Author Guest Post by Camilla Isley about Perfection

Today I’m excited to tell you about a newly released novel written by author Camilla Isley called I Have Never… AND I’m sharing an exclusive guest post written by the author herself!

Title: I Have Never
Author: Camilla Isley
Release Date: July 13th, 2017
Genre: Chick Lit

Twenty-nine-year-old Blair Walker is a girl with a plan, or more a girl with a list. A list of dos and don’ts to live the perfect life, land a dream career, and marry Mr. Right.

When Blair loses her job and gets dumped by her boyfriend all in one day, she starts to wonder if she’s had it all wrong. And what better way to find out than experience everything the list forbade?

With hilarious consequences, Blair will discover some items are trickier to tick off than she’d thought…

A laugh out loud romantic comedy perfect for fans of Lindsey Kelk, Sophie Kinsella, and Mhairi McFarlane. First Comes Love is a series of interconnected romantic novels. However, each book in the series can be read as a standalone novel.

Author Guest Post by Camilla Isley

Perfection is a major theme in your novel. Is there anything that you have to have done perfectly or anything that you particularly love having done perfectly?

Maybe it was more like that in school. Where a set of grades could define the output of your work. I remember always shooting for the straight As… perfection. But life is so much different from school. Perfect doesn’t exist. Except maybe for the perfect-score bowling game, everything else is too subjective. There is no perfect job, book, movie, partner… just the best job, book, movie, partner for you. When I get a five-star review for one of my books, I don’t think that my story is “perfect” I just think that it was the right match for the right reader. Same goes if I get a one-star. I don’t pull my hair out thinking my work is a disaster—*cough*—I try to look at it as a wrong match.

So instead of perfection, I like to think in terms of right match and best effort.

To explain this second part… The other day I was huffing and puffing through one of Jillian Michael’s workout videos, and at one point she was explaining one exercise—probably something mean on the muscles—and said, “I don’t want perfect, I just want your best effort. Perfect is boring.” This is not an exact quotation, so her words could’ve been slightly different, but the concept is the same. I believe it’s a beautiful philosophy. What matters is what you bring to the game. Did you do your best? Yes? Then that’s perfect for me. (Unless you’re building a bridge or something, then you’d really better check your numbers are perfect!)

What is on your personal list of do’s and don’t’s?

Err, to be honest, I don’t have a clear list. At least not a set of rules like the one Blair carries wherever she goes. But if I think hard about patterns I follow, I can spot some trends in my actions like…

I never “bought” a pet. I’ve always adopted a stray from a shelter or directly off the street. It happened twice to me to save an animal literally from the side of the road. Once it was a dog. My mom found him stuck under a pile of industrial tubes and we adopted him right after taking him to the vet. Now that I think about it, I subconsciously made Chevron look a lot like him, a mutt Labrador type. And another time I found a shoe box with two abandoned kittens inside, those two won the lottery that day. One of the two happiest cats I know to date.

If I can, I always try to eat and shop organic.

I recycle.

I try to leave the car at home if I can walk somewhere.

I abandon books I don’t like. Too little time and too many other books I might enjoy to force a reading relationship that isn’t working.

Then maybe I have a list of “Work In Progress” items:

I’m messy. And okay being an artist and everything, but I should really try to keep the disorder in check.

I should exercise more.

And I should eat more vegetables and less chocolate.

But, hey, no one’s perfect! 😉

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Camilla is an engineer turned writer after she quit her job to follow her husband in an adventure abroad.
She’s a cat lover, coffee addict, and shoe hoarder. Besides writing, she loves reading—duh!—cooking, watching bad TV, and going to the movies—popcorn, please. She’s a bit of a foodie, nothing too serious. A keen traveler, Camilla knows mosquitoes play a role in the ecosystem, and she doesn’t want to starve all those frog princes out there, but she could really live without them.

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