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Eades said: “I adored Ever After , it is beautifully romantic, but also true to life, with characters so real it is as if they are sitting beside you. Kate skilfully upends the expectation of a happily-ever-after ending, exploring the complexities of long-term love. The suspense of Tess and Gus’ romantic storyline is thoroughly satisfying and will earn Kate Eberlen a whole new audience of readers. I couldn’t be prouder to bring her to the Orion Fiction list.” The first book, Ever After, is scheduled for publication in July 2023 followed by a second as-yet-untitled work. Eberlen makes the move from Mantle, which published her most recent book Only You in 2020 and won a seven-way auction for Miss You in 2015. As they explore Italy together, they grow closer, despite their differences. Tess is something of a dreamer, Gus is a doctor and a professional. They are determined to stay together when they return to real life in London. They are facing so many challenges. Kate Eberlen has gone beyond the initial star crossed romance of Tess and Gus to explore the lasting nature of relationships with her characteristic sensitivity, perception and humour in this inspirational book’ Martha Kearney In the meantime, I am grateful to all dancers, from Strictly star AJ and his brother Curtis Pritchard’s #DressupDanceDonate, to the Russian stars of the Michailovsky, to our own wonderful artists of the Royal Ballet, the Birmingham Royal Ballet and the English National Ballet for posting amazing and sometimes hilarious videos of themselves practising in their homes. I’m also loving watching recordings of all kinds of classical and contemporary performances.
During the following fortnight, before my treatment started, my life consisted of having scans at hospital then rushing off to tea dances all over London – Shoreditch Town Hall, Spitalfields market, the Rivoli Ballroom. We’d known that these things happened and thought that they were a lovely idea, but without the urgency of my diagnosis, we would never have gone. It’s simply impossible to feel worried when you’re waltzing! We all know that our lives are limited, but we still treat our time casually, as if it is limitless. Living with cancer, each day feels like a blessing to be enjoyed with passionate enthusiasm. Me at the Royal Opera House first night Don Quixote Publisher Sam Eades signed the two-book deal for world English rights with Mark Lucas at The Soho Agency. Lucas is also handling translation and screen rights and US rights are being handled by Jessica Purdue at Orion Books.I’ve always loved dancing, from ballet classes as a little girl, to ballroom classes in recent years. Dance is a major theme in my new novel ONLY YOU, which will be published in the UK on April 30th by Pan Macmillan. For me, the giddy exhilaration of a Viennese waltz feels a lot like falling in love and I wanted to see if I could recreate that unique joy in a novel.
Tess and Gus are strangers when their lives collide one sun-drenched morning in Florence, but it feels as if fate has brought them together. Dancing is good for you. Like any physical exercise, it gets your muscles working and heart rate up, but it’s also stimulating for your mind. The former prima ballerina and Strictly judge, Darcey Bussell, recently made a television programme highlighting the therapeutic effects of dancing on mental health. There’s something about the coordination of movement, music and expression that makes human beings feel better when they do it. In Ever After, Kate Eberlen re-introduces her characters Tess and Gus who we first met in her 2016 novel ‘Miss You’. Populated with a cast of colourful and loveable characters, from Tess’s friend Nash to young Bella and with wonderful descriptions of both Italy and London, this is another story to savour from a wonderfully talented author.One their return to rainy London, will their love be strong enough to survive the challenges of their complicated lives? My son has always loved dancing too. As a child, he trained with the Royal Ballet School and competed in the ballroom and Latin team at university. The first thing he did, after we’d told a few close friends and family my news, was book ourselves into a tea dance at the Floral Hall in Covent Garden.
If you had asked me that morning how I might feel in the evening, I would probably have replied ‘sad’, because this might well be the last time I would see that ballet. However, it occurred to me during the first interval that this was in fact the only time that anyone would see this particular show. It dawned on me then that it is this unique and fleeting beauty that makes live performance so scintillating, so precious and such a privilege to witness. I decided I would see every live performance I possibly could, and I truly believe that the joy I experienced doing just that kept me going throughout my year of intensive treatment. Marianela Nunez and Vadim Muntagirov curtain call after first night of Carlos Acosta’s Don Quixote at the Royal Opera House For my new novel ONLY YOU, I was incredibly fortunate to spend 5 months living glorious, sun-drenched Rome. The novel is inspired by my interest in the Italian language and classical literature, but also by my passion for dance. I enjoy all forms of dance from ballet to ballroom and I think the exhilaration of dancing is very close to the wonderful excitement of falling in love. When Tess and Gus meet on a beautiful morning in Florence, they are strangers. However, they soon discover that their lives have overlapped many times over the last sixteen years. Attending the same events, the same university, holidaying in the same places. Alternating between the perspectives of Tess and Gus, the novel explores the conflicts and challenges of new love and old loyalties, passion and duty, logic and belief, with readers racing to find out if the couple can or can’t be together. Tess and Gus’s after is the story, and it’s a heartbreaking one. Despite all that goes wrong and the novel’s poignant portrayal of illness, family issues and class differences, there is such a clear love between the characters.
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Such a beautiful book. I so loved the concept of it - that the writer didn’t focus on the lead up to the happily ever after, as a normal romance novel would. Obviously the expectation would be that the story would follow all of Tess and Gus’s missed chances for years, which in itself is gripping, but the fact that the author starts right when they finally meet properly, and instead only briefly references all those twists of fate throughout, is fascinating. Because Tess’s mum and auntie are correct - falling in love is just the beginning, and it’s what comes after that’s important.
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