Today I’m joining the blog blitz for The Girl Of Lost Petals And Possibilities. I’m sharing a guest post written by Laura Briggs with thanks to Rachel Gilbey at Rachel’s Random Resources for inviting me on the blog blitz and to the author for writing her guest post.

Blurb:

On holiday in Egypt with Sidney and Dean, young writer Maisie is—in her mind—on top of the world. Her long-labored manuscript is finally going to be published, she and Sidney are deeply in love, and the future looks bright on every level.

In one moment, however, it all changes. Tragedy leads to overwhelming loss that Maisie can’t even begin to process. As the world itself turns upside down, there’s no solace for Maisie from the growing sense that her wonderful future is finished.

No dream about to come true. No certainties of new chances in life.

No Sidney.

Even if the first two did not break her, the last one is determined to. It’s up to Maisie to find her strength and determination to find a new future, even if—unthinkably—it may be nothing like the one she dreamed of.

Guest Post:

Laura Briggs writes about the books that inspired The Girl Of Lost Petals And Possibilities.

How exciting to drop by and share with all the readers at Portable Magic today! If you’re like me, you probably grew up reading classic children’s novels full of impossible adventures that most of us would love to go on—stories that transport us to a world of wonder with a mere flip of the page. I still love to visit those stories from time to time, as I suspect you do too. In fact, some of them ended up becoming the inspiration for parts of my new Cornish romance series (although my grown-up heroine’s quest is a little less magical, of course!). So keep reading below to learn which books are behind the roots of Maisie’s Cornish experience, a series that offers its own romantic escape for readers to dive into! 

Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

“The bottom had dropped out from beneath my world, and I had yet to plunge all the way into its vortex in the manner of Alice falling down her rabbit hole.” (The Cornish Secret of Summer’s Promise, book four in ‘A Little Hotel in Cornwall’).

Poor Maisie is every bit the wide-eyed wanderer as Alice in her journey to foreign shores. She’s definitely a bit naive at times—and so completely charmed by her surroundings that she takes more risks than she should, probably, in her quest to discover the key to her dreams. There’s much to be curious about in her new world, though, from the quirky staff she joins at the seaside hotel, to the mysterious, wealthy, and eccentric guests who grace its threshold. Entangled in a series of quirky adventures, she can’t help being most curious of all about Sidney Daniels, the enigmatic village groundskeeper. His secrets will lead her down the biggest rabbit hole yet…but perhaps it also leads to the answer she’s been seeking all along. 

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

Ah, how I loved this one growing up. The Gothic house with creepy corridors, a proper ancestral portrait gallery, and a forgotten garden locked away from visitors was right up my alley (as was the 1987 made-for-television adaptation from Hallmark Hall of Fame). I loved the story’s slightly spooky atmosphere, along with its heartwarming messages of friendship and healing. In a way, Maisie’s connection with Sidney and his friend Dean is rather like a grown-up version of the Mary, Dickon, Colin trio, as their kinship slowly coaxes Dean from his self-confessed ‘ogre’ status. After all, it’s a special bond forged partly in the hours wiled away in Dean’s neglected garden, where nature plays its own part in rekindling the artistic spark that was all but vanquished in the aftermath of tragedy. 

The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum

In my reboot series about Maisie, known as ‘A Cornish Hotel by the Shore’, her journey takes on darker tones in places, a bit more like Dorothy’s path to Oz than Alice’s wonder land or Mary Lennox’s lost garden. For one thing, her world is uprooted and plunged into chaos. It’s because of romantic tragedy, as well as life’s inevitable changes that Maisie finds herself not in Cornwall anymore—at least for part of the time that is, since Maisie can’t stand being totally separated from the place she thinks of as home now. If only she could click her heels and find herself back in those idyllic surroundings with Sidney by her side…but it will take much more than that for Maisie to find her way back to the love and the life that she lost.

Does all that have you curious to learn more about Maisie’s adventures? I hope it does—and that you’ll be swept away to a thrilling adventure that echoes a bit of the spirit of those classic stories so many of us know and love.

***

The Girl Of Lost Petals And Possibilities is available from Amazon

.