But then Martin has a secret agenda Celia knows nothing about. Meanwhile she defends her geriatric charges, fights to secure gallery space for their artwork, and fights to keep The Harbour, a home the residents can truly call home, from being closed.
She takes on the might of the town council; to the point of leaping from a church steeple to bring attention to the plight of her independents, no matter that she might fall and end up splattered all over the pavement. When she does fall, however, it's much more painfully.
Police Constable Alex Burrows, the son of long time Harbour resident, Colonel Burrows, whose sense of humour has made her laugh, whose tragic personal circumstances have made her cry, whose smile has stolen her heart; turns out to be just as much a liar as Martin.
Can Celia ever trust again? Can Alex get past her protective cadre of friends, forgotten by most of the people in their own lives, and convince her to trust him, to love him, as he does her?
Reviews for The Madness of Celia Summers
"As you read on you’ll realize that there really is no madness to Celia Summers, even though some of those around her would like you to believe that. There are quite a few surprises in this story, with ups and downs you don’t expect, all building to a very dramatic climax, and one worth waiting for. Definitely a keeper for my bookshelf, Charlotte Chalmers has a winner with The Madness of Celia Summers – from the first page through the last you’ll love every minute of it." - Grade A, Lynda, Simply Romance Reviews
"The Madness of Celia Summers by Charlotte Chalmers is a funny, well-written glimpse inside the doors of a rest home inhabited by characters who are each remarkable. Manholes, deception and secrets that have been long buried make every page of this story intriguing. I especially enjoyed Luke, who is so characteristically adolescent that I laughed at almost every word and gesture. I think the best part of this story is the characters. They are all realistic and colorful and make me want to take a trip just to peek in on them! I’ve got to say there is one point where one of the male characters (I won’t give anything away here) gets exactly what he deserves and I cheered out loud!" - 4 Angels, Marlene, Fallen Angel Reviews
"Colonel Burrow's son Alex comes on the picture and proceeds to complicate Celia's life. The interaction between Celia and Alex, and indeed Celia and Martin, makes The Madness of Celia Summers a page-turner. Add in a bit of mystery and a strong dose of the funnies, and you have a very satisfying read which I highly recommend." - 4 1/2 book rating, Rose, Long and Short of it Reviews
Visit Charlotte Chalmers' web site
An excerpt from The Madness of Celia Summers
About Charlotte Chalmers 
Hi,
I'm Charlotte Chalmers. I work in Financial Services and I have been writing for about, oooh, one million years. I reside in Worcestershire in the UK, where I strive to stop my witty son typing-THE END-halfway through my manuscripts and to keep up with the demands of my rescue dogs. Sadly, I recently lost a dear, dear three-legged friend (yes, just three, bless her), who was brave and gorgeous right to the end, but I still have my hands full with Mad Max, who is a claustrophobic cross-collie (we have the biggest ever dog-flap so he can get out, with welcome burglars sign right above it) and Snoops, who is the tiniest, cutest Jack Russell. Snoops is blind. Ahhhhhh, says everyone. Hmm, says Charlotte. Don't let appearances fool. Think Gizmos and Gremlins when thinking of Snoops. The litte guy has attitude, and a definite problem with water. We go walkies. It rains. Snoops goes home. Check out the resemblance out on my website www.charlottechalmers.com.
So, I suppose in describing myself, I'd say I was a bit of a doer... Um, no that's doer... I think most women are. Those who write certainly are, most having to do a juggling act before they can start. If a dog needs rescuing, yours truly is there. If a room needs decorating, I do it. If a floor needs tiling, ditto. It took a while for me to realize I had some things I needed to do for me. For instance, I was petrified of spiders. Well, petrified until the flight instinct kicked in, that was. I once backed so far away from one, I fell over the banister and landed in a heap on the hall floor. The son wasn't impressed. =( So, I took a cognitive therapy course, and... OK, I don't love them, but I can live with them now. I didn't like heights, I threw myself out of a plane. Um, that was with the parachute BTW-son was impressed that time =) I wanted to write, I wrote. So, here I am, after twenty, sometimes heartbreaking, years. Motto of story: Be proud of your achievements, be they big or small.
An Interview with Charlotte Chalmers
By Holly Hewson for The Romance StudioHH: Celia, thank you so much for talking with us at TRS. Please tell us about your featured work, The Madness of Celia Summers. CC: And thank you to The Romance Studio for giving me the opportunity to talk about The Madness... as it has fondly become known. To tell the truth-and shame the Devil-as my mum would have said, bless her, this particular novel was originally aimed at a publishing house here in the United Kingdom. What happened was, I sent them a synopsis and the first two chapters. I was geared for rejection, I must admit, thinking they would either like it or they wouldn't. If they didn't, it wouldn't be the end of the world. If they did...I'd have a little heart attack! Have you ever tempted fate, only for Lady Luck to call your bluff? She did. They liked it. They wanted to see all of it. Um, small problem, I hadn't written it!! Eeek!
