Character Spotlight/Interview with author Charlie Cochrane

Please give a warm welcome to Ben Edwards from Tumble Turn by Charlie Cochrane today as we sit down and see what makes him tick.

What’s your favorite thing to do when you’re not saving (the world, clients, your mate)?

I don’t often save the world – in fact I don’t ever save it. But I still hold a Paralympic world record in the swimming pool. When I’m not swimming or training I watch a lot of sport and enjoy playing games on the computer. I guess it’s no surprise to find out that the games I like best are sports based. I’m a dab hand at FIFA  2019: much better than Nick is.

What is it about your love interest Nick that makes you crazy in a good way?

How sad is it if I say that it’s just about everything? He’s drop dead gorgeous for a start, he’s into computer games like I am (how romantic!) and he likes winter sports, so he’s been teaching me to snowboard. You’ve realized by now how much I’m into physical activity – and not just the sort that takes place in bed – so being able to do a sport together is brilliant. I’m a better swimmer than he is, as well as being better at gaming and both of those nark him in a good way.

Do you sometimes want to strangle your writer? Thrash her/him to within an inch of their life? Make them do the stupid crap they make you do?

Um, only once or twice. Or maybe more. Thing is she got me into a situation where my love life was impacting on my sport and with the London Olympics on the horizon that was a bit below the belt. Still, I had to forgive her when she gave me and Nick a happy ending. Even if it took a while getting there.

Favorite food?

Pizza, although I have to watch how often I have that when I’m in training. And no, I don’t have pineapple on it, but I won’t judge those who do. 😊

  

Describe yourself in four words.

Dedicated. Determined. Faithful. Funny. (Nick would say I’m infuriating, swimming-mad and fit in both senses of the word but I can’t say that about myself, can I?)

What do you do for a living?

I’m a professional Paralympic swimmer but I’m getting into sports presentation and commentary now. It must have been my appearance on the British cult TV programme ‘A Question of Sport’. I even appeared as guest captain for a couple of weeks. I don’t know who was prouder, Nick or my parents. I reckon Dad thought it was better than any of my medals.

What do you fear the most?

That I’ll wake up one day and the last 14 years have just been a glorious dream and that I’ll have to do it all again and maybe this time there’ll be no happy ending. ☹

Blurb: Four seasons, four stories, one connection – finding love. For the first time these four re-issued tales are in a single collection, with a story for each season.
Two men who hate Valentine’s Day discover they might have been wrong.
A Paralympic swimmer gets an unusual incentive to win gold.
Love and lust flourish under desert skies, but nature’s cruel.
Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night gets a new twist.

                                                                                     

Buy link (July 22^nd release): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07SFYTPZ9?ref_=pe_3052080_276849420

Excerpt:

Fate’s a cruel mistress. Or master. Or something. I got to my seat—eventually, after battling through crowds and then signing autographs for some real swimming fanatics—and I was settling in when something slapped the back of my head.

“Ben!” It was Matty, of course, looking pleased as punch and plonking his backside in the seat behind mine and two to the left. “That’s a stroke of luck. I’d forgotten I hadn’t got your number on my new phone.”

That made me even more angry. Matty pulling the “long lost friend” thing on me when he hadn’t bothered to keep my number. I scowled at him, and at the weaselly looking bloke sitting to the left of him, who was evidently the ghastly Nick and every bit as horrible as I’d imagined him. There was another bump to my head and I spun round one hundred and eighty degrees, about to give some clumsy sod a mouthful. There was gorgeous-guy-with-the-coffees smiling at me and being terribly apologetic.

“Sorry, did I thump you?” He smiled, revealing the sort of lovely teeth that would have been all the better to eat me with, if I’d been lucky. “My fault. I’ve always been clumsy. I think it’s dyspraxia but Jenny just says I’m a prat. With dyspratsia.” He grinned.

This horrible hot flush—remember my habit of blushing?—started to clamber up the back of my neck, which is hardly my best look given that there’s more than a trace of ginger in my hair. I managed to stammer something like, “No worries,” although I could have been spouting gibberish, for all that I was aware. All I could think of was that I’d nearly gone and cocked everything up with my I won’t answer the phone ruse. At least fate had saved me and redeemed itself at the same time. Unless I was buggering things up again by making an assumption too many, this must have been Jenny’s brother, and he wasn’t the spotty nerd I’d expected.

“I’m Nick.” This gorgeous vision of tall, dark handsomeness stuck out his hand. “You must be Ben.”

“Yeah, that’s right.” I managed to shake his hand without shaking too much myself. Sometimes I get a bit clumsy if I’m overexcited.

“We saw you on the telly—Paralympic World Cup, earlier this year. You won.”

“You don’t half state the bleeding obvious,” Matty chipped in, grinning. “I suspect Ben remembers that for himself.”

“Just a little.” I was hoping the red flush was starting to subside.

“Matty was so proud of you. Kept pointing at the screen and saying that was his best mate from school days. He started to cry when you won.” Nick rolled his eyes. “Great Jessy.”

I was starting to well up, too. Maybe Matty had redeemed himself a bit. “We said we’d be here, being a part of it. Even back when we were horrible, spotty schoolboys, we knew we’d have to make London 2012 happen.”