Biography
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Twitter
@gaylecranfield
Gayle Cranfield was born in London and found her
forever after, Mark at the age of 14.
After 29 years of being together, they have two
children and now live in Wiltshire in the South West of England somewhere
between Stonehenge and Bath. They have one child at University in Wales
studying Psychology and another at the London College of Fashion studying Make
up, Hair and Prosthetics for Performance (Training to become a sci-fi makeup
artist for film and TV basically.)
Gayle was an Account Manager for a
manufacturing company until 3 years ago when, after a weird shamanic experience
in Brazil she changed her life path and retrained as a beauty therapist. She now owns a successful beauty salon in her home town.
Whilst
on a road trip around California in 2013, she read some
disastrous books and when she returned home decided
to write one of her own. Having never creatively written a
word since school, she picked up her iPad and hesitantly started to write in
secret thinking she'd write a short story. Her most productive time of the day
was as soon as her husband left for work at 6am and before her first beauty
client was due at 9am and then in between appointments if she had a spare hour. Before she knew it, she had 20 chapters and 97000 words!
Gayle's sister and friend both called Debbie, read it and with a bit of re-writing Gayle had a manuscript
ready to send out to publishers at the beginning of 2014, where Siren offered her a publishing contract in
March 2014
for The Right Turn.
"It is great to see your work come alive,"
Gayle says. "Although you have had various Beta readers telling you it is
a great story and a real page turner until a publishing company says 'Yes we
want your work' you only think your friends are being nice and trying not to
hurt your feelings. Seeing the front cover being emailed to me for approval
with my brother-in-law's photo of Bath in the background, was when the reality
hit me that this was actually happening and people other than my friends and
clients were going to read it.
Gayle
now has three books published by Siren Publishing, The Right Turn and The New
Dawn with the third, The Jasmine Tree was released on the 15th January and was
released to Amazon last week. Although Gayle writes Erotic novels which are
Male/Female, they are also thrillers with a very dark twist. She now wants to
be able to write full time and hopes that in a few years the dream will become
reality.
Gayle's Latest Release
The
Jasmine Tree
Amazon
USA http://www.amazon.com/Jasmine-Tree-Siren-Publishing-Classic-ebook/dp/B00TEF4PGM/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1424259696&sr=1-1&keywords=gayle+cranfield
Amazon
UK https://authorcentral.amazon.co.uk/gp/metrics/rank?ie=UTF8&bookASIN=B00TEF4PGM&index=default
"The Jasmine Tree is my favourite book so far. I
have grown as an author over the past year and although I love The Right Turn
and The New Dawn, The Jasmine Tree is a much harder story with Michael and
Lilly being strong people in their own right, but together they make the story
come alive. I got the idea for The Jasmine Tree when I was in New Orleans in
2014. We went on a scandal tour where the tour guide told us about the Russian
Mafia taking over the seedier side of life in New Orleans after Hurricane
Katrina and how they import girls from Eastern Europe with the promise of a
better life in the USA, but realistically they are drugged and, put to work
in the strip clubs in Bourbon Street in the French Quarter. When they are hooked on heroin and are burnt out,
the girls go missing. It intrigued me and I couldn't wait to get home and put
pen to paper (or fingers to ipad). Ten weeks later The Jasmine Tree was ready to
go to my Beta readers and the feed back I got from my four strong team was that
this was the best book yet. I hope you like it as much as us."
Michael Reynolds, ex Royal Marine and SBS (special
forces) has been deep undercover in the Russian Mafia for two years. He hates
his assignment, but because his mother was Russian, he was called upon to
infiltrate the organisation by MI5. Now called
Mikel, he has been tasked by his mafia bosses with finding girls in Eastern
Europe who are to be put to work in the sex industry in New Orleans with the empty
promise of a better life in the USA.
Mikel meets Lilly Summers in a Mafia owned club and
starts a relationship with her, but soon
backs away when he realises he is getting in too deep and doesn't want Lilly to
get involved in his current life or to be dragged into the organisation he
works in.
But Lilly starts working for Mikel's Mafia boss andhis love for
Lilly grows.
When
Mikel is encouraged to go further undercover by his MI5 boss he
finds himself in a battle between reality and the counterfeit life he has been
leading, although when he finds out Lilly is not all she is supposed to be,
that iswhere
his troubles really start.
But Michael is troubled in other ways....what is in his nightmares and what is the significance of the
large tattoo that covers his back?
Excerpt
Michael stood in front of his bathroom mirror, running
his fingers through his hair.
When did he stop recognising his reflection? Apart
from having a quick shave every other day, he hadn't really studied himself for
a while. His forty-one year old weary, blue eyes looked back at him as he
dragged his cheeks down and moved nearer to the mirror for a closer inspection.
The lines that were appearing around his eyes seemed
to be getting deeper by the day. Dragging his fingers through his hair once
again, he could just see the beginnings of grey coming through the dark brown.
Where had that come from? He wondered if he could pull off the George Clooney
look a few years down the line but decided he had a harder life than Mr Clooney
so probably not. "I'm getting too old for this shit!" he said to
himself in the mirror. "And talking to yourself Mikey-boy? That's not
going to go down well at your next psyche-eval is it?"
Walking back into the main room of his pokey bedsit,
he sat down on the edge of his bed and put his head in his hands and massaged
his aching skull with his large callused fingers. God he missed being himself,
he was tired of his counterfeit life, he just wanted to climb to the highest
point in London and shout, "I am Michael Reynolds!"
He got off the bed and knelt on the hard wooden
floorboards and picked up his mattress. Stretching deep into the middle of the
underside, he reached and felt for the cut he had made in the soft furnishing
and pulled out the envelope he was fishing for. Sitting back down on the floor
he opened the flap and carefully laid the three photographs out in front of
him.
Thank you so much for being my guest today, Gayle, I can't wait to get stuck into this book!
Thanks also to all my readers for stopping by today. If you have any questions or comments for Gayle feel free to leave them in the comments box below - I'm sure she would love to hear from you. I hope you can join me again real soon. Take care,
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