We chat with author Susie Tate about Deal Breaker, which is an enemies-to-lovers, brother’s best friend, age-gap, grumpy/sunshine contemporary romance featuring family secrets, red carpet drama, and a hero who will move heaven and earth to protect his girl.
Hi, Susie! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?
Hi! I’m a contemporary romance author, and before writing full-time, I spent twenty years as a doctor in the NHS, twelve of those as a GP partner. I live in Dorset with my wonderful husband Andy, our three lovely boys and an even more lovely dog. Andy and I met at medical school, and I still have a huge crush on the poor man.
Andy was diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease (ALS) in 2021. My career as an author has meant I can be at home with him and the boys, and I’m so grateful to my readers for making that possible. I write feel-good, sometimes funny, sometimes heartbreaking romance underpinned by real and raw themes, many of them drawn from my medical career.
When did you first discover your love for writing and stories?
I’ve always been a voracious reader. Jane Austen sparked my love of romance as a teenager, and my mum bought me Riders by Jilly Cooper when I was far too young for it, thinking it was a book about Pony Club!
The writing came much later. In 2013, just after the birth of my third son, I picked up Stephen King’s On Writing, thinking it was an autobiography. Of course it was, in fact, a guide to writing a novel, and I was completely engrossed. After that, the Amazon algorithm recommended every craft book ever written, and eventually I thought, you know what, I’ll have a crack at this. I had three boys under four and a full-time job as a GP at the time, so it was total madness, but I’ve never looked back. It took a lot of hard yards to develop the craft, but I find the art of making a story compelling so fascinating that it’s always been a wonderful escape.
Quick lightning round!
- The first book you ever remember reading: Okay, bit of a weird one, but it’s a book called Fat Puss and Friends by Harriet Castor. I still have a dog-eared copy on my shelf. In a strange way, it’s not that dissimilar to my books theme-wise. Fat Puss is excluded by his mean, skinny feline compatriots until he finds his found family in the form of Humphrey the beaver and Terence the mouse. It’s all about empathy and inclusion, and the importance of kindness (and how having a fat tummy can be good when rolling down hills for fun!).
- The one you can’t stop thinking about: I read The Count of Monte Cristo as a teenager and still love and think about it to this day. I am ready for my villain revenge-taking era should the need arise, but to be honest, I’m yet to be wronged sufficiently!
If you could only describe Deal Breaker in five words, what would they be?
Sorry, I have two options!
Sunshine heiress melts Grumpy Scot.
Or
Sequins, scowls, rugby, yearning, grovelling.
What can readers expect?
Deal Breaker is an enemies-to-lovers, brother’s best friend, grumpy/sunshine romance. In Law Maker, I paired the most powerful, entitled aristocrat I could muster with a shy primary school teacher from the other side of the class divide. In Deal Breaker, I flipped it, so this time the heroine is the aristocrat. Lady Poppy Sterling is pure sunshine, a society princess, and Rory Wallace is the dour, deliciously grumpy Scottish international rugby player she’s had a crush on since she was a teenager.
Expect laughs, tears, a big charity event, and fabulous (and much-needed) grovelling from the rugby player hero. Underneath the fun there are real and raw themes too. Poppy is dyslexic, and part of her journey is realising that struggling in a system that wasn’t built for the way she learns was never a reflection of her intelligence.
Where did the inspiration for Deal Breaker come from?
The reason for Poppy and Rory’s forced proximity in Deal Breaker was actually inspired by my own experience. Rory’s best friend, Connor, has MND (ALS), and the charity event Poppy organises with Rory is based on something my husband and his mates actually did.
In 2022, a year after Andy’s diagnosis, he and his beach touch rugby team, the Sandbaggers, decided to go for a Guinness World Record for the longest game of beach touch rugby ever played to raise money for MND charities. Because obviously, after being diagnosed with a progressive disease affecting your muscles, the sensible response is to play rugby on a beach for thirty-four hours!
It took twenty-two players on Sandbanks beach and more than 150 friends and family to make it happen, and there was real time pressure because Andy’s arms were deteriorating. It was completely bonkers and bloody brilliant. I knew I wanted to capture that spirit in a book: the friendships, the community, the ridiculousness and the love. The record attempt they organise in Deal Breaker may have been at Twickenham rather than the beach and may have involved a few more celebrities, but the vibe is the same.
Also, I have an older brother, which probably explains my lifelong weakness for the brother’s best friend trope!
Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?
I loved the opposites-attract dynamic between Poppy and Rory. Putting all that sunshine up against Rory’s endless grumpiness was so much fun. I also love a powerful man messing up with his heroine and then anticipating just how much he’s going to have to grovel to claw it back, and Rory definitely delivers on that front. Rory’s yearning for Poppy is off the scale and I always enjoy torturing my heroes a little and making them work to deserve their heroines.
Strangely, although it was difficult at times, I also really enjoyed writing Connor’s character. MND is a progressive, ultimately terminal condition with no cure. It can feel hopeless, and dark humour has become a coping mechanism for our family, so it felt important that it was part of his story too. Connor has MND, but he’s also kind, funny, a bloody good bloke and an awesome dad, just like my Andy.
Did you face any challenges whilst writing? How did you overcome them?
The MND storyline was much harder to write than anything I’d drawn from research or my medical career, because this time it came from our own life. I wanted to write about it honestly without making Connor’s story entirely about dying, because that hasn’t been our experience of living with MND. There has been fear and sadness, of course, but there’s also been an awful lot of laughter, friendship and living. Focusing on everything around the disease, the community and the love is what helped me find my way through.
On a more practical note, my books are interconnected standalones that sometimes share the same timeline, and I’m not great with timelines! I rely heavily on my developmental editor to untangle the mess I make.
Getting Rory’s Scottish voice right also took some careful refining and lots of advice from the lovely Scots in my life who are not short on opinions if I get it wrong!
What’s next for you?
Trouble Maker, the third and final Aristocrats of London book, is out in spring 2027. I simply couldn’t resist a Pride and Prejudice retelling. I’ve loved Jane Austen since my teens, and I think all my heroes have a little Mr Darcy in them. My own Darcy is just as prideful, but he meets his match in Lily, a chaotic, loud, endlessly kind, down-to-earth primary school teacher.
I’ve also written a romantasy trilogy of interconnected standalones. They feel very much like my contemporaries but are set in a fantastical world which, of course, the heroines ultimately save whilst driving their heroes up the wall.
My next contemporary series is set around a rugby club. In book one, Owner, the billionaire who has just bought the club comes face to face with the woman who ended his rugby career a decade ago, and who now coaches the girls’ youth squad he’s threatening to cut. Think Ted Lasso meets The Proposal.
Lastly, what books are you looking forward to picking up soon? Any 2027 releases on your radar?
I beta read for my lovely friends Rosa Lucas and Elodie Hart. Their Christmas novellas are out at the beginning of November, and they both have books out in early 2027. Rosa’s book Gut Punch is a fabulous enemies-to-lovers romance with a delicious boxer MMC, and Elodie’s book The Muse is a scorching hot, professor/student romance.
Other releases I’m looking forward to early next year are Mhairi McFarlane’s Hopeless Romantics, Ali Hazelwood’s The Two-Body Problem, and Annabel Monaghan’s August After All.
