Our wonderful medical authors Carol Marinelli and Fiona Lowe give us a behind-the-scenes insight into the Paddington Children’s Hospital mini-series and their fabulous romance stories.
I thoroughly enjoyed writing the opening story in the Paddington Children’s Hospital series. The news that Paddington Children’s Hospital is soon to close comes as a sad but seemingly inevitable blow to the staff and patients of the much-loved facility.
My heroine, Victoria, is a paramedic and I especially loved writing her because she’s such a strong and complex character. She is used to dealing with difficult situations and is also very confident when dealing with bureaucracy. Surely then she should be more than able to deal with a fairly new and rather grumpy Scottish doctor (my very favourite type)? Dominic has every reason to be miserable and to not want to get involved with a feisty paramedic. Their rows though are a thin attempt to mask their mutual attraction. My plan was to keep the seething tension going but Dominic and Victoria had other ideas and next thing I knew their story had taken a rather sexy turn. I do love how characters soon let me know who’s boss! Just when they are doing their best to avoid each other a major incident occurs and all personal issues are of course pushed aside in the rush to save little lives.
One aspect of this story I especially liked was the working relationship between Victoria and her crewmate, Glen. Emergency personnel regularly deal with things most will never see and of course it has an effect. I liked how both looked out for the other even if it wasn’t always obvious at the time. Well, out of bad comes some good and the major incident brings a lot of publicity for the hospital. Victoria decides to harness the energy and the lackluster campaign to save Paddington Children’s Hospital gets a new lease of life.
The race is on to save the hospital but wait… what about Dominic and Victoria? Well, they have a little new lease of life of their own to deal with! And, no, the grumpy Scottish doctor did not take the news well (in fact I was tempted to smack him upside the head as I wrote it) but you’ll have to read it to find out why!
Happy reading
Carol x
Forbidden to the Playboy Surgeon
I have a secret confession; I LOVE research, which is lucky because Forbidden to the Playboy Surgeon, book 2 in the Paddington Children’s Hospital series, is set in London and I’m an Aussie. Given I’m 21 (snort!) it’s been more years than I care to admit since I was last in London, which was probably around the time I was 21 the first time; so, I needed to do some research. I was having so much fun taking virtual tours of London, walking the streets of Paddington, planning the route Claire would take to work each morning, checking out what old London hospital buildings look like and creating a Pinterest board, that I had to force myself stop and actually start writing Claire and Alistair’s story. But for all the fun I had getting a handle on the setting, my favourite task by far was researching the charity ball.
I’ve been to a few charity balls in my day; they’re a fun and social way to raise funds for special projects. I decided that the Paddington Children’s Hospital ball had to be magical and take Alistair and Claire far far away from work, sick children and their preconceived ideas about each other. That’s when I discovered the Savoy Hotel. Thank you, Google! Oh, the stories the walls of the hotel hold from Oscar Wilde to Marilyn Monroe, and the parties. I wove some of this history into the story including the one about an elephant in a gondola in the ballroom, but you’ll have to read the book to get the full story.
I hope you enjoy reading Forbidden to the Playboy Surgeon and all the other romances in the series.
Fiona Lowe
Thank you, to our lovely authors Carol Marinelli and Fiona Lowe, for taking the time to talk to us about their fabulous books. The Paddington Children’s Hospital mini-series books are out now!
