Today I have the pleasure of welcoming Nia to my blog, as she shares an exclusive Guest Post with us. There was something a little quirky and intriguing by the front cover of her novel Love Punked, which has made me want to read it! Until I can do so, Nia was kind enough to write a post for the blog!
So shall we have a quick look to see what the book is all about?
Love Punked by Nia Lucason July 21 2018
Genres: Fiction
Amazon UK
Goodreads
When her life is irrevocably altered by a post-Rave tryst on her mother's floral patio recliner, Erin Roberts’ long-standing relationship with Humiliation takes her down a path that's not so much 'less well trodden', more 'perilous descent down sheer cliffs'.
Armed with a fierce devotion to her best friend and the unrequited love for the boy she might have accidentally married at age seven, when Erin falls pregnant at sixteen, life veers off at a most unexpected tangent.
Her journey to adulthood is far from ordinary as Erin learns that protecting the hearts of those most precious to you isn't balm enough when your Love Punked heart is as sore as your freshly tattooed arse.
Whilst raising football prodigies and trying not to get stuck in lifts with Social Work clients who hate her, Erin discovers that sometimes you have to circumnavigate the globe to find the very thing that was there all along.
I also checked out what some of the reviewers have said, and wanted to share this with you!
Novel Kicks says
The style of writing makes this novel really easy to fall into and I did not want to stop reading. It’s not often that a book has me laughing out loud (at one point, I sniggered so loudly I woke my husband up,) and then crying so quickly.
Rosie Amber says
Written in a style designed to entertain the reader, this book also deals with the harsher realities which some teenagers face. If you were a teenager in the 90s this story may well hit some nostalgia buttons, making you laugh, cringe or nod with understanding. I did find that once the story got underway I was keen to follow Erin’s journey.
Goodreads reviewers says
This book should come with a warning…that you will laugh and cry in equal measure. I laughed at home, on the bus, in cafes and on one sneaky occasion when I needed to know what happened next; when I was meant to be working. The second to last chapter had me in floods of tears. For anyone who knows me this rarely happens. I’ve only ever cried at one film and that was (spoiler alert) Bruce Willis’ death in Armageddon – romcom books never result in tears. All this waffle is to explain just how good I found this book.
Loving these reviews! So shall we check out the pearls of wisdom Nia is willing to share with us today? I am quite excited to say the least!
I’m a big believer in Karma. Despite having been dragged up in a very Catholic household, I don’t have any religious faith to hold dear but Karma, she’s the actual real deal.
I’m not sure how or when my faith in this great leveling force came to be but what I do know is that with every passing year, my respect for Karma gets deeper and deeper. As a Social Worker, there are some days when I have to smile and treat the most abusive people with respect and care but in my head, during the most difficult of interactions, there’s a voice that whispers, “Karma will deal with them my friend so just crack the chuff on with what you need to do”. Some days, it’s all that keeps me from howling at the moon.
In writing this Guest Post for the lovely Zoe, I thought I’d try and hone down the three most Karmic incidents in my life, to better understand where my blind faith comes from.
1) Sister X
When I was 10, my mother and the Priest hatched a nefarious plot which saw me dispatched on a free place to a Catholic school with nuns. Actual nuns. I was hoicked out of my CofE Primary School, missing out on the bloody Isle of White trip, and sent off to a new and boggling world. Over the years I was there, I learnt that Godliness and Goodness aren’t always a hand-in-hand package deal. All very elderly, the nuns ranged from sweet, gentle and lovely to utterly terrifying and not a little vindictive. The worst ones were those who played on both sides, leaving you guessing as to where they stood on any given day. The scariest, fiercest ones were actually the kindest. It was the ones who smiled and simpered at the parents that you wanted to watch. One of them, she played at nice. She would smile, act a bit batty, seem kind and then if you did something wrong, she’d turn on in a flash and drop a desk lid on your fingers. I would watch her through narrowed eyes because although she was liked by many of my peers, I was not fooled. Neither was Karma, the sassy minx.
Then one day in the early 90’s, a gust of wind saw fit to deliver justice. Opening an external door on her way to teach us, Sister X was sideswiped by a raging storm. As the door flew open, the attached Nun was propelled at an unexpected speed, staggering to catch her balanced and buffeted by gusts.
She fell into a bin. An actual bin. Like something out of a Roald Dahl story, she was upended into the rubbish receptacle and had to drag her shocked carcass out of it.
She burst into our classroom, bun askew, decorated in crap and looking like she’d been shagged by a bin lorry. In a shaky voice, she described what had just occurred.
