Happy Rocktober, motherf**kers!

Yes, I'm happy, can you tell? I'm happy because IT’S A LONG WAY TO THE TOP is finally about to hit the virtual book shelves.

Rocktober 21st.  Mark it down. It's important. It's also the date in time to which Marty and the Doc travel.

It's an auspicious day. Really.

For the last fifteen or so years, my focus has been on writing screenplays as well as adapting other writers’ manuscripts into screenplays. I don’t know if you know anything about screenwriting, but let me tell you it’s a hard gig. And unless you’re Aaron Sorkin you can often find yourself wondering if the challenges of writing a screenplay are actually worth the effort. Well, yes, it is worth the effort but the rewards can be achingly few.
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It was as I was toiling away on yet another adaptation, this time a romance/mystery, that the idea for IT’S A LONG WAY TO THE TOP first injected itself into my tragedy-loving brain. Just like the Greeks of old, I love a good drama and love it all the more if it’s a tragic drama. Now, I guess you’re wondering if this makes me psychologically impaired or damaged in some way. Maybe it does, I don’t know... I know I’m not a half glass empty kind of person. On the contrary, I’m a glass half full kind of gal. All I know is that I’m fascinated by the passions that compel people to behave in destructive and self-destructive ways. Always have been. 

The Greeks were also fascinated by tragedy. Their plays dealt with all the big themes: love, pride, loss, power, and the rocky relationships between mortals, and gods and mortals. Their plays often followed a basic structure: the conceited protagonist commits some kind of crime then as his world crumbles around him he comes to realize the error of his arrogant ways.

In dramatic art, the term ‘catharsis’ describes the effect that tragedy has on the audience. Essentially, it means purification (of the heart) through the purging of emotions (especially pity and fear) through art. If we are able to divest ourselves of petty worries and concerns, we are, thereby, able to realize that there is nobility in suffering.

Now, I think I may have mentioned, once upon a time, that romance was never really my thing, especially romance of the Mills & Boon variety. But a pay check’s a pay check and we all do what we have to do to keep a roof over our heads, right? So, as I worked my way through the romance/mystery manuscript searching for hooks and motivations, plot points and character arcs, I began to think - I can do this. I can write a romance…

But I didn’t want to write an ordinary romance. I wanted write a romance with grit. After all, a romance with grit was still a romance, right? So, in July 2013, I sketched out a plot for my very first romance novel, indeed my very first novel. And now, here we are, almost one year to the day, and that novel is about to the hit virtual book store shelves.

So, if you love gritty rock ’n’ roll, if you love a killer tragedy, then this is the book for you! AVALAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER NOW FROM AMAZON

AVAILABLE FROM iBOOKS 21ST ROCKTOBER CHERRY COX ON AMAZON