Blog Tour: Beautiful Liar
Today is my part in the Blog Tour with Bloodhound Books for Beautiful Liar by Louise Mullins! My contribution will be “All About Louise in Her Own Words”.
Today we get to learn a little more about Louise:
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As a child, I always had my head stuck in a book and as I grew older I used to make up stories in my head, often writing them down. When I left home I took with me several notebooks filled with plot ideas, short stories, and poems. I didn’t take writing seriously until I wrote my autobiography at the age of twenty-one as part of a writing course I took with an adult education centre. From my teenage years I devoured everything from historical fiction, psychology texts, autobiographies, and true crime to psychological thrillers.
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I’ve always been fascinated with history and crime and my first novel, The House Of Secrets, published in 2013 was the result of two years of research into the lives of the residents of Oldbury Court, a historic mansion, which no longer exists, that had been local to where I was born in Bristol. I had the notes written up but didn’t begin to write the novel until my nan had passed away. She was a huge influence on my life and I channelled my grief through writing about it. Some aspects of the novel are based on events she shared with me, including meeting my grandfather at the bottom steps of a hotel she worked in. The book took me about five months to write and two months to edit. It wasn’t until it had been published that I sat back and realised I’d written a historical crime novel. My subsequent novel, Lavender Fields, followed suit, based partly in Cornwall where I lived for a six years. Both novels began is historical romances, but despite my intentions resulted in murder.
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I have a varied work history. Before I became an author I ran my own cleaning company. I’ve also worked in care, mental health support, and retail. I’ve been a practicing psychological therapist since 2012 and I run my own retail business. I’m also training as a forensic psychologist. I find studying and the day job fit nicely alongside writing, running a home and taking care of my three children.
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I get a lot of my plot ideas from studying real life crime cases as part of my training and have a lot of knowledge to draw upon from my work. Formulating assessments and treatment plans on individuals attending therapy involves consideration of life adversity and social conditioning. Through my work I’ve found that many individuals who have addiction problems have suffered some kind of childhood abuse, and a lot of individuals who experience recurring depression and anxiety disorders have histories of domestic abuse or rape. It is no surprise then, that most of my novels tend to cover quite dark subjects. My debut psychological crime thriller, Scream Quietly was based loosely on my own experiences of domestic abuse, though the incidents in the novel are purely fictional.
Description from Amazon:
When Erica’s husband Joel dies in a tragic accident nobody suspects she had anything to do with it. But appearances can be deceptive.
Erica describes her successful, lawyer husband as handsome and charismatic when she recounts their whirlwind marriage. But nothing is what it seems.
What is Erica hiding? Was Joel’s death really an accident?
Sometimes the truth can be ugly.
Beautiful Liar is available for purchase now:
Amazon US
Amazon UK
Courtesy of Bloodhound Books: Louise Mullins is the Amazon best-selling author of five psychological crime thrillers and two historical crime novels. Louise also works as a Psychological Therapist and is currently training as a Clinical Forensic Psychologist.
Louise began writing her life experiences, often turning them into poems. After taking a novel writing course she finally decided to publish her first novel in 2013. Her dream of becoming a bestseller was realized in 2015 when her debut thriller hit the Amazon best-selling charts. Since then she has continued to write dark, gritty fiction, hoping to bring to light some of the crimes and psychological suffering she supports people through in her therapeutic practice.
She admits to a serious book addiction and spends a lot of her spare time reading. She enjoys crime fiction, psychological thrillers, historical novels, and biographies.
She lives in Bristol, England with her husband and three children.