As I struggled not to die of restrained laughter, I mentally high-fived Karma for dealing it out like an absolute boss. I’m laughing now as I type this. Sister X got it served to her.
2) Him
He wasn’t very nice. He really was a bit of a prick if I’m honest but he was good looking, he could talk the talk and I was sixteen and daft. I should add that he was also twenty-six so Karma already had an eyebrow raised. He played it all very slick, made me feel like I was so naïve and unworldly, mocked me for having to check with parents about curfews, belittled my lack of independence. It made me feel lucky to have been chosen by somebody so mature. It was was a pretty amateur imitation of manipulation but he played a strong game.
Then there was the night he inexplicably arrived at my home with a motorbike helmet (he didn’t own a motorbike) and no car. My Dad ended up giving him a lift home. It was all a bit weird and I ended it that night. It subsequently turned out that Mr. Worldly-Wise had had to give his car back to his mum. He didn’t own it. He lived with his parents too, the flat we’d spent time at was his mates not his. My Dad made him the butt of his jokes during his speech at my Wedding, as an example of the poor boy-choices I have previously made. I was younger at my wedding than he was when he dated me and as a room full of people laughed at Metro Dave and my Dad’s parody of his motorbike-less state, I laughed loudest at the knowledge that Karma is the gift that keeps on giving.
3) Agents
Karma works both ways though. That b**ch is nothing if not fair. I met my husband when we were teenagers, daft and unencumbered. It was such a straightforward and mutual thing, you could have ticked boxes. Calamity on legs meets nice, gentle, good looking boy with a sparkle in his eye. There’s friendship, familiarity and then there’s suddenly kisses and heat and love. Solid from the start.
Despite ups and downs and daydreams involving a Hemsworth and the commissioning of a hitman, I am pretty lucky. I am lucky because what I have been spared, what I can never really understand, is the absolute horror show of dating in your twenties and thirties. My gorgeous, amazing friends have had to handle shit that frankly, I’d be loath to wish on my worst enemy. They’ve met the older, nastier, game-playing versions of Metro Dave and they have had to do it whilst juggling careers, adulthood, life bollocks and the ebbs and flows of pubic-topiary trends. They’ve had the babies of people who are undeserving to share their airspace let alone DNA. They’ve navigated Tinder, Bumble, Match.com…….they’ve swiped, cyber-stalked, been catfished, ducked Dick Pics. I’m exhausted on their behalf. The hurt is at times, unbearable. Games are cruel, lies are told, female friends wage war on their
behalf.
Karma, she doesn’t forget though. I’d escaped that horror and I was owed.
When I wrote my first book, I diligently bought the ‘Writers and Artists Yearbook’, I emailed my ‘unique’ covering letters to all the Literary Agents I thought might be interested and I sat back smugly waiting for my key to the Publishing Kingdom to be couriered to my door.
Karma, she smirked and pressed the ‘dealt’ button.
I have now had more rejections than Mick Hucknell and that doctor from ‘Love Island’ combined. I will have, “Thank you for your submission but…”, burned into my brain. In the depths of my inevitable dementia, I will be repeating the phrase, “I don’t feel passionate enough about it to offer representation” as I wander around the corridors, annoying the nurses.
I have been dumped by an army of strangers, turned down by people I will never meet. It was a salutary lesson in Karma’s ability to keep the universe on an even keel. Nothing, absolutely nothing worth having comes easy and I needed to graft for what I wanted. I needed to be better.
When I went on to write and then self-publish ‘Love Punked’, I did it with Karma winking and nodding in approval. I need to learn this business, I need to pay my dues, I need to earn my stripes and one day, when the time is right, Karma might turn off the ‘dealt’ button and press, ‘win’. She’ll know when it’s time.
‘Love Punked’ is doing really well, people are kind enough to read it and review it and those 5 little golden stars on Amazon make me smile whenever I see them. I don’t have my agent but I’m earning those stripes one review at a time.
If it does happen, if somebody’s email arrives without a ‘but’ in the first sentence, the big question will inevitably be: “What in God’s name did that poor agent do, to deserve Karma dealing them me as a Client?”
If you want to follow how it all plays out, please join the chaos on Instagram @Nialucasbooks, Twitter @BooksNia or Facebook at Nia Lucas Books.
Thank you x
I loved reading this, and please if you get a chance like me pick up the book and check her out!
Until next time xx
Rosie Amber says
Good luck with the book Nia, and thank you Zoe for adding a snippet of my review of Nia’s book to your post.
Zoe says
Aw it was a pleasure to do this post. Can’t wait to read the book. Thank you for stopping by x