Author Spotlight: Heidi Field Has a New Mystery & a Giveaway!

Heidi Field was raised in the beautiful countryside of the South of England with her parents and her two sisters. In her twenties she was a freelance Sports Massage Therapist. She achieved a Degree in Zoology at the age of thirty and then went on to raise two boys and became the stepmother of three more young children. She still lives near her family home with her partner, their Great Dane and the children that have yet to fly the nest.

In her early forties, Heidi completed a Masters in Creative Writing at Winchester University. Writing contemporary thrillers, she likes to put relatable people in extraordinary situations, challenge them, push them to their limits and watch them fight for their sanity.

The Peasedale Woods Killers is Heidi’s first series, interweaving the relationships between mothers, sons, and serial killers, questioning where blame ends and responsibility begins.

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The Other Daughter

by Heidi Field

So, The Other Daughter is the final book in my Peasedale Woods Killers series, and I am thrilled that it is out in the world. It is an origin story, but also a story of inheritance, family secrets, revenge and survival. It’s a lot. At times it is a difficult read, but I promise that you will care about the characters, you will change your mind about some, and you will understand them even if you don’t like the choices they make.

At its core, it is about two little boys who only ever had each other-and who never really escaped the woods.

I am fascinated by psychology, by societies, by human choices, and I think that people surprise me all the time. They hide things, convince themselves of things that are not true, tell different versions of the same story, and have many, many thoughts that they would not want the rest of the world to know about. This is what I try to get into my novels and my characters, people’s duality and complexity.

You can love and hate the same person, despair and pity can go hand in hand, and I believe that everyone is capable of violence if the situation pushes them far enough. This series shows these different sides of all of my characters as the stories progress, and distinguishing between the killer, the accomplice, the parents, the siblings and the friends may be harder than you expect. You might begin a chapter rooting for someone, and end it dreading their next move, only to be back on their side in the next scene.

I have also loved creating the settings for this series, and The Other Daughter has an old lake house that is both magical and disturbing in equal measure. The settings are as fun to create at the characters, fashioning the tone and atmosphere of each chapter, reflecting the emotion of the scenes and helping to build the tension. Constructing the settings, for me, is a much fun as forming the psychological foundation of my cast.

I thought I would give you the first chapter to read. It is the first introduction to someone new, Hunter, a boy whose upbringing is about as bad as you can imagine, but within the horror is one relationship that might just save him from the horrors of his childhood.

GIVEAWAY! I’d love to send someone an Ebook of The Other Daughter, so let me know the creepiest character you have encountered in a book and what made them so disturbing?

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The Other Daughter

Two brothers. Two daughters. One deadly legacy.

Every family has secrets. Some are worth killing for.

Shiv has spent years trying to leave Peasedale behind. With Mason Tucker finally free from prison and her son, Pip, growing into a happy young boy, the future feels brighter than it has in a long time.

Then Hunter Piper appears.

For decades, the Piper name has been synonymous with tragedy, violence and loss. Now Hunter has come back to claim what he believes is his, bringing with him a daughter no one knew existed.

Jeanie.

As old wounds reopen and long-buried secrets begin to surface, Shiv finds herself drawn into a deadly conflict rooted in the darkest chapter of her family’s history.

When Pip vanishes, the race to find him leads back to the place where it all began—the shack in the woods.

But some truths should never be uncovered.

And some daughters inherit far more than their father’s name.

The gripping conclusion to the Peasedale Woods Killers series, The Other Daughter is a chilling psychological thriller about family loyalty, revenge, and the making of a monster.

Excerpt

Hunter Age 9

‘DINNER!’

Mum shouts from the bottom of the stairs. Only once. It’s the only time she speaks, really. She has a very small vocabulary. School. Bedroom. Dinner. That’s pretty much it. Because I have to spend so much time in my bedroom, I have a much better vocabulary than her, I read the dictionary and the thesaurus and the bible. I tried asking for some different books once, but dad told me that proper language and a healthy fear of God was all a boy needed. He’s wrong. Boys also need food and water and shelter, somewhere to clean themselves, and friends, all of which are in short supply in this house.

I hate dinner. I hate all the times we have to be together as a family. My aim is to eat everything as fast as possible without drawing my dad’s attention and then get down from the table unscathed. That’s a new word for me. Unscathed. I’m going to use it the next time I talk to someone. Scathe. Scathing. Unscathed.

Dad is an English teacher. At secondary school. He is also a headmaster.

I hear my brother’s bedroom door click open, so I know it’s safe to go downstairs. He’s my protector. Superbro. He has an invisible forcefield that dad can’t penetrate, and if I am close enough to him, the forcefield fits around me too.

I take the stairs slowly, bare feet, because there’s more friction when you run on bare feet, less chance of slipping over and getting caught. I’m in my pyjamas, like I am most of the time when I’m at home. Ready to jump into bed and hide under the covers at a moment’s notice.

The kitchen is quiet. Too quiet. I creep along the corridor, hoping to hear something that will give me an idea of what is going on. Nothing. Pausing at the door, I peer around the doorframe to see who is sitting at the table. Mum, dad and my brother are all there, spooning food onto their plates. Shoot. I’m late. I left it a bit too long.