I am rounding off the week with a guest post from author Kate White about dating the wrong man on the tour for her book The Wrong Man, before we get to that here is what the book is about.
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A moment of pleasure leads to a deadly game of cat and mouse in this slick and suspenseful thriller.
Kit Finn meets handsome sculptor Matt Healy on a business trip and the two share a night of passion. They arrange a second date, but when Kit arrives at Matt’s apartment she is greeted by a stranger claiming he is the real Matt and that his identity was stolen.
Realising she has been duped Kit decides to put the encounter behind her. Shortly after, the police ask her to identify a man killed in a hit and run, carrying only her business card, and she is shocked to find the dead man is the person she knows as the genuine Matt Healy.
Kit fears she has become unintentionally embroiled in a sinister web of deceit. With no real evidence to take to police, Kit resolves to unravel the mystery herself. But can she do so before more lives, including her own, are put in danger?
For fans of psychological suspense and compulsive mysteries, don’t miss this tense and page-turning novel.
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How to Stop Dating the Wrong Man
In my thriller The Wrong Man, a smart, clever thirty-something woman named Kit Finn, who lives in New York City and runs a small interior decorating business, has a no-strings-attached fling with a man named Matt Healy while she’s on vacation in the enchanting Florida Keys.
Kit is really drawn to Matt and so she’s pleased when, despite their established ground rules, he ends up suggesting a follow-up dinner at his place in New York City, where he lives as well.
But when she shows up at his apartment on the designated night, another man answers the door and says he’s Matt Healy, and claims to have never met the person she’s come to see. Kit returns home feeling angry and humiliated. She doesn’t yet realize she’s been drawn into a treacherous web that will soon put her life in danger. What she’s thinking is simply this: How could I have made such a dumb mistake? How could I have done such a lousy job of judging a man? Aren’t I smarter than that?
I think a lot of women can relate to Kit’s experience, myself included. Wrong man? Been there, done that. Perhaps that’s what planted the seed for this particular book in my mind.
Granted, Kit’s situation turns out to be pretty extreme and harrowing, but many of us have ended up living with or even marrying a guy who in the end seemed all wrong. Maybe he simply wasn’t a good fit, a man with a totally different tempo than yours or a worrisome approach to money compared to your prudent one.
On the other hand, he could have been wrong with a capital W. A guy who was regularly unfaithful or dishonest or nasty–or all of the above since those qualities like to team up. And what really sucks is ending up with more than one of those guys in a lifetime.
Before deciding to write mysteries and thrillers full time, I spent fourteen wonderful years as the editor-in-chief of U.S. Cosmopolitan, and the wrong-man problem often turned up when we discussed romantic relationships in forums with readers. Dating one bad boy, women acknowledged, seemed to be part of growing up, helping you to better understand what you were really hoping for in a relationship. The real problem started when a pattern emerged, when you found yourself dating one wrong man after another. How, women asked, could they break out of that pattern? How could they avoid the awful, sucky guys who initially, at least, didn’t seem that way?
We ran a bunch of articles on the phenomenon and there’s one piece of wisdom, offered by a psychologist, that I have never forgotten.
“Recognize,” she said, “that whenever there’s a series of failed relationships, the only thing that is consistent is you, so you’re the one who ought to make a few changes.”
In other words, if you have a string of wrong men behind you, you need to figure out what you’re doing wrong. Why are you drawn to guys who turn out to be duds or jerks or cheaters? Are there warning signs you keep ignoring? Are you letting yourself view as positive the attributes that really hint at a negative force?
The psychologist’s advise was blunt, I know. But I found it powerful and game-changing.
I’ve also discovered that her wisdom is useful in other areas of life. When you’ve had a series of failures in a certain area—in work, let’s say, or friendships, or even, in my case, writing, be brave enough to ask what you might be doing wrong.
Because you’re the common denominator.
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True words, even if they are hard to admit to yourself! What I will say though is that I’m now very eager to read The Wrong Man myself and hoping that I’ll be able to squeeze it into my schedule this year, it sounds brilliant.
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Today is the last day of the tour but be sure to check out the other hosts for today and the other stops on the tour if, like me, you’re dying to know more.
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Kate White is the New York Times bestselling author of twelve works of fiction: seven Bailey Weggins mysteries and five stand-alone psychological thrillers, including most recently, The Secrets You Keep. For fourteen years she was the editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan magazine, and though she loved the job (and the Cosmo beauty closet!), she decided to leave in late 2013 to concentrate on being a full-time author and speaker.
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