas in Painted Faces and they gave me great inspiration in the creation of his personality.

Well, if you like musicals then you’ll certainly be interested in this book as I’m describing songs left, right and centre when Nicholas is performing. I’ve also been
told by those who have read it so far that it’s funny, but I’ll let people decide whether or not that’s the case. I know it appeals to my sense of humour, but it might not be everybody’s cup of tea. There’s also a lot of swearing and sex, so if you’re not into that then you probably shouldn’t read it. I may have to put a warning on it about that lol. But most of all it’s romantic, even though the subject matter is a little left of centre, the romance isn’t too far off what you would expect in most contemporary novels around nowadays.

You can check out the Goodreads page for Painted Faces here.

Also, look out for posts by the authors I’ve tagged to talk about their books next in the blog hop on November 28th, K.L Toth and Kia Zi Shiru.