Spirit Willing, Flesh Weak
Rosie Fox is a liar. A really, really good liar. But when you're a stage psychic who's not actually psychic, you have to be. Then one night, while pretending to commune with the dead relatives and pets of her audience, Rosie makes a startling prediction - which tragically comes true. Suddenly she's trapped in a media frenzy, spearheaded by the impossibly handsome journalist Harry Blake, a man intent on kick-starting his stalled career by exposing Rosie as a fraud. Yet when his interest in her goes from professional to personal, she thinks she can trust him not to blow her cover - but maybe she's making a huge mistake.
More About Spirit Willing, Flesh Weak
Here it is next to Martina Cole, Jenny Colgan and Jackie Collins...
As a fiction writer I love the idea of creating illusion and belief out of thin air. As a romance writer I believe that even illusion can reflect profound human experience.
I did quite a bit of research for writing Rosie Fox, who's a fake spirit medium, and this research tended to fall into two camps: researching "real" psychics, and researching "fake" psychics.
psychics
For the "real" side, I attended several services at the Spiritualist Church in Reading. Although I'm not a religious person I find religion of any sort very interesting, and the people at the church were consistently welcoming and kind, with a strong faith. I'd like to thank them, even though they didn't know they were harboring a writer in their midst.
The history of the Spiritualist movement is, in many ways, the history of the emotional life of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and as this is a special interest of mine (I wrote my MPhil thesis on this period), I spent a lot of time researching it. (And named my heroine after the Fox sisters, who helped start it, pictured on right.)
I also went and had my tarot cards read. This was an immensely enjoyable experience for me. The reader was warm, interesting, and engaging, and it was totally worth the money to have a nice person talk entirely about me and my problems for an hour. It was sort of like therapy. She taped the session and I've always meant to check back over her predictions to see if any of them have come true, but the tape won't work. A lot of what she said was wrong, and a lot of what she said she could have deduced easily from my manner, clothing, and the information I gave her. But I liked her an awful lot and I would probably pay to talk with her again.
When I was, briefly, a reporter for the Brown Daily Herald, I went and had my palm read for an article. That woman was terrible, and I've looked back at predictions she made and not one of them has come true in any way at all, nor are they likely to. My predominant impression of that reading was that her young son came in and kicked me in the middle of it.
I also spent several happy hours watching "psychic" Sylvia Browne on the Montel Williams show. I can't write my opinion of Sylvia Browne here, because I think it unwise. Let's just say I don't think I'd pay money to talk with her. I'd rather be kicked by a small boy.
magicians
Although I enjoyed my time with the "real" psychics, my book is about a fraud, and my heart lies with the joyful fakers, the illusionists, the entertainers, the rational magicians.
I thanked some of them specifically in the book, particularly Ian Rowland. His book, The Full Facts Book of Cold Reading, was invaluable to me in learning how a fake psychic does it. It's an outstanding book and I recommend you buy it.
My female readers may like to know that Ian is single, entertaining, could "possibly be considered non-hideous", and enjoys the finer things in life such as treating females to exquisite food and wine. I can vouch that he is charming and an excellent writer. And hey, magicians are inherently sexy. That's why I made my hero, Harry, good at sleight of hand.
Speaking of sexy magicians, I also spent a lot of time staring at Derren Brown, and reading about Harry Houdini, particularly Ruth Brandon's The Life and Many Deaths of Harry Houdini. Many people will think I'm weird to consider Houdini sexy, but the man escaped from manacles. Good God.
I am also consistently amused, challenged, and informed by the weekly newsletter and forum at James Randi's website, www.randi.org.
Finally, after I finished Spirit Willing, I read a book that made me so jealous I could hardly think straight. I love it, love it, love it, and it is called Carter Beats the Devil by Glen David Gold. It's about magicians, trickery, and the redemptive power of love.
Other Covers
Published as Tubino Nero in Italian by Sperling & Kupfer, and Charmante Leugen in Dutch by De Kern.