Brook Cottage Books: Guest Post: Pauline Barclay discusses her new book!

In The Cold Light of Day by Pauline Barclay

Release Date: 26th October 2014
Publisher: Self-pub

Genres: Fiction

Thank you so much JB for having me back on your fabulous Brook Cottage Books site to talk about my latest book, I feel extremely honoured to be sitting here again.

Like my last book, Storm Clouds Gathering, I have once again returned to the sixties for In the Cold Light of Day. I just love to write about the times when mobile phones, lap tops, the World Wide Web and computers in general were nothing more than a futuristic dream. Set in the London area, In the Cold Light of Day is a moving story about gambling addiction taking the reader into a world of lies and deception. Like all of my books, it is an emotional read, one that gets to the very core of the characters feelings. I’m sure the odd tissue will be needed. I admit to having felt emotional when I was writing this book.

You asked what inspired me to write about gambling. “The initial idea came to me after I had heard how a business man had lost everything he owned through gambling. A few weeks later I met a lady who had a family member who was addicted to internet gambling. From then on my story slowly began to unfold.

To understand the deep emotions of how addiction takes over, I read many stories from people who had been in that kind of situation. I also I spent a great deal of time checking out gambling rules and laws that were pertinent to the sixties, very different from today’s gaming laws. And of course back then there were no stringent checks on money transfer as there is today. In the Cold Light of Day is not about sitting round a roulette table or understanding the rules, it is about how two people find themselves caught up in the consequences of gambling addiction and how it turns their lives upside down.

Here is the blurb….

Bertie Costain has worked hard all his life in the building trade and now owns his own London-based company. In 1967, approaching fifty and still unmarried he enjoys a playboy lifestyle, but when he meets Kitty, an attractive, wealthy widow ten years his senior, he swiftly proposes.

Swept off her feet, Kitty adores him. The happy couple seem to have it all, but Bertie has a secret. Kitty has no idea their home is mortgaged to the hilt, or that the many expensive gifts he brings her come out of his winnings at roulette. Proud of his apparent success and ignorant of his gambling addiction, she happily loans him large sums of money, ostensibly for his business.

Convinced with each spin of the wheel that his run of bad luck will change, Bertie gambles for increasingly high stakes, falling deeper and deeper into debt until, facing financial ruin and with nowhere to turn, he resorts to fraud. As their lives begin to unravel, Kitty learns the horrifying truth.

In the cold light of day can their love survive the pain and destruction Bertie’s addiction has wrought?