So, I had to write, like I'd never written before. Finally, I sent if off, carefully avoiding cracks in the pavement on the way to the post office. Not that I'm neurotic or superstitious or anything... It's just, you get a feeling, don't you? I was right. They read it. They liked it. They didn't take it! S-i-g-h. It was, apparently, too commercial for them. I actually suspected it might be, so I stopped weaving the noose with which to hang myself and thought, blow it, I won't give up on this one. The publisher had sent it back with a 'glowing' rejection (if there is such a thing) along with referrals to other publishers so, I dusted it and myself off and sent it to one other publisher here, and then, when I didn't hear anything back, to The Wild Rose Press, who I'd read about in the Writers' News, and who seemed really approachable. They were wonderful! And here I am!
We have a saying here in the UK, something about waiting forever for a bus, only for three to turn up at once. That was the case with The Madness. Amazingly, the other publisher I'd sent it to also liked it! So, there you go. Don't give up, is the motto here I think, even if the odds seemed stacked sometimes. I suspect what's slightly different about the book, are the characters. The Madness of Celia Summers is a romantic comedy revolving around the titular Celia and her job as an art therapist at an old people's home (or an elderly independents home, as Celia prefers to refer to her old folk). The book features a cast of eccentric and colourful characters from the home and explores Celia's romance with a police constable, the shy and delectable Alex, who is a single father, comes with excess baggage, and has the unfortunate duty of arresting Celia.
HH: Your heroine fights for the elderly. For their art, their very home. She's willing to go far because she knows that's what it takes. Where did you get the idea for her amazing story? CC: Well, I like older people. I take in rescue dogs for my sins, some three-legged, some odd-legged, some blind. Anyway, they have to be walked, and I've noticed over the years that it is usually an older person who will take time out to stop and talk, and smile. I've actually just had a spell in hospital, and on my ward was a lady who was born in 1912! She had to "pop to the loo," like you do =), and because of the effects of anaesthetic, there is a rule that bathroom doors are not to be locked. So there she was, minding her own, and into the bathroom waltzed a young gent, oblivious to her presence. OMG, he says, I'm so sorry. Not 'alf as sorry as I am, darling, she chuckles. Ten minutes later, I hear a doctor asking her to "hop" on the bed, and she says, he's trying to get me into bed! You just have to love people like that. They're not supposed to have anything to laugh about, and yet... They put some of us to shame, in my opinion.
So, I wanted to write about people like her. People who still have lives to live, and something left to give, as Celia would say. Here in the UK, we'd call them "the Queen's generation", eighty plus (in this lady's case, ninety plus!), active, fully-functioning people. To quote Bette Davis, "growing old is not for cissies." These people are certainly not that. I'm not sure whether you would know George Melly, a jazz musician, who at 79 was endeavouring to give up flirting! How could you not want to write about people like that, in all their rich eccentricity?
Someone who also typifies the feisty older lady I wanted to write about is Liz Smith, who plays the eccentric, elderly Latitia Cropley-of chocolate pudding and tuna fame in Brit sitcom, The Vicar of Dibley. This lady didn't get a break in TV until she was 50. Her mother died in childbirth. Her father walked out on her. She was divorced to bring her son up on her own. Yet still, she didn't give up her zest for life. She was interviewed on radio and asked what single book she would take if shipwrecked alone on a desert island. She said, a catalogue, so she could leaf through it at leisure and make a huge list of all the lovely things she would buy herself when she got back. She's 87! A redoubtable, witty, loveable character, and definitely the sort of person I'm honoured to write about.
HH: Celia is also a woman who's been burned. How did you create such a wonderful, multi-faceted character? CC: Did you ever know a woman who wasn't multi-faceted? =) Seriously, women are mothers, lovers, carers, workers, counsellors... Celia is all of those, caring by nature, she is also artistic, and independent financially, because she's had to be. It seemed natural that she would want to combine her talents into a fulfilling career that would also allow her to be flexible to see the needs of her family. And what more fulfilling than art therapy, using her skills to help exercise ageing minds, along with exercising ageing limbs of course, thus her aerobics endeavours. Celia is vulnerable, because she is trusting. Yet, she is strong. She doesn't become cynical and turn her back on love when it goes wrong. She learns from it, hopefully to love more wisely. Is that possible? We hope so.
HH: What did you like best about Alex? CC: Oh, Alex… Here is a man who doesn't like himself very much. He's made some terrible mistakes. He's not perfect. Not worthy of the kind of love a person like Celia could offer. Not worthy of the adoration and love his handicapped daughter offers him. And that, in a nutshell, is what I like about Alex. He's examining himself, recognising his imperfections, and trying to be the kind of father his daughter needs him to be. Whether he can ever be the kind of man Celia deserves rather than needs? Alex thinks not.
