Today I’m back with something a little different, you’ll be hearing from author Siobhan Murphy.
The Vision Board
Siobhan Murphy
Two best friends. Two one-way tickets. And a future that might just surprise them.
Bex and Amy are best friends and total opposites. Bex is cynical, Amy is romantic. Bex is chaotic, Amy is organised. With the prospect of turning 34 just around the corner, neither is where they expected to be at this point in their lives.
Bex is exploring her sexuality and has a string of failed relationships, while Amy is newly single and desperate to fall in love. Armed with a photographic vision board of the future, Bex and Amy put their trust in ‘The Universe’ and fly from London to Bali, then on to Australia in search of adventure, cocktails on the beach and maybe even love.
Almost immediately, Amy finds someone who is the perfect fit for her dream life. While Bex is stuck playing double dates with his best friend, the most pompous man she has ever met, but also one of the hottest. Travelling via white sand beaches, lush rainforests and road trips through idyllic scenery, the images on their vision board begin to transform into reality.
However, people are not always what they seem, and first impressions are not always accurate. Add in a queer, charismatic love interest and a vindictive ex-girlfriend, and the path of true love begins to get a little more complex.
When ‘The Universe’ has its own agenda, is it possible to manifest a happy ever after?
An Enemies to Lovers destination romance with a sprinkling of Pride and Prejudice vibes.
Goodreads | The StoryGraph | Amazon
I’m Siobhan Murphy – Author of The Vision Board – an enemies-to-lovers vacation romance. Here’s a little information about me. I’m a typically chaotic creative type; my brain never stops. I’m always coming up with new ideas for stories, and I have to be careful not to go off on irrelevant tangents and disappear down research rabbit holes. I’m easily bored and a bit of a dreamer. I’m a photographer by day and bookworm at night – or anytime I can get away with it, really – being self-employed does help on that front. I listen to tons of audiobooks while I’m driving, walking, or trying to avoid boring jobs around the house, like cleaning. My first love is travelling, and I adore being out in nature, walking the dogs, visiting friends or discovering places I’ve never been before. I live in a pretty little town surrounded by beautiful countryside, but I would love to live by the sea one day.
My hobbies are eating sweets, talking nonsense and walking into rooms wondering why I am there. I overthink everything, and therefore, I have rewritten this guest post several times already.
I read tons of romance books, but I hadn’t planned on writing one. However, the idea for The Vision Board came to me at 3 am (as all my good ideas do) when the character of Bex woke me up to tell me she was playing “Airport Bingo” with her best friend Amy. I was intrigued by Bex and wanted to know more about the game, so I got out of bed, grabbed a cup of tea and my laptop. The story flowed from there, with all the characters arriving in my head gradually as the story progressed. It turns out the Bingo game was the start of a light-hearted romance set in various exotic locations, that even had a sprinkling of Pride & Prejudice vibes.
I love to write about places I’ve been so that I can ensure they are written with as much authenticity as possible, so this book is set in Bali, where I’ve been twice, and Australia, where I lived for a year and visited several times before that.
My writing hours are sponsored by Earl Grey tea, Galaxy caramel chocolate bars and sometimes a Gin & Tonic or wine. I have started to write another Romcom book. This is not a sequel, but it exists in the same universe. It takes a couple of characters from The Vision Board and gives them their own story, so hopefully, readers will want to follow their journeys having read this book.
Going forward, I have another idea for a different kind of book – this one arrived in my head fully formed. The whole outline was there, together with all the characters, complete with all their names. I’m very excited about this story, but it does involve a lot of research, so I need to find more time to write. It begins in 1969, and a large part takes place in the ‘70s, so I want to ensure I get the era right. It horrifies me that books set in the decade I grew up in are now considered “historical fiction” – surely that’s books set in Elizabethan times or during the 1st world war? I must be getting old.
I hope the readers of your blog will check out The Vision Board. It’s a great beach read or a great excuse to escape the UK winter. So if you aren’t heading on holiday anytime soon, you can travel from the comfort of a snuggly blanket on the sofa.
Siobhan Murphy is a writer and photographer based in the UK. She writes (and reads) both light-hearted romantic comedies and contemporary women’s fiction/Bookclub fiction.
Her writing hours are sponsored by Earl Grey tea, chocolate bars several glasses of wine. When she is not writing, reading, or working in her photography day job, her hobbies are eating haribo sweets, talking nonsense and walking into rooms wondering why she is there.
She loves to travel, laugh at the absurdity of life, and enjoy a glass of wine with good friends. She loves a good TV binge session, especially shows like Grey’s Anatomy, Virgin River, Emily in Paris, or This is Us. She can be an emotional wreck who often runs out of tissues and when she was a child, her dad had to constantly reassure her that programmes on the TV weren’t real. The upside of this is that she can legitimately class her habit of binge-watching RomCom films as ‘research.’
Siobhan loves to escape into books and live in other worlds. Like most writers, she has been an avid reader from the second she hurtled into the world (well perhaps a little bit after that). Over the years she’s drifted around the world in search of adventure, hoping to figure out what to do with her life. She is not sure if she has the answer yet but writing certainly comes close. Though she suspects her long-suffering family, and her liver might not agree.
She’s impulsive and easily bored, so she’s turned her hand to many jobs over the years. She’s worked in places as diverse as the High Commission in Nairobi; a market stall selling cheese in the UK and an 80ft racing yacht in Australia. Been a secondary school English teacher and a Barista with no discernible talent for making coffee. She’s done admin work for a number of businesses but discovered that offices aren’t really for her. Her favourite job was as a bookseller for Waterstones, she loved recommending books to customers and applying those 3 for 2 stickers that people find so hard to remove. For the last 19 years she’s been a professional photographer, taking portraits of humans – often the really, really small ones.
everywhere-and-nowhere.com 