Welcome to Three Questions with Van Heerling. This is where you get to meet authors, actors, painters and anyone else that is bent toward the arts, but on a more personal level.
Today I welcome Rhoda Baxter author of Having a Ball.
VH: Hello Rhoda, for what are you grateful?
RB: Apart from the obvious things (my family, my health, my job etc) the thing I’m most grateful for is the NHS (the National Health Service). In the UK we have a health service that will treat anyone, regardless of who they are, at the point of need, for free. There’s a lot of nonsense written about the NHS (Death panels?? I mean, really? Who came up with that one?). It is over stretched, underfunded, under staffed and yet it works. It works because there is a fundamental mindset among the staff that says – this person is ill. We will do our best to help them.
My elderly mother and my very young daughter both owe their lives to the excellent care they received (and continue to receive) from the NHS. So thank you NHS. I’m grateful you exist.
VH: If you could change one thing about our world, what would it be and why?
RB: Transport. I’d make teleportation possible. Think of all the time we’d save by simply zipping from one place to another without having to walk/run/drive to get there. Failing that, I would change the transport system so that there were fewer roads that required cars and more trains. Travelling by car is so BORING. Trains are much more fun. You get to sit and read, or walk around. And there’s always the possibility that you might accidentally end up in Hogwarts.
VH: What is the number one lie you tell yourself? How is that working out?
RB: You can have your cake and eat it. Turns out this is not possible. I keep eating my cake and then finding I don’t have it anymore.
VH: Good one! Pleasure Rhoda. Thank you. :)
VH: Hello Rhoda, for what are you grateful?
RB: Apart from the obvious things (my family, my health, my job etc) the thing I’m most grateful for is the NHS (the National Health Service). In the UK we have a health service that will treat anyone, regardless of who they are, at the point of need, for free. There’s a lot of nonsense written about the NHS (Death panels?? I mean, really? Who came up with that one?). It is over stretched, underfunded, under staffed and yet it works. It works because there is a fundamental mindset among the staff that says – this person is ill. We will do our best to help them.
My elderly mother and my very young daughter both owe their lives to the excellent care they received (and continue to receive) from the NHS. So thank you NHS. I’m grateful you exist.
VH: If you could change one thing about our world, what would it be and why?
RB: Transport. I’d make teleportation possible. Think of all the time we’d save by simply zipping from one place to another without having to walk/run/drive to get there. Failing that, I would change the transport system so that there were fewer roads that required cars and more trains. Travelling by car is so BORING. Trains are much more fun. You get to sit and read, or walk around. And there’s always the possibility that you might accidentally end up in Hogwarts.
VH: What is the number one lie you tell yourself? How is that working out?
RB: You can have your cake and eat it. Turns out this is not possible. I keep eating my cake and then finding I don’t have it anymore.
VH: Good one! Pleasure Rhoda. Thank you. :)

Having a Ball, published by Uncial Press. Released 17 March 2013.
When the going gets tough, the tough throw a party.
Stevie has always relied on her brother to bail her out of trouble. Now she needs to prove to him that she can be independent and mature. When she takes on a job organizing a charity ball for some slightly barmy retired academics, she’s not expecting to fall in love with the rambling old house, the even more rambling family that lives there and Tom, the boss’s son. If she can make the ball a success she could show the world, and herself, that she’s her own woman. She doesn’t need anyone else. Nope. Not anyone. Not at all.
For Nook and Kobo (etc)
Amazon
When the going gets tough, the tough throw a party.
Stevie has always relied on her brother to bail her out of trouble. Now she needs to prove to him that she can be independent and mature. When she takes on a job organizing a charity ball for some slightly barmy retired academics, she’s not expecting to fall in love with the rambling old house, the even more rambling family that lives there and Tom, the boss’s son. If she can make the ball a success she could show the world, and herself, that she’s her own woman. She doesn’t need anyone else. Nope. Not anyone. Not at all.
For Nook and Kobo (etc)
Amazon

Rhoda Baxter lives in the north of England, where she works a day job and writes romantic comedy when her kids are asleep. She is a member of the US Romantic Novelists Association and her first novel was shortlisted for the RNA new writer’s award. She has a Biochemistry degree from Oxford. She wanted to study English, but her parents suggested she should do science (to get a Real Job) and pursue her love of literature in her ‘spare time’. Which, funnily enough, is what she ended up doing. So it turns out her parents were right. Again. How irritating.