Hazel Manuel's Blog: Hazel Manuel's Blog

My first novel Kanyakumari sees backpacker Rachel with Pravi, an Indian musician she's only just met, attempting to buy train tickets to Mumbai, with a bribe... Here's how the tale begins:

‘Bribery? Seriously?’ Rachel added it to the list of experiences she had accumulated in her thirty-one years. It made her smile because it made her feel daring, standing there with Pravi in the confined space of the ticket office, the slow and creaking overhead fan trying half-heartedly to stir the fetid air.

Pravi cocked an eyebrow. ‘The problem is Rachel since we’ve left buying the tickets until now, there won’t be enough places left.’
Such is the price for spontaneity thought Rachel as she wiped an irritating trickle of sweat from the side of her face with the back of her hand.

‘Rachel, do not concern yourself with this,’ Pravi whispered to her. She felt his hot breath, his lips almost touching her ear. ‘We will get our tickets. This is the way of it in India.’

In Undressing Stone, Sian leaves her home and job in Wales to begin a new life in rural France. Here's how it all started...

‘Never let the internet make a decision for you.’ I can’t remember now what Arwel had been talking about, but not wanting to do my ex-husband's bidding, that’s exactly what I did. I, Sian Evans, a fifty-something divorcee moved from Cardiff to Saint Vay - a four-house hamlet tucked away in a forgotten corner of ancient France, perfect for farmers, old people and escapees. I went because the internet told me to. And I loved the fact that Arwel was furious...