Ally – Page 31 – A. L. Lester

Interview: Ana Ashley

I’m delighted to welcome Ana Ashley today to talk about her new release, How to Catch a Vet! Her story fits in very well with my ‘slightly crazed smallholding’ vibe… Welcome, Ana!

Hi everyone! I’m really pleased to be here today to talk about my new book, How to Catch a Vet. This is the sixth book in the Chester Falls series, which is a small-town romance with all the feels. Don’t take it from me, check out the reviews and you’ll want to move into Chester Falls in no time!

Now for the questions. What started you writing? How did you fall into this writing gig?

I’ve always had this hidden desire to be an author but it wasn’t something I thought about too much until I voiced it in a coaching session. Once those words were out I decided to see where it led me. Four years on and I’m now doing this gig full time.

Where do you write?

I have a makeshift office but it’s not where I tend to write. I prefer to move around. Sometimes I sit outside on the various seating areas we have around the house, or the pool, if it’s not too hot. I like the dining table too because it allows me to spread. My favorite place of all is coffee shops, but sadly it’s been over a year since I’ve been able to do that.

What do you like to read?

I read mostly gay romance. It’s partly research but mostly pleasure because I absolutely love the genre I write in. I also read some craft books about writing and publishing but I need to be in the right mood for those. I’m a romance girl all the way.

What are the three books you’d take to a desert island? Why would you choose them?

Oh my goodness, what a question to ask a reader! I really don’t know. I always think that even my favorite books, if read over and over, would become old news if I couldn’t access other books. I love to reread books and I always find new things I hadn’t noticed before, but I normally have a break between rereads. Can this island have power so I can take three ereaders full of books?

Writing is an intrinsically solo occupation. Do you belong to any groups or associations, either online or in the ‘real’ world? How does that work for you?

My writing goes through stages. Sometimes I need total silence, and other times I need someone around to talk things through. I have a close author friend and we usually skype and write together. We have the option to talk or just be silent but we’re there for each other regardless. I’m in quite a few author groups and have had the pleasure to meet some of my author friends personally at conferences. I love making that personal connection with people.

What do you like to do when you’re not writing?

I love baking so when I’m not writing I’m usually thinking of something to bake. We also have a really big garden so I’m learning how to grow things and look after the various fruit trees that came with the house when we bought it. I find it’s good exercise and it helps clear my mind and thinking about my writing, or if I’m stuck in a particular plot point.

Tell me a little bit about your most recent release. What gave you the idea for it? How long did it take to write? What did you enjoy about writing it? What did you hate?

How to Catch a Vet is partly the plot bunny from a reader. She messaged me after How to Catch a Boss released last Christmas saying that Santi, the brother of one of the MCs needed a dedicated and off-the-charts sweet vet that would help him with the great dane he adopted.

In total the book took me 2 weeks to write but many more weeks of research and gathering information. Santi, one of the main characters has an eye condition called retinitis pigmentosa, which is the reason he had to leave the military. At the same time his Dog, Duchess Olive McPickles, also ends up needing a procedure which is quite common with great danes. These two things alone made it the most challenging book I’ve written research-wise. It was also super fun because alongside this we have a menagerie of animals that steal the show at every chance they have.

After five novels and two shorter stories, writing in this world is like coming home and I always love to include recurring characters. It’s something my readers love as well since they get to see their favorite characters come back. There’s also plenty of shenanigans, so there’s that, too.

How to Catch a Vet

The first thing I learned at Vet school was to always expect the unexpected.
Well, I sure never saw Santiago Torres or his adorable Great Dane coming.

Santi is everything I’m not. Tall, confident, overbearing, and if I’m to believe his advances, he’s also very experienced in…well, you know what.

I always play safe, but it’s time to ditch the v-card. We couldn’t be more different, but that doesn’t matter because this is just a one time thing.

I’m not going to want more, right?
I’m not going to fall for him, right?

How to Catch a Vet is the sixth book in the Chester Falls series and features an opposites attract story between a virgin and a player, a Great Dane with a tendency to rescue- read kidnap- other people’s pets, and a small town like no other.

Buy How to Catch a Vet!

Find Ana!

Website : Email : Goodreads : Bookbub : Facebook : Facebook Group : Instagram : Tiktok

Admitting I'd been bullied at school was one thing. Admitting I was still a virgin at almost thirty was another altogether.
Despite the hotter-than-the-earth's core kiss, Santi didn't want to start anything. He was dealing with his stuff, and I understood that.
We could still be friends, couldn't we? I could make sure my grownign feelings for him didn't get any bigger, couldn't I?
Ana Ashley, How to Catch a Vet. Out now!

The Day of the Triffids and nightmares

I don’t watch scary films and I don’t read horror…and this is probably why!

