Once Were Friends - A Prologue: About Three Authors

By Patti Roberts

Once Were Friends is a 20k word prologue to Whoever Said Love Was Easy.

When Becky's life begins to unravel around her ears faster than a kitten with a ball of yarn, she knows she can turn to her best friend for help. With a bottle of Vodka and a box of chocolates, there is nothing the best friends can't work through together. 

That was plan A.  Becky desperately needs another bottle of Vodka, another box of chocolates, a bucket, and a plan B.
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Paradox
• Release date: Jun 29, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386855224

Book preview

When Becky's life begins to unravel around her ears faster than a kitten with a ball of yarn, she knows she can turn to her best friend for help. With a bottle of Vodka and a box of chocolates, there is nothing the best friends can't work through together. That was plan A.

Becky desperately needs another bottle of Vodka, another box of chocolates, a bucket, and a plan B.

Once were friends is a 20,000-word prologue to Whoever Said Love Was Easy?

Paradox Publishing.

http://bit.ly/paradoxcovers

Book Layout ©2014 http://bit.ly/paradoxcovers

Edited By Ella Medler & Tabitha Ormiston-Smith.

Chief Beta Reader - Annmarie Spiby.

Beta Reader – Debra Bassett.

Robert Frost. (n.d.). BrainyQuote.com. Retrieved August 31, 2014, from BrainyQuote.com Web site: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/r/robert_frost.html

Copyright © 2017 Patti Roberts.

Dedication.

Dedicated to my Facebook family – far too many of you too mention - This book was inspired by you all.

Special thanks to Annmarie Spiby for all your support – you rock!

Heartfelt gratitude to Ella Medler and Tabitha Ormiston-Smith, my wonderful editors, for their friendship, knowledge, and expertise.

Introduction for Tabitha Ormiston-Smith

IT WAS WITH MIXED FEELINGS that I received the tidings of this new book. I’ve long enjoyed Patti’s work, both in the Paradox series and in the utterly charming Witchwood Estate series, to which I’ve become addicted. So addicted, in fact, that a small, dark part of me cried out ‘don’t write that! Write a new episode of Witchwood! It’s been months....’

God knows, though, I’m the last person to discourage anyone from exploring new forms and genres. I’m always doing it myself in short fiction, although a disastrous venture into historical fiction left me too cowardly to attempt any further experiments in full length novels, as Patti has bravely done with About Three Authors. Anyway, I firmly reminded myself, we mustn’t be selfish. Patti doesn’t exist merely to pander to my greed for more and more episodes of Witchwood Estate.

In this new venture, Patti has left (not permanently, one hopes) the world of fantasy to write a standalone, contemporary novel about ordinary people. Doing this carries its own challenge – there are no dragons to take the reader’s breath away, no convenient superpowers to save your hero from imminent death, no wise talking animals or were people, which often will bring readers just for their own sake. And with a standalone novel, there is no following of people who’ve followed a particular series and will buy the next book in the series automatically. One is left to rely solely on one’s skill as a writer to produce something that will keep Joe Reader turning the pages. So it was in some ways an ambitious move for someone who’s always written fantasy.

I was delighted to find that in About Three Authors, that challenge has been met and overcome without the slightest sign of strain. All of the author’s usual strengths are in evidence – her evocative visual descriptions and those wonderful injections of humour that aerate all her work, like the yeast rising through a fresh loaf of bread. I read it with great pleasure and was sorry when I came to the end.

Prologue.

Present Day.

BECKY JENSEN'S FACEBOOK STATUS - This past year, against all the ups and downs imaginable, I received the greatest gift of all — the gift of unconditional love. And with love, came the gift of forgiveness. Somewhere around the 1700s, a fellow called Alexander Pope wrote, 'to err is human; to forgive, divine'. It is my humble opinion, however, that my mum said it best in a letter she had written before she died.

Chapter 1 - All I Want For Christmas.

BECKY'S EARLIEST CHRISTMAS memory was when she was about four years old. She remembered a gift from under the tree which was wrapped in shiny red and green striped paper covered in tiny Santas.

This is for you, Becky.

Inside the wrapping paper was a beautiful doll with long, wavy, auburn hair. It was the most beautiful doll Becky had ever seen.

What's her name? she had asked, her eyes unable to leave the doll's beautiful face.

Twenty-four years later.

BECKY JENSEN'S FACEBOOK STATUS: In life, it is said that everything happens for a reason. So I ask you this, Cancer, what is your reason?

FRESH TEARS BLURRED Becky Jensen's vision as she gripped the steering wheel of her Mazda and stared straight ahead through the streaky windscreen. The wind and snow swirled outside, blurring the oncoming traffic. The roads were busy; people had left work early for their last-minute Christmas shopping. Shopping, however, was the last thing on Becky's mind this Christmas Eve. At twenty-eight, apart from her mother's death, Becky had lived a pretty uneventful, run-of-the-mill kind of life.

On the radio, Mariah Carey was singing All I Want For Christmas. Becky sang along to the words of the song, right up until the hiccoughs made it impossible for her to continue. The song had been one of her mother's favourite Christmas carols. Two years ago, before her mother, Victoria, had fallen ill, they had learned the words off by heart. Once all the dirty dishes from lunch were washed and put away, everyone would huddle together in front of the fireplace in the lounge room. Becky and Victoria both dressed up in Santa costumes and performed the song in front of their family and friends. It was a Jensen family tradition. They all had to sing a song, read a passage out of one of their favourite books, or read a poem which reflected the Christmas Spirit. Costumes were optional but were usually worn by everyone.

The Christmas holidays had always been such a happy time in the Jensen household. Although Becky had moved out of the family home a few years earlier, she had never thought for a single moment that the Jensen family’s Christmases would ever change. She remembered her unbridled excitement as a little girl. She would run down the stairs on Christmas morning, her fingers brushing over the ivy and tinsel-encrusted banister that Victoria decorated every year, along with the rest of the household, inside and out. Victoria would stand outside in the snow