Bridging the divide between cultures

Date: 12th October 2023, Posted by mollie

Dear friends, I wanted to share some chapters from Claimed By The Sheikh. I hope you’ll enjoy hearing the story and meeting some of the characters and images of the beautiful desert settings which inspired this romance.

The aim of this story was also to bridge the divide between cultures and aid understanding that leads to healing. It seems even more important to share messages like this or peace, unity, and love in the wake of recent events.

inspired by tragedy

Claimed By The Sheikh, remains one of my favourite love stories. As I shared in the Author’s Note, Claimed by the Sheikh was partly inspired by the tragedy in 2015 that took the lives of former New Zealand sporting star, All Black legend Jerry Collins and his Canadian partner Alana Madill in France. The crash happened at 3:10 am along the highway near Béziers on the way to the city of Montpellier. They died instantly, and their baby daughter was taken to Montpellier Hospital in a critical condition.

I cried such tears thinking of that baby being left an orphan. It really worried me that she would be left in the world with no parents to love and care for her.

So I wondered―what if her parents weren’t really dead? What if the two people that died were the baby’s adoptive parents? What if her biological parents were very much alive?

And then, as writers are want to do, I thought, what if the biological father was an extraordinarily wealthy sheikh who was unaware that he had fathered a child?

I hope you enjoy the audio excerpt and video: