Book Blog Tour – Karly Lane on Making Mistakes and Second Chances

November 25, 2016 | Third Time Lucky by Karly Lane is published by Allen & Unwin, RRP $29.99, available now.

Today I am thrilled to welcome Karly Lane to LOVEthatBOOK. Her latest novel is called THIRD TIME LUCKY and it is freshly released into the world. If you haven’t followed Karly on social media yet, you should immediately scroll to the links below. She is humble, funny and responsive to her followers and as charming as the characters and small country towns about which she writes.

THIRD TIME LUCKY is a romance and redemption story set in Christmas Creek, but it’s also a story about small town life and survival. December Doyle is starting over, moving back in with her family after ten years in a tragic marriage that was not what it seemed. Seth Hunter left Christmas Creek in a cloud of controversy, but could never shake December from his soul. He’s come back to Christmas Creek as a successful businessman, to settle scores and make the town pay for the pain of his childhood. But when the two childhood lovers unexpectedly meet, their pasts explode into the present. Both have left the town in pursuit of different lives, but Christmas Creek is not so easily left behind, and happiness may be closer to home than they both think.

Fans of Karly will not be disappointed by THIRD TIME LUCKY. If this is your first Karly Lane, you will be hooked!

THIRD TIME LUCKY by Karly Lane

After a disastrous marriage, December Doyle has returned to her home town to try to pick up the pieces of her life and start again. She’s also intent on helping breathe new life into the Christmas Creek township, so the last thing she needs is trouble.

Bad boy Seth Hunter has also returned to Christmas Creek, and trouble is his middle name. Wrongly convicted of a serious crime in his youth, Seth is now a successful businessman, but he’s intent on settling some old scores.

As teenagers, December and Seth were madly in love, and seeing each other again reawakens past feelings. But will Seth be able to overcome his destructive anger about the past, and can December conquer her fear of heartbreak to make their relationship third time lucky?

Making Mistakes and Second Chances

by Karly Lane

I think life lessons are one of the most important things we can experience. At the time when things go wrong, it sucks and disappointment is not a pleasant emotion to go through, but I think without experiencing disappointment and to some extent—failure, you never really get to experience the ultimate joy of success.

I can remember finishing my very first full length manuscript and feeling like I’d just written the most UM-azing book ever written, only to have it rejected multiple times.

I remember each time I sent it off to a publisher, I’d wait, not so patiently, to hear back, and spent months and months, almost making myself ill thinking about it—wanting so desperately to be published. When the rejection letters eventually came, the disappointment hurt. Badly.

I’ve since found that original manuscript and had a bit of read and, Oh. Em. Gee. It was terrible! What had I been thinking?! But the thing was, at the time, it was good (to a completely inexperienced novice writer with absolutely no idea what she was doing!) But I needed to learn the craft and practice writing and rewriting until I figured out how to turn that manuscript into a book. I couldn’t see that at first.

But skip forward a few years (cough) quite a few years, and I’d joined an organisation called Romance Writers of Australia and suddenly, surrounded by a network of likeminded people who supported and encouraged me every step of the way, my writing improved. I suddenly had direction and I knew where I wanted to go.

I summoned up my courage to try and submit to another publisher—this time to Allen and Unwin via their Friday Pitch, and low and behold… they asked to read my entire manuscript. It was quite literally like a dream coming true and I’m not ashamed to say there were tears involved. Big, fat, ugly ones.

Was this happening now instead of all those years before for a reason? Probably not for any destiny inspired reason. Realistically, I needed those years to develop my writing and learn the craft, but I also believe, I needed to experience life a little more than I had back when I first began writing as an early twenty-something year old. Since that time, I’d had children, been through a divorce, I’d lost loved ones; all things that while heartbreaking and terrible, somehow added to my life experiences and clearly gave me the ability to write about these things—things I hadn’t experienced and quite possibly wouldn’t have been able to write about with the same depth of understanding back then.

It’s okay to make mistakes, that’s how we learn and writing is no different. If we always got everything right, all the time, there’s be no room for surprises, and how boring would that be!

ABOUT KARLY

Karly Lane is the best-selling author of nine novels including Second Chance Town, Gemma’s Bluff, and Bridie’s Choice. A certified small town girl, Karly is most happy in a little town where everyone knows who your grandparents were. Her novels range from romantic suspense to family saga, and she is passionate about writing stories that embrace rural Australia and the vast communities within it. She lives on the beautiful Mid North Coast of NSW with her husband and four children.

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