This week I am thrilled to be interviewing author Kim Nash. Kim will be sharing with us details of her writing life, telling us all about her new book ‘Sunshine and Second Chances‘, which was released on 4th June 2020, and answering a few fun questions too. This post contains affiliate links.

Kim Nash is an author of uplifting, funny, heart-warming, feel-good, romantic fiction.

Her latest book, Sunshine and Second Chances, was shortlisted for the 2020 Amazon Kindle Storyteller Award.

She lives in Staffordshire with son Ollie and English Setter Roni, is Head of Publicity for Bookouture and is a book blogger at www.kimthebookworm.co.uk.

Kim won the Romantic Novelists Association’s Media Star of the Year in 2016, which she still can’t quite believe. She is now quite delighted to be a member of the RNA.

When she’s not working or writing, Kim can be found walking her dog, reading, standing on the sidelines of a football pitch cheering on Ollie and binge watching box sets on the TV. She’s also quite partial to a spa day and a gin and tonic (not at the same time!) Kim also runs a book club in Cannock, Staffs.

Amazing Grace was her debut novel with Hera Books and came out in April 2019.

Escape to Giddywell Grange is Kim’s second novel and was published in September 2019.

Sunshine and Second Chances is Kim’s third novel and is out now!

I did indeed! I remember loving writing stories in English but I must admit that I did struggle with English Literature.

Without doubt Enid Blyton. I loved her books, wanted to be the characters in them. My favourites were the Famous Five, The Naughtiest Girl in School, The Magic Faraway Tree and The Wishing Chair. I had a lovely childhood but there was no place that I would rather have been found than between the pages of a book.

My darling mum passed away after a long battle with cancer and I began to write down my feelings and what she would have said to me if she could still have spoken to me. I tried to keep my feelings inside of me so as not to upset the rest of my family, so I found that writing them down was cathartic.

Years passed and I’d had my son, and he was growing up, before I started to write again but I’d always been a huge reader and always said that one day I would love to write a book. That one day came and I thought, well it’s not going to write itself Kim, so you’d best make a start. So I did!

I’m getting to be a better plotter now. Your first book has no pressures, unless you’ve already got a contract so you have all the time in the world. Future books can be written for me quicker if I plot what’s going to happen.

As I work full time, I need my writing time to be really productive so I need to know what I’m writing the minute my bum hits the writing chair. I am still a bit of a pantser too though and wing it quite a lot!

Now this I struggle with. I have a child to get ready for school, although he should really be doing that himself now, and a dog to walk before I can even start work let alone think about writing. If I get myself really organised and don’t take the dog out first thing, I can knock out a good 1k words before I start work and then I try again in the evening. I am a binge writer so can be more productive when I make a really concerted effort on a weekend.

Where Kim Nash Writes

For me, when someone contacts you and says that your book has meant something to them. In lockdown times, it’s been wonderful to have so many readers write to me to say that my books have helped them to get through some really dark and lonely times.

It’s based in The Algarve which is an area I know well, but obviously a trip there was quite useful. It was one of the last trips I had before travel stopped too.

I actually wrote this one quite quickly for me and did it in about 3 months. Then the editing started!

I write romantic comedy because it’s the genre that I love to read. I love books that take me on a journey of growth for the main protagonist and I’m a sucker for a happy ever after.

I picked Olivia (Liv) for my main character because I wanted something reasonably upmarket but something that could be shortened too, but something that was quite fun and quirky too.

Olivia is a wife and mother of two teenage boys. While she lives a lovely life and has everything she wants, living in a big house, with plenty of available money, while she loves her family dearly, she feels really put on, and feels like she’s lost her sparkle and purpose.

Debs is newly single, her husband left her for a younger, thinner, prettier model and she’s really lost her self-confidence and is feeling generally down about her life.

Fiona is caring for her mother who has dementia and while she feels really guilty about it, fears that her mother may need a little more looking after than she can give.

Samantha is lonely after her husband died and she brought up her son alone, she spent the last few years hiding from him a number of things she discovered about her husband, and now her son is away at University, she doesn’t know what to do with herself.

I felt like my ladies had gone on a wonderful journey, reunited with each other and formed an even stronger friendship than before. This made me really proud of each of them, for motivating each other to make changes in their lives, so that they could move forward and live a happy life and be the best version of themselves that they could be.

Never let anyone dull your sparkle!

We do! We have Roni, our tri-colour English Setter. He was rescued from Greece and we’ve had him just over 3 years. He is adorable and at the same time a pain in the backside, but he’s our pain in the backside and we couldn’t love him more!

SOOOOO many wonderful books on my reading list but I’d like to tell you that I’ve just finished a book called The Girl at the Back of the Bus by Suzette D Harrison which is an amazing book, set across two timelines, Montgomery, Alabama, 1955 where protagonist Mattie witnesses an act of bravery by a woman named Rosa Parks that inspires her to change everything she knows and present day Georgia, Atlanta where Mattie’s granddaughter Ashlee is living in relationship turmoil and has a career held back by prejudice.

She returns to her home where Mattie is dying and is determined to share her story before it’s too late. It taught me about a culture that fought to survive and shows a history that hasn’t always been kind. It was a real eye-opening, evocative, beautifully written, educational novel that I will never ever forget!

I’d be a waitress working in a bar in Vilamoura where a lot of my book is set. It’s one of my favourite places in the world and I would be sitting on my break, watching the world go by with the sunshine beating down on my shoulders!

Right now I’d travel to my own fictional world in Sunshine and Second Chances. What I wouldn’t give to be in The Algarve right now!

‘God, isn’t your dog annoying! Why does he bark at everything? AND why aren’t you sitting in this chair writing? Are you procrastinating AGAIN Kim?’

I would like to say a big thank you to Kim Nash for sharing with us details of her writing life and for a wonderful interview.

Share your thoughts on our interview with Kim Nash in the comment section below!