Making A Change In The World! Chatting with author Cindy Vine - C U @ 8

Cindy Vine is chatting with us today. She is the author of titles C U @ 8, which she is currently touring with and also Defective, free today on Amazon. Check out all of her books on Amazon. Welcome to Mass Musings Cindy :).

MM: Many authors relate their characters to people they know. Is this the case with your characters and do you see yourself in any of them?

In C U @ 8 I have definitely based the characters on people I know and Fenella does have a lot of me in her. Most of the characters in my books are based on bits and pieces of people I know. It’s actually become a family joke, careful around Cindy as you never know if what you say or do might find its way into a book!

MM: Who is your favorite character in your book and why?

My favorite character in C U @ 8 is Suki, because she is trying so hard to change her life but in doing so has become a little fragile and needs protecting. She’s also so naïve. I just find something quite lovable about her.

MM: Who is your most favorite character from any book of all time?

My most all-time favorite character is Jenny in Not Telling. She endured so much growing up, but always managed to rise above it all. She was a fighter and never gave up hope her life would get better.

MM: If you could dive into the pages of any book, which book would it be and what character would you be?

I would dive into The Hunger Games Trilogy, and I’d be Katniss making a change in the world, leading the rebellion against oppression.

MM: If your book was to become a movie, which actors/actresses do you see playing the parts of your characters?

Ah great question. Meryl Streep could be Fenella, Sandra Bullock could be Suki, Alec Baldwin would be Declan, Katherine Heigl would be Kirsty.

MM: What can we expect from you in the future? Any new projects?

I’m going back into the dark with Hush Baby. It’s a story about a man that separates from his live-in girlfriend and fights to see his 2 year old son who then dies mysteriously. He starts investigating the death and comes up with some secrets he never dreamt he’d find. I don’t want to say too much as I’m still writing it and who knows whether it might veer off in a different direction. I’m also working on Diary of a Dancer which is about a man’s struggle with AIDS. This is based on the diary my late cousin kept the last year of his life.

MM: Where can readers connect with you?

Readers can connect with me on Goodreads, Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Shelfari. On everything my username is cindyvine. Also on my blog http://cindy-vine.blogspot.com and my website http://cindyvine.com

Thank you so much for taking time to chat with me today. It's been a wonderful pleasure.

Do your kids ever really leave? 

Fenella Fisher and Suki Rabinowitz are middle-aged single mothers whose children have left home and started on their own lives and careers. But Suki’s son Josh is a cocaine-addict who supposedly fathered a baby on a visit to the UK; and Fenella’s daughter Kirsty has just been dumped and is feeling miserable. Fenella and Suki decide they need to step in to help their children and hatch a plan to sort out Josh’s mess and find Kirsty a suitable man, with some hilarious consequences. After interviewing prospective husbands for Kirsty at Waves Restaurant and Bar, they discover that a good man is hard to find.

Chapter 10

‘Fun-loving, creative free-spirited young woman looking for a life partner. Travel, art and adventure are my middle names. Conservative is out and not in my repertoire. Control freak does not feature in my life dictionary. Cheap and miserly are not welcome in my universe. If you are intelligent with a sense of humour, a stable job and a six pack, then please contact me so I can get to know you.’

Suki had said short and sweet was better. Men on dating sites couldn’t be bothered to read long diatribes; they were in too much of a hurry to meet their ideal woman. So Fenella had complied. With quite a bit of eye rolling and laughter, the two had bandied about words until they were satisfied. “Leave it to stew for 24 hours before we check for any bites,” Suki had suggested and Fenella had done just that. Twenty-four hours had passed. Throughout the day Fenella had kept looking at the clock on the kitchen wall. Since the invention of cell phones she had stopped wearing her watch. In fact, she had no idea where it was or where she’d last seen it. It had been a gift, she couldn’t even remember who’d given it to her. It had been about a decade ago for a birthday, she thought. Suki was late. Before she left the day before she’d made Fenella promise not to open up Kirsty’s profile page and look at the replies. She wanted to be a part of the action, which Fenella supposed was only fair seeing that this whole internet dating thing had been her idea. Where the hell was Suki? Fenella was just about to succumb to temptation and open up the webpage when the doorbell rang.

“976 replies! I told you!” Suki had an excited sparkle in her eyes. She looked quite animated, Fenella thought, feeling less excited herself. Well, maybe she was a little excited, but quite a bit apprehensive as well about the whole damn thing. “So what we need to do first is delete the weirdoes and creeps.”

“I thought you said there weren’t weirdoes, creeps and psychopaths on this website!” exclaimed Fenella feeling rather naïve about that kind of stuff.

“Um, not really, well some but sort of. They are far less weirdish and freakish on this site than on some of the other sites,” said Suki clicking on links and deleting emails at quite a pace. “Yuck! Yugh! Ugggg!”

Fenella peeped over Suki’s shoulder only to see a picture of an erect penis filling her screen. “And you were saying?”

“Some creepos still slip through, like that one. So what we do is reduce these responses to our top few hundred.”

“Few hundred? Few hundred!” Fenella was in shock. There was no way she was interviewing a few hundred young men. “I’m not sure about this Suki. I’m not sure if it’s worth it. These interviews…I don’t think I can do it.” Falling back onto her chair Fenella began to fan herself. A panic attack seemed to be developing as the heat started from her head and seemed to spread down to her toes. It was either that or a hot flush and the start of menopause.

Suki sat upright on the dining table chair glaring at Fenella with her hands on her hips. “Do you or do you not want Kirsty to give you grandchildren and make you a granny?

