Today we are interviewing Sheila Roberts, author of the romantic comedy, The Man Next Door.
Sheila Roberts is a USA Today and Publishers Weekly bestseller – and a fan favorite. She has seen her novels turned into movies for the Lifetime, Hallmark, and Great American Family channels. Before settling into her writing career, Sheila owned a singing telegram company and played in a band. She is happily married, and when she’s not traveling, she splits her time between the Pacific Northwest and Southern California.
Her latest book is the romantic comedy, The Man Next Door.
Visit her website at http://www.sheilasplace.com.
You can visit her on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100044180452595 and Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/sheilarobertswriter/.
I think I was always meant to be on this path as I was writing stories even as a child. I was also creating musical “masterpieces” and by college wanted to be a songwriter. Alas, I spent more money on that career than I made. After my first book sold it became pretty clear (at least to my husband, who wasn’t on board with the idea of moving our entire family to Nashville to gamble on a songwriting career), that this was the direction I should go. I still dabble in songwriting, but fiction is my forte.
\Your latest book, The Man Next Door, can be described as Love in the Time of Serial Killers meets The Woman in the House Across the Street and is a delightful romp about a recently broke divorcee who moves in with her house-bound mother only to spend their days spying on her grumpy, mysterious and sexy new neighbor. How did you com up with this idea?
It was inspired by the classic Alfred Hitchcock movie Rear Window, where the hero, who is stuck home with his leg in a cast winds up spying on the neighbors and then seeing something very suspicious going on across the way. Of course, that got me thinking. What if I retold this story, giving it a new twist?
Can you tell us more about the main character?
In a nutshell, we have a woman who has had to move in with her mother who’s stuck home with a broken leg. The two of them wind up spying on the hunky but mysterious and potentially dangerous new neighbor and things go downhill from there. Some tumbles and bruises along the way, but one can hope that love will conquer all in the end, right?
Who are the other main characters?
We have quite the cast:Zona and her mother Louise, who loves true crime shows and has a very active imagination. Then there’s Alec James, who seems friendly but also seems to have a temper. And a girlfriend? And what’s all that fighting the women are hearing over there at his house? And wait, where’s the girlfriend? She’s suddenly disappeared…just like the unfortunate wife in Hitchcock’s movie Rear Window. Oh, no! Add to the mix a daughter who’s been scarred for life thanks to her mother’s love mistakes and a sweet man who is always there for Louise (except when she wants him to take down that dangerous neighbor) and I think I have a fun cast of characters.
What is the first line of your book?
The House on Glenwood Avenue had taken on an air of darkness.
You are a person of enormous influence. If you could start a
movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of
people, what would that be?
I would try and build on a movement that took place two thousand years ago and encourage everyone to follow Jesus. Can you imagine what a wonderful world we would have if we all loved God and loved our neighbors, both on the block, in our towns, in our country and in our world? As the old song says, What a wonderful world it would be.
About the Book
Love in the Time of Serial Killers meets The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window in this delightful romp about a recently broke divorcee who moves in with her house-bound mother only to spend their days spying on her grumpy, mysterious, and sexy new neighbor.
Zona never thought her life was headed this way, but here she is, newly divorced and moving back in with her mom, Louise. After her gambling addicted ex-husband lost all of their savings, including their daughter’s college fund, she doesn’t really have a choice. She’s cutting every coupon she can and she’s going to help put her daughter through nursing school, even if it kills her.
This wasn’t Louise’s plan, either, laid up at home with a broken leg after one unfortunate tumble on the senior singles cruise she’d been looking forward to for months. But if she’s going to spend all her time at home, at least she’s got her daughter there with her. And there’s some hot new eye candy next door to distract them both from their troubles. He appears to be single and just around Zona’s age. Could his arrival be the universe making amends for everything it’s put her through?
Maybe the universe isn’t feeling as generous as Louise hoped. There’s something lurking under that mans surface charm, something…dangerous? And who’s the woman they can hear him in all-out shouting matches with on the other side of the fence? When the woman seems to disappear without a trace, imaginations run wild. Or at least, Zona hopes it’s just her mother’s imagination…
The Man Next Door is available at Amazon.
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