Linda Hill, of Linda’s Book Bag.
Linda kindly invited me to contribute to her website. Linda has an award-winning blog, reviewing and sharing good books with her vast ocean of fans and followers.
Check it out: https://lindasbookbag.com/
“Lovely Diane Solomon has appeared here on Linda’s Book Bag a few times and when I heard she had a new book, Eva, I simply had to invite her back. I asked Diane about her experience of writing Eva and she kindly provided a super guest post and an extract from the book that I’m delighted to share today.
Let’s find out about Eva.”
A Guest Post by Diane Solomon
Welcome back to Linda’s Book Bag Diane. And congratulations on your new romantic suspense novel, Eva. Has writing this book helped you realize anything about yourself in the same way Eva has a voyage of discovery?
It’s nice to be back, and that’s a great question! I came up with the idea for this novel 20 years ago, but it took me until now to feel ready to write it, to truly understand what I wanted to say.
Here’s a wee bit about the story. Eva, the 26-year-old protagonist, has not committed to love since the day when she was eleven, when she found her mother dead on the kitchen floor. Since then, believing she is better off alone, she has kept a safe distance from people, only connecting deeply with animals.
Then she discovers she possesses a powerful skill. Maybe it is a gift. But it might be a curse. She realizes she can heal an animal simply by holding it and meditating to a deep inner space where she connects with its spirit. Things get even more shocking when she finds she can heal humans as well. When through her healing, her grandfather recovers miraculously from the incapacitation of a stroke, word spreads quickly and her life is no longer her own.
Journalists hound her relentlessly and hand-delivered death threats confirm someone wants to kill her. Forced into the limelight she’s avoided all her life and facing challenges at every turn, Eva must fight to protect her newfound ability while also doing the most difficult thing of all: staying alive.
Eva is a deep love story, full of twists and turns, with the theme of our universal yearning for connection. Plus, it is loaded with heart.
I resonate strongly with the path Eva travels, that of her struggle is to overcome her inner demons in order to own her power and to flourish. To grow. Eva is continually challenged, when all the time, all she wants to do is look after animals. That’s where she feels safe and loved and where she can give love unconditionally without fear.
Some of that is me! This hit home as I wrote the book. What kept me from connecting deeply with other people my whole life was very simply the walls I created to protect myself. The walls Eva created. The walls we all create! We hide behind those walls, protecting ourselves from pain. Yet, ironically, those walls insulate us from the very thing we need to alleviate the pain. Connection to other people. I believe we all yearn for that connection.
Writing this book has been one of the most fascinating and rewarding experiences of my life. And I wrote it from my heart, hoping to grab yours!
Eva sounds fabulous Diane! CLICK HERE TO READ “EVA” EXTRACT