A story of love, loss, and mania
Sometimes your state of mind has a dark side…
SOPHIA: 22-YEAR OLD CONCERT CELLIST, SOON TO BE ENGAGED, A PERFECT BOYFRIEND, A PERFECT FAMILY, A PERFECT LIFE
But Sophia’s picture-perfect life is about to take a drastic turn for the worse. After the tragic untimely death of her beloved boyfriend, Spencer, something happens to her – something dark.
After a period of post-traumatic stress, Sophia develops a severe personality disorder. Gone is the gracious upper middle class girl. In her place stands a dysfunctional young woman on a frenetic path of self-destruction and mayhem.
Sophia’s world starts to fall apart. Something dark has got a grip on her mind and it refuses to let go. Her psychologist has never seen a case quite like it and is at a total loss. Sophia has recoiled into a dangerous and sinister place in her mind, but now it’s spilling out into the real world with a vengeance.
She proceeds to tear her family apart, alienate her friends and destroy her career; soon there will be nothing left.
Can her new best friend, Delphine, save her before it’s too late?
Targeted Age Group:: 16 upwards
What Inspired You to Write Your Book?
My ex career as a concert pianist
How Did You Come up With Your Characters?
Imagination and I love the name Sophia. If I had a daughter, I’d name her Sophia.
Book Sample
The light wind in her hair, the bright stars, the light music, holding Spencer’s hand while he drove smoothly across London – it was perfect, like it always was. She looked across at him and soaked up his side profile, his short neatly cut, light mousy brown hair and handsome features. She felt a love so strong as she gazed at him.
‘Woah!’ shouted Spencer as he yanked hard right on the steering wheel. Sophia was instantly yanked back into reality and looked through the windscreen to see a fox running across the road in the path of the BMW. Spencer swerved at a severe angle to avoid hitting it. He wrestled with the steering wheel and tried to straighten up the car, but he lost control and the car spun sideways and bounced up onto the kerb on the opposite side of the road. Spencer braked hard while still struggling with the steering wheel. The car bounced back down the kerb and came to a halt, sideways on, on the opposite side of the road right in the middle of a bridge over a canal. The panting Spencer looked at Sophia.
‘Are you ok?’ he gasped, adrenaline rushing.
‘Yes I’m … oh my God, SPENCER!’ Sophia looked beyond Spencer out of his driver’s side window and saw a lorry hurtling around the blind bend towards them. The driver was clearly speeding and there was no way he was going to be able to stop in time. Spencer turned just in time to see the lorry’s large headlights blinding him. The driver hit the breaks and the lorry skidded momentarily before slamming hard into the offside of their car. The impact obliterated the driver’s side of the BMW, while sending the car crashing up onto the kerb, flipping it onto its side and up onto the barrier. The BMW toppled and finally settled upside-down on its roof, teetering on the barrier hanging over the edge of the bridge with the canal thirty feet below. Sophia was stunned and in shock. Upside down, her head was wedged against the opening of the sunroof. She was disoriented, but conscious. She struggled to turn her head to the right, and then she saw Spencer. When she saw his motionless body, she started to hyperventilate and shake violently. He hung suspended by his seatbelt with copious amounts of blood dripping from his crushed torso down onto his face. His neck was clearly broken – he was dead. The chest of his torso was twisted and faced square on to the driver’s window while his face and lifeless eyes faced the opposite direction staring straight at Sophia. Sophia’s body went into involuntary spasms as she screamed emotional screams. The car rocked tentatively like a seesaw, threatening to go over the edge of the bridge at any second.
‘Keep still,’ shouted the driver of the lorry, who had got out and was unscathed. ‘You have to keep perfectly still. I’m going to call for help.’ The lorry driver dialled 999 and demanded all three emergency services, giving the operator the exact location.
‘Help will be here soon, try not to move.’ But Sophia could not hear him. She was in her own dark world of horror; unable to comprehend anything outside the half crushed metal box she was cocooned in.
