These are a few of Ally Blake’s Favorite Things!

One of my favourite things about being a writer is the chance to pepper my stories with personal odes.

My footy team always wins. My heroines eat my favourite food. Our family cars have each put in an appearance. And I often drop in little jokes only my mum and sister would get.

I’m like Hansel and Gretel in reverse – sprinkling before me a pathway of succulent treats that make the journey to the end of the tale just that much more fun.

Here are some of my favourite things I indulged in while writing my latest story, Love Me Tender, the first book in the brand spanking new Cinderella Project series:

• watching muscle cars being restored on Youtube (Mustangs all the way)
• listening to a lot of Elvis (Trouble, anyone?)
• eating M&Ms (lots and lots and lots of M&Ms)

• drinking coffee from a pretty pink tea cup (’cause I can)
• playing ‘spot the jacaranda tree’ with my kids (we mums need car games like we need air!)
• Googling flamingo ornaments (a girl could lose herself on Etsy.com)

• enjoying a little vintage Italian cinema (Bud Spencer and Terence Hill, baby)
• naming minor characters after people I know (ie a mix of two of my best friends from primary and high school)
• laughing myself silly as friends told me wild stories about adventures on actual building sites (Chapter 6, for anyone reading along)
• And to think I could call it all research :).

But the greatest treat of all is the chance to send Love Me Tender out into the world. So I welcome you all to the Cinderella Project – a world of match making mayhem…old-school style (and the occasional flamingo.)

Hope you enjoy the ride!
Ally
xXx

—

Australian writer Ally Blake is a redhead, a footy fan, a devotee of the language of Aaron Sorkin, addicted to stationary and M&M’s, weak in the face of Italians and firefighters, married to a spectacular and ever patient man, mum to three beings of pure delight, and a firm believer in love, luck and fairies. She is also a best-selling author with more than twenty-five fun, flirty romance novels under her belt.