Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

May 22, 2012

Today, I’m welcoming fellow Coffee Crew author, Nell Dixon, to the blog. Nell’s brand new release, Passionate Harvest, was published by E-scape with a Book press yesterday.

I had the privilege of reading the manuscript and can vouch that it’s a warm-hearted, emotional read – and by far Nell’s sexiest book to date! Which probably makes it my favourite.

Nell says:

Passionate Harvest is about nursery nurse Lucy Morgan who unexpectedly inherits half a Somerset vineyard with conditions and a co-owner attached. But Dominic LeFevre doesn’t want or need a new business partner, especially one like Lucy who knows nothing about wine. With Lucy having left behind her old life, and love in Tenerife , she has twelve months to convince Dominic that she’s exactly what both he, and the business, need.

Some of the inspiration for the setting came from our Coffee Crew meetings at a local vineyard. Here’s an excerpt:

Dominic waited until he was on an open stretch of road before cranking up the volume on the CD player and belting out his favourite rock band. He couldn’t believe he’d come so close to kissing Lucy. God, how stupid would that have been? He rubbed a tired hand at the back of his neck in an attempt to ease the tension in the muscles there.

She’d looked so sad and tired with her borrowed tee shirt sliding off one slim shoulder revealing more of the tan on her soft skin. He hadn’t done a great job at convincing her to take up her inheritance. A five mile route march in blatantly unsuitable shoes and allowing his dog to maul her and ruin her clothes maybe wasn’t the best way to commence a business partnership.

“Way to go, Dom.” He muttered to himself. Mutley gave a small whine of agreement from the back of the car.

“And some help you were too.” Dom shook his head.

His mobile phone vibrated in the back pocket of his jeans as he pulled the car to a stop outside his cottage. He glanced at the screen and let the call go to voice mail. The vultures had started circling as soon as Nick’s death announcement had appeared in the press. A couple of them had even approached him about a partnership whilst he’d been at the funeral trying to commend themselves to him.

It had been partly why he’d been so angry with Lucy when she’d arrived late. At the time, not knowing the full story of her connection with Nick, he’d assumed she was yet another one of those waiting to pounce on the business. Mr Fullwood had hinted to him that Nick had left Lucy an interest in the vineyard. He hadn’t known it would be the entire fifty per cent of the holding. At the time he’d assumed it would be simply a couple of shares.

© Nell Dixon 2012

The book is available from all good e-tailers including Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk

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May 21, 2012

I’m shattered and hoarse this morning after my first ever cricket match yesterday – the Fourth Day of the First Test between England and the West Indies at Lord’s, London.

I realise that won’t mean a thing to 50% of my blog visitors but I loved every minute if it, even though cricket is a summer sport and it was freezing!

Anyway, it’s another very busy week on the blog kicking off with two guest authors. Tomorrow is Nell Dixon with her new novel, Passionate Harvest but today we have Stevie Carroll, whose LBGTQ short story anthology is published this month. Over to you, Stevie:

A Series of Ordinary Adventures: Stevie Carroll

Stevie Carroll was born in Sheffield, England’s Steel City, and raised in a village on the boundary of the White and Dark Peaks, Stevie Carroll was nourished by a diet of drama and science fiction from the BBC and ITV, and a diverse range of books, most notably Diane Wynne-Jones and The Women’s Press, from the only library in the valley. After this came a university education in Scotland, while writing mostly non-fiction for underground bisexual publications under various aliases, before creativity was stifled by a decade of day jobs.

Now based in Hampshire, Stevie has rediscovered the joys of writing fiction, managing to combine thoughts of science fiction, fantasy, and mysteries with a day job writing for the pharmaceuticals industry and far too many voluntary posts working with young people, with animals and in local politics.

Stevie’s short story, ‘The Monitors,’ in Noble Romance’s Echoes of Possibilities, was longlisted by the 2010 Tiptree Awards jury. Other short stories have appeared in the anthologies British Flash and Tea and Crumpet. A Series of Ordinary Adventures is Stevie’s first solo collection, and is published by http://www.candlemarkandgleam.com/store/

Stevie has a livejournal, http://stevie-carroll.livejournal.com, for writing updates, and really needs to get a website.

I started off writing short stories; my first were produced for school assignments, and then I wrote a few while at university as part of the ‘Edinburgh Women Writers’ group run by three of my friends. Short stories don’t always come easily to me, however: I have three complete novels two of which I wrote because their original short story format was insufficient to tell everything I wanted to impart about the characters. On the other hand, all three of my novels are awaiting a good edit before I think about starting submissions rounds for them, while I’ve had quite a few of my shorter stories published.