The police were the first on the scene. After quickly assessing the situation, the larger of the two officers tried to put his bodyweight onto the boot end of the upside-down BMW to prevent it from tipping over the edge. Minutes later an ambulance and the fire brigade arrived. Just as the firemen jumped out of their truck there was a sound of metal twisting and scraping. The barrier collapsed under the roof of the BMW and the police officer could not hold the weight of the car to prevent it from tipping up. All he could do was watch, in horror, as the BMW tipped up and plummeted straight down into the cold dark canal below.
All of the emergency servicemen hurtled over the barrier at the side of the bridge and down the sloping bank to the water’s edge. The car was upright in the middle of the canal, slowly sinking. Without hesitation, and against the rules, one of the firemen jumped into the canal and waded, up to his chest in water, out to the sinking car. He could see Sophia, screaming in a frenzied emotional state, trapped inside the car. The fireman struggled to open the door against the pressure of the water, eventually winning the battle and pulling the door open. He cut Sophia’s seatbelt with his emergency tool and pulled the hysterical Sophia from the car.
‘Spencer, I want my Spencer!!’ she screamed. The fireman waded back to the bank with Sophia kicking and screaming in his arms. ‘Spencer, Spencer!!’ she screamed with tears flooding down her face. She looked back towards the sinking car, now almost totally submerged with just the rooftop barely visible. Water poured into the open sunroof. ‘SPENCER!!!’
Author Bio:
Nigel Cooper was born in England, UK. He grew up in the Lake District, but later moved down south to London.
Nigel wouldn’t really want to work for any company that would employ him, he has been self-employed for most of his working life as: photographer, classical pianist, private detective, video producer, magazine founder/editor, rant columnist and journalist.
In his early years Nigel also had several irrelevant and inconsequential jobs including working as stretch limo driver and a one-man operator/bus driver for London Transport. He still has his PSV (Public Service Vehicle) licence, badge and pass to prove it.
While in the employment of another company he actually got sacked for being too efficient at what he did; piece-work at a belt factory in Queens Crescent, North London. It upset the other factory workers that he was earning three times more money than they were. The boss (sad as it made him) had to let Nigel go due to the unrest and tension on the factory floor.
Of the menial jobs where Nigel was employed, they never lasted more than nine months; at least his boredom threshold didn’t. Working as a commis chef, bus driver and salesman, all ended after exactly nine months. The fact that these jobs lasted the term of a pregnancy is purely coincidental.
His shortest employment lasted only three hours; his personal best record. This was during his first ever job as an apprentice barber in Swiss Cottage, North London. Three hours of sweeping up hair, refilling shampoo bottles and cleaning sinks was all he could take; he left at lunchtime.
Later, he got serious and studied screenwriting in London, where he learned the art and craft of creative writing for film and television. In 2004 he became the founder/editor of a specialist UK-based television/broadcast video production magazine. Although it was hugely successful, he sold the magazine in November 2011 to become a full-time author of fiction.
Nigel has had many years’ experience as a writer of technical articles, tutorials, reviews, news stories and journalism, not only for his own magazine, but also for many other well known publications, magazines and newspapers. It was during these years that he found his voice.
In 2011, Nigel had an overwhelming desire to move into creative fiction writing, so he set about researching his debut novel in the dark romance vampire genre. This desire had been smouldering inside him for a few years. Having seen various classic vampire movies in the past, he decided to write a vampire story that he himself would want to read.
After extensive research and planning Nigel completed his debut novel, Email From A Vampire, which was published in July 2012.
After more research and writing during 2013 he completed his second novel, Sophia; a different genre altogether. Sophia was published in January 2014. See www.nigelcooperauthor.co.uk for more details.
Nigel writes across a diverse range of genres including: psychological thrillers, dark romance, suspense, crime, horror and general fiction.
In his spare time Nigel enjoys playing the piano. He studied classical music at Trinity College Of Music, London, attaining a degree, and is an accomplished classical pianist. He enjoys photography, swimming and badminton, spending time in coffee shops and eating out. He is an animal lover and loves dogs, especially Cavalier King Charles Spaniels and small affectionate toy breeds.
He is currently working on his next two novels: a horror story and a crime thriller.
Nigel lives and writes in Cambridgeshire, UK.
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