Love in a Hurry follows a woman desperate to find love and start a family and a Catholic priest questioning his vocation and wanting an heir, who meet in a support group and form an unconventional romance. What inspired the unusual premise behind Love in a Hurry?

As a young adult, an attractive priest visiting the parish came to Sunday lunch at the family home. He revealed he’d been pressured into the priesthood by his family; it was expected in Ireland. This meant he was destined never to have children, yet he’d have to baptise all the parish babies. I felt so sad for him and wanted to write a story where a pressured Irish Catholic priest escapes the Church to find his own path. The fate of priest I’d met? No idea. But I do think about him and wonder if he was ever happy following not his calling, but his family’s.

Miranda is a character from the second book of my series, Love in the Cupboard, my first sweet Catholic priest romance. With Miranda as the heroine in Love in a Hurry I felt that a Catholic priest would be the best fit for a virgin mother’s love interest— and the funniest.

How did Miranda’s childhood in care shape the adult woman we meet at the beginning of the novel, and why was it important for her desire for another child to be connected to a larger longing for love, security, and family?

Being passed from one care placement to the next, one foster family to the next, Miranda’s life has been filled with insecurity. It isn’t much better now, because her home is tied to her job as a live-in carer. Although her son’s daddies are supportive, she wants someone for herself to have her second child with because she has never been loved and has never been part of a family. She does not want her son to grow up as a lonely, only child who becomes a lonely adult.

She longs for motherly love from the crotchety woman she cares for, and dearly wishes to be invited to stay as a substitute daughter instead of constantly being at risk of losing her home at the whim of her employer. Although one of the daddies might provide her with a second child, she does not want to be a single mother to two children. She wants a husband, the love of a committed man who will be there for her and her hoped-for children in a way that no one else ever has.

What interested you about writing a priest who is questioning whether his vocation reflects his own desires or his family’s expectations, and what does Kieran have to discover about himself before he can genuinely build a new life with someone else?

Even popes in the Catholic Church used to be allowed to marry, although rules varied around intimacy until 1139 AD, when the Catholic Church prohibited any marriage for future priests, even celibate ones—who often still managed to procreate. The Church was concerned about losing wealth to inheritance. However, today, if a married Protestant priest wishes to convert to Catholicism and become a Catholic priest, he is allowed. So there are some married converted Catholic priests with children. I think a life of celibacy and loneliness, without the companionship and love of a partner, is harsh and unfair—and too many men, and too many women, have been pressured into the priesthood, and into becoming nuns, by their families’ expectations.

Kieran has long felt lonely and sad, and the emptiness in his heart is amplified when he finds out that his brother had stood up to their mother in a way that had given her no choice other than to accept the situation. Kieran reevaluates his life. He now knows that, if he has any chance of true happiness, as his brother has secretly been enjoying for years, he must break free of continuing along the path his mother had chosen for him. He discovers that he has the strength to defy the Bishop, and his mother’s memory, by leaving the Church and starting afresh somewhere else—he just has to find a wife.

What do you enjoy about using awkwardness, misunderstandings, and physical comedy within a romance?

I aim for entertainment as well as plenty of heart, and I love characters who don’t fit into the expected norm, giving rise to behaviours and situations that can be quite a surprise and are typical of farce—a big part of British humour, past and present.

I love the unexpected when I watch or read a comedy, even better if it is a romantic comedy. The journey that takes us to the end of a framework heading towards a happy ever after can be enormous fun. Awkwardness, misunderstandings and physical comedy can add to that fun.

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