When I was about fourteen – in my second or third year at Senior School – we had an English teacher who seemed set on giving us all nightmares. He was thought of as a nice bloke. He played saxophone for Screaming Lord Sutch and his band when Such toured the West Country and he took various groups of kids camping on Dartmoor and Exmoor.

However, he must have had a really sadistic side. He showed us various TV Series as ‘treats’ in one particular lesson slot every week and they were invariably really traumatic. He showed us the 1982 Q. E. D. Documentary A Guide to Armageddon about the consequences of the detonation of a small nuclear warhead over St Paul’s Cathedral; and the TV adaptation of Z for Zachariah, which is a fantastic book, but watching it in the context of the tail end of the Cold War and preceded by watching the St Paul’s Nuke thing was terrifying.

The story that really, really freaked me out, though, was Day Of The Triffids by John Wyndham. I don’t think that we even read the book in class. He just showed us the TV Series. There was a BBC serialisation done in 1981 that had large fibre-glass and latex ‘Triffids’ that were operated by a chap crouched down inside, with a radio-operated clacker-thing to make the rattling noise.

I know this NOW, because Wikipedia. However, then, it was terrifying.

The thing that made it double, triple, a million times more scary was that I lived on a horticultural nursery. Where we grew flowers. Big flowers, small flowers, short flowers, tall flowers. I’d get home from school as it was getting dark and my parents would be somewhere out on the seven acre plot. And I’d run, run, run around the house and down the path along the back of the greenhouses to find them in the flower-packing shed, all the time waiting to hear that rattle. We used to grow huge swathes of Chrysanthemum blooms – globe-shaped single blooms about four or six inches across – and the white ones would look ghostly in the dusk. As you walked, or ran, down the Back Path to the flower packing shed, they spread out in great luminous swathes in the half-light and I was convinced they were watching me.

I’d arrange my music lesson every week in the same slot so that I had an excuse to miss watching the serialisation. When he realised what I was doing, the teacher reported me to my Housemistress and they stopped me and forced me to sit through each episode. I would sit there with my eyes shut for the whole forty minutes, trying not to hear what was going on; and if he noticed, he would try and get the rest of the class to tease me.

Cover of the 1981 Penguin edition of Day of the Triffids

To try to help me not be so scared, my Pa, who was a bit of a old-school Wyndham fan I think, bought me a copy of the book. I can remember him watching the series on the BBC every week as it was time for us to go to bed and he wouldn’t let me sit with him, so he must have known it would affect me. I was a voracious bookworm even then, but I couldn’t even bring myself to even touch the covers of the paperback he bought. That episode of Friends where Rachel puts Little Women in the freezer for Joey? That was me. I couldn’t even have it in the living room. In the end, Pa put it on the table by his side of the bed. When he died, twenty five years later, it was still there. Nothing has ever, ever scared me like that, since.

Strangely, I grew in to be a huge science-fiction fan. Some Wyndham I love. The Chrysalids is one of my all time favourite books. Give me some nice post-apocalyptic drama and I’m happy – especially if there is romantic tension thrown in there. No walking plants or clacking noises, even now though, please.

Taking Stock: Deleted Scene

Here’s a deleted scene I found from Taking Stock. It’s Patsy Walker, who runs the Post Office, talking to HER friend Sally, who’s Laurie’s housekeeper. It’s whilst he’s in hospital recovering from his stroke. I took it out because it didn’t move the story along at all.

Book cover of Taking Stock — Taking Stock

“He’s going to be a handful,” Patsy Walker said to her friend Sally Beelock as she filled the tea-pot. “You’ll have trouble with him.”

Sally pulled a face. “You don’t need to tell me that,” she said. “He’s already talking about coming home and the stupid idiot can’t even stand up without help yet.”

“He’s improving though, yes?” Patsy asked.

“Yes, definitely. And it’s only been a week. They say that he needs to keep trying to move everything, his arm, his fingers, his leg, and the more he does that the more it’ll help.” She sighed. “They don’t know if it’ll all come back properly, but they say there’s a good chance.”

Patsy passed her a mug of tea and sat down opposite her at the kitchen table where she could see in to the shop. There weren’t any customers at the moment, but the early autumn day was warm and she had the outside door propped open as usual, which meant the bell wouldn’t ring if anyone came in.

“How are you managing?” she asked Sally. “It must have been a shock. He’s only what, thirty?”

“Thirty-three,” Sally said absently. “Yes. I thought it was curtains for him to be honest, Pat. Jimmy came down to get me at Carsters once the ambulance had gone. He didn’t tell me much, just said I should get into the hospital. Apparently he was unconscious, pretty much.”

Patsy patted her hand. “Well, he’s going to be fine, love. You’ll see. Look at Roger Chedzoy. He had a stroke four years ago and you’d never really know to look at him now.”

