AudioLark Audio Books is proud to present Head Over Heels, by Cindy Procter-King. Click here for an audio demo of Head Over Heels and for purchase information.
Cindy writes:
HEAD OVER HEELS was the fourth book I wrote, but the first to be published. In fact, HEAD OVER HEELS is a comprehensive re-write of my second unpublished novel. I used author Vanessa Grant’s “Garbage Can” method of revising and tossed the first version of my story into an imaginary garbage can. Then I took out what I most wanted to save: the heroine, her apartment, and the Canadian setting. I brainstormed a different hero and a totally new, comedy-of-errors plot.
I also decided to abide by the old writer’s credo to “write what you know.” I wasn’t taking any chances! So my heroine, Magee Sinclair, became a klutz with a heart of gold. Because I am a klutz. Quite plainly, that is what I know.
There’s nothing wrong with being a klutz. I bump into walls, have had my coat sleeve get caught in an escalator as I was descending. As a kid, I’d put the milk in the cupboard and the cookies in the fridge. I’m not stupid. I just don’t tend to pay a lot of attention to the physical world, so it gets in my way. I live in my head. That’s where my characters reside, so why shouldn’t I? Oh, yeah, because I need to back the car out of the driveway without hitting, um, I mean scraping the fence.
I also decided to place Magee in a situation based on my own experiences. Magee tells a little white lie that winds up with her not only needing to masquerade as the hero’s girlfriend for a weekend but requires her to go mountain-biking in Whistler near Vancouver, B.C. (the site of the 2010 Winter Olympic events). I know zip about mountain-biking, so I researched a lot, and, hey, I’d happened to have taken a group trip to Whistler and we’d just happened to go mountain-biking. What a wealth of knowledge on which to draw!
I’m not an athlete (kind of hard when you’re a klutz). My friends split the mountain-biking group into guys and girls so the guys could pursue technically harder paths without worrying about us. If memory serves, I was the only woman mountain-biking that day who was perpetually the last person chosen in gym class, always the team player to win “hardest worker” (in case you don’t know, “hardest worker” = “you suck, but we appreciate you trying.”) So hurtling down Whistler mountain on a fancy bike was especially terrifying.
As you listen to the audio book of HEAD OVER HEELS, when Magee flies down the mountain path screaming on her bike—I lived that. The scene where she flips head over handlebars into a huge mud hole? Based on the experience of my friend, Bruce, during the men’s “technically challenging” excursion (translation: “only idiots would take that path”). Okay, so Bruce didn’t flip head over handlebars. His front tire just kind of lodged in a rut, and he fell over on his bike. Magee’s experience is a lot more dramatic. That’s why it’s called fiction, folks. So writers can take tiny elements of “what we know” and brainstorm an entertaining story.
The ski chalet in HEAD OVER HEELS is based on the cabin my friends and I rented. Magee’s apartment is based on an apartment I lived in with my now-husband. I loved that place and wanted to immortalize it. Monster, Magee’s “co-op cat,” was inspired by a kitten who did climb in through our kitchen window to visit me. Except my little friend left fleas behind (Monster would never do that!). And while I’ve never accidentally overdosed on heavy perfume, I have used chutzpah to extricate myself from embarrassing situations, as does Magee.
Magee isn’t me. However, she has a lot of me in her. I’ll always love her—and her story. And I’m thrilled to share the story in audio book form with AudioLark.
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