Archive for January, 2010

Regency knickers and Richard Armitage

January 31, 2010 | 5 Comments

How indulgent is this: Yesterday I spent almost a whole day eating cake and talking about writing, books and Richard Armitage in the company of friends from C19 – the N&S-inspired Arts forum that started me writing fiction.

The real purpose of our visit was to celebrate the launch of Pursued By Love by Georgia Hill. ‘Georgia’ was there to sign copies of her book which I believe is up for the RNA Joan Hessayon Award this year. Elizabeth Hanbury was also there and we had an interesting conversation abour Regency knickers. Where can we lay hands on a pair? Any clues?

Itw as amazing to think that since 2004, a group devoted to a BBC drama should have inspired so many writers, friendships and blogs such as Vulpes Libris.

We also visited Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, recent home to the Staffordshire Hoard of Anglo Saxon gold. Actually, we got no further than the Edwardian tea room!

When we told the very handsome young waiter why we there there he surprised us all by revealing that be was an ex-Queens Guard who was also a poet. So not everyone thinks we’re totally mad.

Guest blogger – Christina Jones

January 26, 2010 | 2 Comments

What better way of brightening up a cold, grey Tuesday with a little Moonshine. I’m thrilled to welcome Christina Jones to the blog.

Chris is a member of the RNA but I hadn’t met her until I randomly bought one of her previous books, Heaven Sent, and it just blew me away. I’ve never read a book quite so full of joie de vivre and I raved about it to my agent. So you can imagine how chuffed I was when Chris became a client of the same agency last year. Anyway here she is to talk about her brand new romantic comedy,

I’m so excited and thrilled to be asked to be a guest-blogger on my-mate-Phillipa’s brilliant blog today. And, as my novel MOONSHINE is published this week, no prizes for guessing what my blog post is about! I have no shame…

MOONSHINE is the sixth in my series of romantic comedy novels all based in a cluster of Berkshire villages. Like Midsomer and their murders, my small rural locale was in danger of becoming a little over-magicked. So, having already dealt with herbal-magic, astral-magic, aromatherapy-magic, firework-magic, and birthday-magic in previous books, I was slightly flummoxed over which particular branch of grounded-but-inexplicable wonderment I could cover next.

I poured a glass of wine to help me ponder the conundrum. And another. And another… And then – there it was! The solution! Slightly fuzzy round the edges – but a solution none-the-less. I’d write about magical wine!

And that’s honestly how MOONSHINE came about. Once I’d got the basic idea, everything else fell into place beautifully. I already had the location – the hamlet of Lovers Knot (just along the road from Fiddlesticks and Hazy Hassocks) – and the main characters (newly-divorced and forced-to-downsize Cleo, and achingly upper-class and waste-of-space Dylan – aka The Most Beautiful Boy In The World) – all I needed was the magic…

Wine, as everyone knows, is pretty magical anyway – especially after several glasses – and I’d dabbled in a bit of home-brewing in my past, so it seemed like a good idea to dust off some of my Nan’s old wine-making recipes (leaving out the ones involving doubtful root vegetables and things-that-needed-a-lot-of-washing) and do a bit of research. After the neighbours had recovered, I knew which ones I could safely use in MOONHINE without causing too much – er – distress.

As a result, Cleo in MOONSHINE concocts Razzle Dazzle Damson, Blackberry Blush, Plum Pucker and Sloe Seduction among others. Each wine has a different magical effect on the lovely-but-mad residents of Lovers Knot as they celebrate their annual Harvest Home.

Of course, Cleo isn’t a witch, so there had to be some other element to make the wine magical – and this was another easy part. The magic ingredient was the water collected from the local waterfall – Lovers Cascade. I’ve been fascinated by waterfalls all my life (have spent many happy hours dragging a damp and grizzling family under yet another torrent) and must admit to going a bit OTT with Lovers Cascade, making it the grazing place of unicorns and orcs. Sadly, this was lost during the editing process….

As I always use lots of my own life in my novels, the wine-making and the waterfalls aren’t the only “true” bits in MOONSHINE. Oh, no… I made poor Cleo live in a mobile home on a caravan site surrounded by the biggest bunch of eccentrics outside Royston Vasey. Yep – been there, done that. Living in a caravan brings a host of problems – and Cleo meets them all.

And then there was the class thing…

As I grew up in a council prefab, but went to a pretty posh grammar school where several of my class-mates had titles, and also once worked as a skivvy for someone who owned an entire county and regularly flew chums for lunch in Juan les Pins and dinner in Monte Carlo “on a whim”, this was something else I felt I could tackle with some authority. Unfortunately, Cleo can’t. Dylan being very, very upper-class, and Cleo well aware that she isn’t, causes all manner of conflicts – all grist to the romance-writer’s mill. But of course, this being a feel-good rom-com, Dylan isn’t all he appears to be, and Cleo learns that jumping to conclusions always leads to a fall – if you’ll pardon the strangulated and mashed metaphors.

So – in a nutshell, that’s how MOONSHINE came into being. A lot of my own life, a whole splodge of imagination, and of course – just a touch of magic…

Fab new Headline website

January 25, 2010 | Comments

Headline (who publish my LBD books in the UK) has a sparkly new website.

Naturally there is a really zingy Little Black Dress section featuring all the LBD titles. All LBD authors have their own profile page (here’s mine) and Nell’s book, Crystal Clear, is January’s new release.

Tomorrow, I have a fantastic Guest Blogger – one of my favourite romantic novelists, Christina Jones is going to be talking about her magical new book, Moonshine.

Green shoots at last!

January 21, 2010 | 5 Comments

Well, the birds are twittering outside my window like they’re on Viagra and the sun is shining and I can see the green fields and the roads. I’ve been a snow Humbug, I’ll admit. I couldn’t wait for the white stuff to melt and for Spring to arrive.

I’m still glowing from the lovely ‘do’ we held at the weekend for some family and friends, including Nell and Liz.
Finally, one of my all-time favourite writers, Christina Jones has a new book out today so drop by and visit her blog. I can’t wait to get my copy and when this ms has gone to my agent next week, I’m going to have an Amazon splurge.

PS Oh, I almost forgot, I found a lovely customer review for Wish You Were Here on Waterstones. This book will be out in the US in 2011 so I must read it again.

Mum, will you ever finish that novel?

January 12, 2010 | 2 Comments

I read a very interesting article with the above title, in The Times while I was in the health club enjoying a large cappuccino and a large white choc chip cookie. I usually take an 80 calorie Special K bar with me for after my ‘workout’ but today I forgot, so had to buy the cookie.

But I digress. The article was about the effect of creative mums on the development of their offspring. Daphne du Maurier, apparently, was a very distant parent who was so completely obsessed with her writing, she took very little notice of her girls at all. In contrast, other creative families involve their children and spouses very much in their creative lives and process.

There are advantages and downside to that approach.

The article gave a few pointers about surviving life with a creative parent or spouse. I was going to print it off and leave it in the bathroom, next to Top Gear and Runners World…

I wish I could find a link to it but the G2 website doesn’t appear to have the story yet. However they did have this piece, almost as interesting.

Do you agree with the Guardian’s Top 5O television dramas of all time? I mean, Grange Hill? Really? And where the heck is Bad Girls?

Thank you to Laura Vivanco for the correct link to the article.