A SEQUEL novel, A Forsaken Friend, written by two Yorkshire women journalists, exposes the real life of regional media and academia.

Co-authors Sue Featherstone and Susan Pape are journalists-turned-academics. Their first novel, A Falling Friend, wove together the worlds of local media and university life, with its two main female characters at its heart. Its sequel is now published.

The first book follows the lives of two friends who, despite their close friendship, don’t always see eye-to-eye. Both friends are moving through relationships, one of them managing to fall in love with the other's ex-husband, always making disastrous choices, but always there to catch each other. Until it all goes so wrong. This second book sees these two very modern women again trying to get their lives and loves together.

Things can’t get much worse for Teri Meyer. If losing her job at the university and the regular allowance from her dad’s factory isn’t bad enough, now her best friend has gone and stolen her ex-husband! Well, to hell with them all. A few weeks in the countryside at her brother’s smallholding should do the trick – and the gorgeous and god-like neighbour might help.

But then there’s Declan, not to mention Duck’s Arse back in Yorkshire...

It’s not as if Lee Harper set out to fall in love with her best friend’s ex-husband. But, for once, her love life is looking up – except for all the elephants in the room, not to mention Mammy’s opinion on her dating a twice-divorced man. Perhaps things aren’t as rosy as she first thought. And now with one family crisis after another, Lee’s juggling more roles – and emotions – than she ever imagined.

Maybe sharing her life with a man isn’t such a grand idea.

Sue Featherstone said: “With most books the central storyline is ‘girl meets boy’, but we wanted to write something less traditional, pacier. What’s interesting about the two main characters, Lee and Teri, is that ultimately, they’re the most important people in each other’s lives. While men come and go they are the constant fixtures for one another. That’s the case for a lot of women nowadays so, in our minds, this is a book for women, about women, by women. It also underlines the strength of the friendship of women.”

The two former newspaper journalists had already collaborated on two textbooks: Newspaper Journalism: A Practical Introduction, and Feature Writing: A Practical Introduction.

Sue Featherstone lives in Wakefield and teaches magazine journalism part time at Sheffield Hallam University. Susan Pape lives near Ilkley, and is a former journalist on the Yorkshire Post, and at ITV Yorkshire, and, more recently, a lecturer in journalism at Leeds Trinity University.

Susan Pape said: “The relationship between the two main characters in A Forsaken Friend proved it was possible for two, very different people, to complement one another and remain the best of friends. However, while there are parallels between our own lives and friendship, the book is pure fiction, helped along by many anecdotes we collected through our working lives. We wrote the sequel after very kind fans of A Falling Friend demanded to know what happened next”.

The first two novels in the trilogy have been published by Lakewater Press, an international boutique publishing house based in Queensland, Australia.

A Forsaken Friend is published on March 21 and is available from Amazon as either an e-book or a paperback.