For someone who wasn’t that tall Suki could be quite intimidating. “I…er…do want Kirsty to have children one day. But Suki, there has to be another way. I can’t sit through a date with a few hundred men and interview them. My school holiday doesn’t last forever and I don’t want to use it all up on…this!” Fenella pointed at the computer screen. If she didn’t go and fetch herself some ice water from the fridge she was going to self-combust.

Suki folded her arms and scowled. “You may be right. Logistically and time-wise to set up a few hundred dates is improbable. You wouldn’t be giving each applicant the attention they deserve. And if we do a rush job then we won’t get the best. Let me think a minute. We probably need more coffee,” said Suki draining the dregs from her mug. Fenella had hardly touched hers. Coffee was the last thing on her mind. The last thing she felt like doing was pouring more heat into her already overheating body!

“You want that special blend again?”

“Yeah, that East African one again. I love the taste, the aroma. Can’t believe you never brought me back a bag!” The truth was that Fenella had spent ages dithering about what to buy Suki. It was so hard to buy a gift for a woman who had everything and was fussy to boot. She often criticised Fenella’s style choices, although to be honest, baggy t-shirts and track pants were probably on the unflattering side. After wandering around browsing for what seemed like hours, she’d settled for an ornately carved wooden box similar to the Swahili carved wooden doorways she’d fallen in love with. It was always risky buying Suki jewellery as she tended to only wear pieces completely out of Fenella’s price range. So a box it had been but in retrospect coffee would have been better. Fenella hadn’t even thought about coffee as a gift.

With the coffee brewing and the machine making its happy sounds, Fenella joined Suki in front of her laptop at the dining room table. “Any bright ideas yet? Or should we just delete this profile?”

Glaring at Fenella Suki leaned forward to hug the keyboard protectively. “No don’t touch! No deleting, I have an idea as surprising as it may sound.”

Fenella gave an eye roll. “Seriously Suki, covering up my keyboard like that. How old are you?”

“Never trust a woman who tells you her age,” Suki countered. “I know what we are going to do. It’s perfect. In fact so perfect, I think I should patent the idea.”

Fenella groaned. This wasn’t sounding good. It was building up to one of Suki’s hare-brained schemes she could tell. “Okay, stop keeping me hanging in suspense. What’s the idea?”

Suki gave a little shake of her shoulders and sat up straight. “We,” she paused dramatically for effect, “Are going to set up a mass date.”

Groaning out loud Fenella held her head in her hands. “Don’t tell me you are suggesting what I think you are suggesting.”

“We email our top few hundred, say something witty, hook them further. A little saucy repartee. Not all will reply, but many will and then we suggest a meeting. We give all our short list the same date and time to be at a venue we pick.”

“A few hundred doesn’t sound like a short list to me!”

“Oh stop being negative,” Suki pouted. “Then we casually wander among them and check them out. We can take a notebook and make notes. We might even strike up some idle chit-chat with some of them.”

“Are we going to introduce ourselves and tell them why they’re there? Some of them might be pissed to find they’re part of a mass date. I’m not sure about this.” Fenella chewed on her lip. Suki’s plan sounded very flawed to her ears.

“No silly of course not! We’re not asking for trouble. We check them out like we just coincidentally happened to be there at the same time. They’ll think their date stood them up. We can make up some excuse when we email the ones we liked later. Do you think we might need a checklist for our prospects?”

Suki was on a roll and Fenella knew she would not be deterred. This plan would go ahead even though Fenella had grave reservations about it. “So where will we meet them?”

Suki threw her arms around Fenella, giving her a suffocating hug. “I knew you’d come on board! I was thinking that new restaurant/bar on the beachfront we’ve been going to. Waves. It’s quite big inside and should accommodate all our prospectives. We should get the owner to give us commission as we’ll be increasing his business on a normally quiet week night. Don’t look at me like that I’m just joking. About the commission part, that is.”

Fenella gave a thin smile. She felt quite drained. This reminded her of why she hated dating and was content to remain single. It was just too much hard work and unnecessary stress. No wonder people elected to stay in bad relationships. “Let me pour that coffee. You sure this will work?” Suki nodded, grinning and humming to herself as she turned back to scroll through the responses to the ad on the dating site. In a way Fenella was glad that finding Kirsty a man had made Suki’s other problem with that woman in Cornwall, take a back seat. She felt bad keeping Kirsty’s news about Josh a secret from her friend. But then again, she was sure that Suki had kept secrets from her about Kirsty she’d heard over the years. Lying by omission. It was something everybody did to protect those they cared about.

A teacher, writer, mother - Cindy Vine was born in Cape Town, South Africa and has lived and worked in many different countries around the world. She currently resides in Tanzania at the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro. Cindy has three children, two of whom have already left home. Writing and reading has been a passion of hers since she was a young girl.

Websites: http://cindyvine.com ; http://cindy-vine.blogspot.com ; http://facebook.com/cindyvinefanpage ; http://twitter.com/cindyvine ; http://cindyvine.hubpages.com

Purchase Links: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007N60QAI

August 6 - Introduction at the VBT Cafe' Blog
August 8 - Author Fav Recipe & Fun Facts at Writing Innovations E-zine
August 10 - Guest Blogging at AZ Publishing Services
August 14 - Review & Guest Blogging at Jersey Girl Book Reviews
August 16 - Review & Ebook Giveaway at Books, Books, and More Books
August 18 - Interviewed at Mass Musings
August 18 - Ebook Giveaway & Excerpt at Mocha Girls ReadAugust 20 - Guest Blogging at Cafe' Creations
August 22 - Guest Blogging at SheWrites Blog
August 22 - Interviewed at From The Mind Of OmegiaAugust 24 - Interview & Giveaway at The Bunny's Review
August 28 - Guest Blogging at Wise Words
August 30 - Interviewed at BK Walker Books Etc.