A Letter from Danielle for January ’23
Hi Everyone,
I hope you had wonderful holidays and feel renewed and full of energy as we begin this new year! Or: maybe you want to hibernate this month, in the cold weather. It’s a good month to tuck in with a good book—and I’m very excited about the two books that are coming out in January.
Without A Trace touches on a theme that has always fascinated me. In this case, the main character of the book has a dreary job he hates; an insensitive boss; and a harsh, demanding, unkind wife in his loveless marriage. He travels to his weekend home in France after a long tedious week, falls asleep at the wheel of his car, goes over a cliff, and crashes onto the rocks in the sea below. He struggles to exit the car and, finally, explodes to the surface, fighting for breath, and he suddenly realizes—as his car slips down into the water after he leaves it—he realizes that if he ever wanted to escape his life and disappear, now is his chance. When they find the car, everyone will assume he died and was swept out to sea. Now is his CHANCE!!! He climbs painfully up the cliff back to the road and the book is about everything that happens to him after that. Mystery disappearances have always fascinated me. Many years ago, Agatha Christie crashed her car into a tree and left it there and disappeared for 5 days—and never revealed where she went. I loved the idea in my book of someone being able to walk away from their life and start their life anew, free of all the burdens that held them back and made them unhappy. You’ll have to read it and see if you love the book as much as I do. And I really love it, it was a really fun challenge to write!!!
And the second book is coming out in paperback, Beautiful, which is also a challenging subject. A young woman, a female superstar model, is caught in the terrorist attack at the Brussels airport: she loses the two people she loves most in the world and half her face is destroyed in the explosion. She must reevaluate her whole life—everything she believes about beauty, life, and herself. And she most forge a whole new and meaningful life for herself. It’s about courage and perseverance and is a very poignant story. And I hope you love that book too!!
I wish you a peaceful month and some wonderful times curled up with a book (or two!!).
Love,
Danielle