“He’s sixty-three though,” Sally said. “I mean, there’s never a good age, is there? But Laurie’s so young.”

Patsy nodded. “And that means he’s got more fight in him and he’ll get over it quickly. You’ll see.”

Fiona Glass: The Strange Case of the Superfluous Sword

Fiona Glass is here today with a post about archaeology and her new release Trench Warfare. It’s a subject particularly close to my heart because in a previous incarnation I was an archaeologist. And I also remember doing work-experience with a County Archaeologist called Steve; and Mick Aston from the Time-Team was very kind to me when I was writing my dissertation. Take it away, Fiona!

Thanks so much to Ally for letting me waffle on about my latest book. I’ll start by saying that one of my favourite TV shows of all time has to be the Channel 4 archaeology series Time Team, which ran for the best part of 20 years from 1994 to 2014. Each episode featured a new site for the team to investigate, and they were always given “just three days” to answer a series of questions, typically ‛how old is it?’, ‛how big was it?’ and ‛is there anything unusual about it?’. The sites ranged from Prehistoric caves to Victorian industrial sites, and pretty much everything in between, and almost all the programmes were both informative and absolutely fascinating.

One episode stood out amongst all the rest for being unique, and even a little odd. I can’t remember every detail now, but I do remember that there was a magnificent discovery (which may well have been the sword referred to in this post’s title). The only trouble was, the team’s experts were thoroughly unconvinced the discovery was genuine: it was the wrong artefact in the wrong stratigraphy at the wrong time. They couldn’t openly say so, though, without accusing the land owners of fraud, so it was left very open-ended – and very intriguing.

Straight away this suggested all sorts of plot bunnies, and I used one of them to write a short story called ‛Trench Warfare’- but substituting a gold cross for the sword. The story also featured a sweet m/m romance between an archaeologist and his assistant, and was published in the gay romance magazine Forbidden Fruit. And then I sort of forgot about it.

Recently I re-discovered it lurking in a file, dug it out, dusted it off, and realised it would work just as well as a book. I’ve added a lot of extra material, including a whole sub-plot about a ghost and lots more back-story about the characters, including County Archaeologist Steve, right-hand-man Jon, and devious businessman Paul. It fought back every inch of the way (I swear I’m never using the word ‛warfare’ in a book title again!) but I finally finished it to my own satisfaction, and published it at the end of May.

The result is an ultra-sweet, no-sex, plot-heavy romance involving a rescue dig to find a town’s missing priory before the local developers build a swanky apartment block. There’s also a set of mysterious stairs, something nasty lurking in the undercroft, and of course, that out-of-place gold cross. You’ll have to read the book to see just how that contributes to the overall story – but I’m hoping you’ll have a riotous time finding out!

Buy Trench Warfare, £2.99 / KU

An Excerpt from Trench Warfare

‛This one?’ Jon tapped it with his trowel.
Before I could reply the stone tapped back. Or at least, that’s what it sounded like. Three more taps, fainter and more muffled, coming from underground. I looked at Jon and Jon looked at me; a kind of unspoken question-and-answer passed between us and with a lift of his eyebrow he tapped again.
One-two-three.
A pause.
Then fainter, more muffled, one-two-three.
‛An echo?’ Jon’s voice was rough; what I could see of his face under all the hair was pale.
‛Must be. It could be a well-shaft. They’d have needed water, and we haven’t found one yet.’
‛True, although there’s the stream…’ He didn’t even finish the sentence. The tapping had sounded again. This time Jon hadn’t tapped first. And there were more than three.
Tap-tap-tap; tap-tap-tap. Tap.
It sounded, weirdly, like Morse code. But that was ridiculous. There could hardly be a transmitter down there, let alone anyone to operate it. It must be the well. We’d probably disturbed some smaller stones, and they were falling down the shaft and echoing. That was all. Except that it wasn’t all. Not by a long way. The tapping started again, and this time it wasn’t Morse, or any kind of code, but a frenzied jag of sound like someone beating, pounding, to be let out. And then the stone began to move.
‛What the fuck?’ Jon leaped back as though someone had poured scalding water on his legs.
I wasn’t far behind. We stared at each other; my heart was pounding and I could feel sweat prickling on my brow. Fight or flight, they call it, and I’d have given a lot to fly right out of that trench. Or to grab Jon and hang on. But my feet seemed locked to the ground. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t get out. I couldn’t get out, and the stone was working itself loose. And whatever was underneath it would overwhelm me and drag me back down to—
‛Steve? Steve! Come quickly!’
Concrete feet or not, I jumped at that. But this was no ghostly presence; it was coming from the other side of site. And it sounded hoarse.
Jon took my elbow and hoisted me out of the trench, and then I reached a hand down and hauled him out. We stood for a moment, eyeing each other. I still wanted that hug, but couldn’t ask. It wouldn’t be fair on him when he wasn’t that way inclined. I laughed nervously instead, trying to work out if what I’d seen was a normal, natural force or something else.
‛Steve!’ Ben, the shorter of the Flowerpots, appeared round the corner of the site hut, panting as though he’d been running and waving his arms around. ‛Are you there? You have to come.’
Whatever was under that moving stone would have to wait. My first thought was that there’d been yet another disaster. We’d had burglary, fire, stones that moved by themselves and threats; what was next? And was this what Paul had meant by accidents? I dropped my trowel and ran, aware of Jon at my heels.
Ben had already turned back. By the time I caught up he was standing near the garderobe trench, staring at a heap of soil. Next to him stood Bill, a spade still in one hand. He too was looking down. My heart rate hitched up a notch again. Please God, don’t be a dead body. That would be the worst. The delays, the police involved, the paperwork, even for something that was hundreds of years old. But then I saw Ben’s face. His eyes gleamed with excitement, but it was happy excitement, not dread. I breathed again. ‛What’s with all the shouting? What’s going on?’
‛Oh, you know, just your average chance discovery.’ Bill indicated with one corner of his spade. ‛And it’s only fucking gold.’

