The Writing of Manhattan by Ronni Cooper

Ronni Cooper's second novel is being released today and she has kindly sent me an article about writing Manhattan to share with my readers:

Writing Manhattan took a few months, but the planning? I think I may have broken some kind of world record as it’s been floating around in my head for over twenty years.

It started, aptly, in the middle of Central Park, as I lay on the grass, alternating between flirtatious glances at a gorgeous guy playing baseball nearby and reading a bonkbuster that was so heavy my biceps were feeling the strain. I can even remember what I was wearing – denim shorts, black boots, a white T-shirt and a leather waistcoat. They say that the 80s is the decade that taste forgot. Obviously, no-one filled me in on this info until some time around 1995.

I’d headed to New York for a couple of weeks break from managing a wild nightclub in the UK. I was in my early twenties and life was incredible: dangerous, sexy, unpredictable, filled with steamy encounters and fuelled by adrenalin and Marlboro Lights.

As I flipped down a page filled with Shirley Conran’s genius, I started to dream. If I had a nightclub in New York, what would it look like? Who would go there? What would set it apart from all the other clubs?

Somehow, in the glorious sunshine and picture-perfect setting of the park, those thoughts turned to fiction. Raine. Her name came to me immediately. She was a feisty, ballsy chick of Irish descent and she was calling the shots in the club. Stevie came next. A reluctant rock star with a huge heart. And finally Mei-lin. Shanghai was a city I knew well and this inspired the beautiful, enigmatic girl with the tortured past.

Over the next two decades, the story would pop into my mind and I’d change and shape it until last year, long after I’d swapped my career from nightclubs to novels, when I finally wrote it down.

Manhattan – a hot, sexy tale of three women determined to rise to the top of the New York nightclub scene and prepared to sacrifice anything to survive.

Oh, and the gorgeous guy who was playing baseball in the park that day? That story is in the sequel….

Thank you to Ronni for visiting my blog and my review of Manhattan will be following soon.