HH: Was any part of your story drawn from personal experience? CC: Phew, good question. Yes, is the honest answer. I lost my dear, beautiful mother to early Alzheimers disease. She was very young. So was I. But we laughed, until we wet ourselves sometimes, until the very end, which, if there is a fortunate in there anywhere, came quickly, thank God. And, yes, I have been a fool for love. Absolutely. Say no more. Oh, and I'm quite arty, so…
HH: What else do you have in the works for lucky readers? CC: Naked Fully Clothed! Ta-dah! This is a book that looks beyond the veneer to the people beneath, hopefully. It is a romantic comedy, and here is a blurb and brief excerpt, assuming I haven't talked so much, we're out of time:
Blurb - Naked Fully Clothed (UNEDITED)
Single mother, Leanne Curtis, has reached crisis point. Then she gets arrested-for soliciting, which does even less for her self-esteem than finding naked footprints on the windscreen of her boyfriend's car. On the inside.
Lee vows never to fall in love again, ever, particularly with her good-looking arresting officer, PC Paul Davis, in his bite-the-buttons-off blue uniform. Her offering him lodgings is strictly a business arrangement. She has better things to do with her life than to fall in love. Attend to the all-important task of blackmailing her ex-boyfriend into repaying monies he owes her, for a start. With a little help from her friends: Jade, who has no time for love, which is shame because there is someone who's very much in love with her, if only she'd stop pushing him away. And Nicky, who's exhausted with three children to care for, ergo is pushing her ever-patient husband away. She'll make it up to him, she decides. Wear something racy and lacy and…draw pupils on her eyelids, which is the only she'll be wearing come-to-bed eyes.
Excerpt - Naked Fully Clothed (UNEDITED)
She'd been right, Lee thought, wearily the other end of what turned to be an abysmal day. Without the file for reference, she hadn't known her Villeroy and Boch bathroom furniture from her beech floors.
Oh, well, she'd do better tomorrow. She'd have to if she was going to keep her son in clothes befitting an emotionally charged punk rocker.
"Evening, Mumsie-wumsie," Drew, looking like a cross between Sid Vicious and Bud Holly, detached himself from his PS3 to greet her as she drooped through the front door. "Have a good day?"
"Snoops! Down!" Lee attempted to fend off the dog, who bowled through the back door to launch herself at her tights from fifty paces. "Oooooh, God, give me strength!" She failed.
"Oh, that good then," Drew observed, sloping to the lounge, Reebok laces trailing flatly behind him.
"Better." Lee sighed, heading for the kitchen, to find a buttonless pair of Richard's tennis short strategically placed on the table. Cheek! After hours on her feet showing properties to perusers, he thought she was going to metamorphose into a cross between Mary Poppins and St Michael? No way. He could sew his own buttons on, and if he was expecting haute cuisine tonight he could learn to cook, because she had about as much panache it the kitchen as she had in the blooming Villeroy and Boch bathroom earlier. What's more, if this was him ringing, she'd tell him so, too, after he'd had the nerve to stand her up last night. She kicked off her shoes and trailed mud to the phone.
"Richard, I'm glad you've rung," she started determinedly, having noted is number on the caller display. "I see you stopped by today and… Flowers? What…? Oh," she glanced at the sink, wherein were indeed flowers, "um, yes they're… Sorry?" He wanted to go out? "Well…?" Lee was a bit taken aback, spontaneity not being something Richard did without being prompted. "Oh, all right, then. The beef bourguignon will keep till tomorrow. Half an-hour? Yes," she said, uncertainly. "No problem." She signed off, checked her watch, then her face in the hall mirror. No problem at all. A head transplant should do it.
HH: How did you get your start as an author? CC: I've been writing…forever…it seems. I've had invites to London, the hub of the literary world here in the UK, don't y'know(!), only to be let down. The Wild Rose Press gave me my real start, no doubt about it. And, while there is a lot of hard work involved in the promotion side of publication, which, as an "aspiring" author, you're not really aware of, I have to say that getting published is possibly the best thing that has happened to me. It has given me my self-esteem back. One thing I was never good at was talking in public. I just gave my first ever author talk to a reader group at the local library. They sent me a thank you card! Suffice to say, it went really well, and I was so proud of myself. That's what The Wild Rose Press and my brilliant editor, Laura Kelly, has done for me.
HH: How have things changed for you since then? CC: I got to the stage where I'd walk through WH Smiths (big bookstore) droopy-shouldered. Not anymore though. Hey, MY book is on the shelf! Yes, things have changed. I'm a published author! I've changed. As I said above, I am truly a much-more confident person. Oh, and a slightly more organised one. Needs must, I'm afraid. You do have to polish your juggling act once published, to include another all-important ball: promotion.
HH: What's your favorite way to network with readers? CC: I love to swap ideas and catch up on news, reviews and excerpts on the Yahoo Groups. Sometimes, the day job doesn't allow, but I check in when I can. That said, I've had some really lovely personal emails from readers, saying how much my book has made them laugh, and that gives my little heart wings.
HH: What's your idea of a good writing day? CC: Waking up in the night! Huh? Well, if your characters are keeping you up nights, you must have had a good writing day, right? Obviously, it wasn't a working day. The dogs got walked, the family got gone, the phone didn't ring, the door-to-door sales man didn't dare darken your door ever again…. The window cleaner didn't call, just to stress out the dogs. The fridge is stocked and everyone but you is eating out. Now that is a perfect writing day!
Thank you so much, The Romance Studio! =)
HH: Thank you!
Top
|