You can find ‛Trench Warfare’ on Kindle for only £2.99 (or whatever your local equivalent is) or free on Kindle Unlimited, and I hope you have as much fun reading it as I did writing it. And if you fancy catching up with Time Team, there are various classic episodes available on YouTube, and some new, online-only programmes on the same platform.

Find Fiona

Website : Facebook : Twitter :

Time Team TV programme... Tony Robinson and Professor Mick Aston.

The hardest thing about writing…

…is often idea of other people looking at it. I do realise this is absolutely counterintuitive for someone who publishes their work.

person in white shirt with brown wooden frame — Photo by cottonbro on Pexels.com

Self-confidence, though.

I write under a pseudonym. Quite a few people in my Real Life ™ know about Ally (waves to those of them reading this!); but in my head, the pseudonym is a thin veneer of paper protection between the me who is trying go to Parent-Teacher meetings more often and not visit the shop in her slippers; and the me that likes to don my house-trousers at two in the afternoon and settle on the sofa to read or write queer novels featuring werewolves.

When we lived on Merseyside, we lived on a side-street just off the river Mersey itself, on the opposite side of the water to Liverpool. I am not a City Person and it was a Sacrifice For Love that I made when I was young and foolish. Mr AL has more than made up for my sacrifice by now – he found moving to the country a lot more traumatic than I found city life. In a village, if you put your washing out on the line, every single person in the vicinity will know that you have bright red BEST DAD IN THE WORLD underpants. In the city, you can’t hang your laundry out because it will absorb city-shmutz and be dirtier afterward than before you washed it. In cliche, in a village, everyone knows your business, but in the town, everyone ignores you.

So there are alleged pros and cons. I’m not sure the city/village cliche is true, though. Our city house was three stories high, with an attic window that looked across the river to the Liver Buildings, those iconic symbols of the city. They watch the big ships and the little ships go out on their adventures and welcome the sailors safely home again. That was one of the pros. As was the collection of dear friends and close family that we had within a half hour walk. The downside for me was feeling like a rat shut in a trap. For me, being on a suburban terraced street, I felt watched all the time. When you go out of the house on a suburban street of terraces, someone sees you. When you come home, someone else sees you. In your postage-stamp back yard, your neighbours overlook your Sunday afternoons. Traditionally, living in a village is supposed to be like that; but here in our village, it is more spaced out and I feel I have room to breathe. In the city, I felt squashed.

Writing is a bit like that, for me. When a new book comes out it sometimes feels as if I’m in one of those dreams where you’re standing on the village green with no clothes on and everyone is watching you—or walking out of your house in the city and the neighbours’ curtains are all twitching to see where you’re going.

This can be good! People can go Ooooh! You’ve lost weight since the last time you had this dream, how good you look! Or Yay! You’ve got to the Parent-Teacher meeting and you’re not wearing your pyjamas! Or of course they can laugh at the fact that you don’t shave your legs or your pyjamas have little unicorns on them.

I think the trick as a writer is to let both those things flow over you. It’s lovely that people like what you write. But once it’s written and in the public domain, it’s a thing on its own and you can’t let how readers interact with it affect you too much, because that way lies madness. It’s the ultimate in looking for external validation and that’s not a great mental health place to be.

So…I guess the hardest thing about writing a book for me these days is letting it go. Pushing it out the door with its lunch in a paper sack, making sure it’s got a waterproof in case it rains, waving it off on the school bus and trusting that it’ll be okay out there on its own.

Img of woman giving lunch to a child who is about to on the school bus, with books in the background.