'Can you love more than one person at the same time?' Lucy Simmons asks her brother-in-law, Richard Rainey, as he comforts her after the sudden death of her father, and the revelation of family secrets that have led her to question who she is. For Lucy's been quite certain about one thing since she first met Richard when she was ten: she's in love with him, even although he's twenty years older than her, and married to her sister. Throughout her early adolescence, he has been (as she tells her best friend) her rock, her confidant - the one person who's always there for her.

By Heart

By Heart

In her early twenties, Lucy meets Mark Hetherington, a man her own age whose close-knit family is the antithesis of her dysfunctional one. They marry, but soon after this her relationship with Richard takes a more sinister turn, culminating in tragedy. Can she save her marriage and her family?

This is Fiona Cameron's fourth novel, and like her earlier books (the Balvaig Trilogy) is focused on relationships - between husbands and wives, between lovers, between friends, between parents and children.

'I'm fascinated by how those relationships shape characters, as well as how characters shape the relationships they find themselves in. Romance there may be, but it tends to be of the raw variety, and there's black humour too,' says Fiona. 'There's also tragedy in By Heart, but it's always important to me that the resolution to the story is life-affirming.'

She was inspired to write the novel after watching a satirical drama, broadcast at the end of 2014.

'I had recently completed my third book, The Swan Widow, and one of the principal characters in that is a man who had recently retired from the police at senior rank. The storyline of the TV drama featured another high-ranking police officer who was similar in personality to Kevin in The Swan Widow: someone who is very buttoned-up, controlled and controlling, and internalises stress. The TV character commits suicide, after details of his womanising - including an affair with his sister-in-law - hit the media. I became fascinated both with the idea of what would drive such a competent man, holding down a high-profile job, to such an act, and also how he'd become involved in an affair that he must have known couldn't end well. By Heart is the result!'

Fiona Cameron is a journalist and PR consultant who is based in SW Scotland. By Heart is available on Amazon Kindle and in paperback (as are the volumes of her Balvaig Trilogy: White Cranes Dancing, Containment, and The Swan Widow).


by for www.femalefirst.co.uk
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