A Series of Ordinary Adventures came about after I was contacted by Kate at Candlemark and Gleam. She’d read ‘The Monitors’, and wondered if I could come up with a whole collection of (sometimes) romantic speculative fiction. So I made a spreadsheet (something I find soothing, so long as no one else is involved in the process: other people just complicate matters), and worked out what ideas would be suitable, and how I could combine them to produce a suitably varied selection of characters, settings, and themes.

In the end I wrote seven stories that were included in the collection (two were novellas, while the others range from 6,000 to 17,000 words). They were:

• Hawks and Dragon: a story of female friendship, castles and daring adventure
• Breaking the Silence: a short horror story set at a school reunion
• The Woman Who Hatched a Fairy’s Egg: a gently romantic novella set in Hebden Bridge about the growing friendship between an incomer and the local Wildlife Officer
• Mr Singh Confronts the Minotaur: another romantic friendship story, set against the backdrop of a Mediterranean cruise for travellers of pensionable age
• Charmed by Prince Charming: a slightly unconventional romance between actors in a rather unusual theatre company
• Seven for the Devil: a novella about the perils of wishing for the unobtainable
• The Footballer’s Mistress: a sweet almost-romance about a ghost and the woman whose flat she haunts

Three of the stories introduce readers to characters who already know each other, which is one way of fitting the romance format into the structure of a short story, although of those only one was primarily a romance, and one featured no romantic elements whatsoever. The short horror format is definitely easier when several elements are already known to the characters: ‘Breaking the Silence’ sees characters confronting a long-buried collective fear. ‘Seven for the Devil’, being longer, allowed me to set the characters against new dangers, while backgrounding the romantic plot in favour of the central mystery and its solution.

With short stories, even more than with novels, I find it easier to stick with one character’s point of view for the whole narrative, which again helps keep within the ideal length for both the story and its structure. I like dropping my protagonist straight into an unexpected situation, and that can draw the reader in, as the character learns about this new person or environment along with them.

For instance, the beginning of ‘The Footballer’s Mistress’:

***

It was the men that woke her up. Noisy men, with their machines, their tools, and their shouted conversations. After so many years of silence, the din would have deafened her, had she still ears to hear; the clouds of brick dust would have choked her, had she still needed to breathe. Cooped up within the walls for two score years or more, before she had finally slept, she found she could now drift outside. It intrigued her that she could do so, and made her curious to see if the world she remembered was much changed by the passing of the ages.

The copse stood as it always had, in the space between the mill and the mill workers’ cottages. The iron railings surrounding it had bent and rusted over the years, and the trees had grown taller; now a rope swing hung from the lowest branch of the great horse chestnut and a den, constructed of planks and sacking, nestled amongst the tree’s smaller brethren.

As the sun sank lower in the sky, the copse filled as it always had, with laughter and movement. Children climbed the trees, hid in the den, and swung on the rope. Their clothes—very similar whether worn by boys or girls—were brightly coloured under fresh dirt, and they called out unfamiliar names, but their presence served to reassure Poppy that all was right with the world.

A horseless carriage rumbled along the road, unremarked by all but one of the children; he merely waved to its occupants. Two young women, wearing trousers rather than skirts, pushed tiny babies in wheeled chairs. They chattered happily to each other and to their babies in sentences that contained more unfamiliar words than words Poppy recognised. A roar in the sky sent her flying back into the mill; the men inside must have heard it, too, yet they carried on with their tasks as if it were an everyday occurrence.

Reassured, she passed back through the walls to watch the children again.

***

Poppy’s story is a romance (of sorts) between two women, and it does sometimes seem as if LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer) romance has taken off in the past few years. I’m not so sure, although it has certainly become more visible. Back when I was at university, and before, most of the ‘gay and lesbian’ books (with the exception of some titles from The Women’s Press that managed to sneak into my local library and a few of the classics that could claim to be Literature with a capital ‘L’: possibly including Radcliffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness) either came from specialist bookshops (West and Wilde in Edinburgh, a couple of Women’s bookshops on Charing Cross Rd in London, etc) or were tucked away on a couple of shelves at the back of big bookshops (with the romance, other fiction, and self-help books all jumbled together).

The internet has changed all that. It’s easy to find all genres of fiction featuring romance involving LGBTQ characters, and specialist publishers are springing up all over the place. Sadly this has also pushed a lot of the old independent bookshops out of business, and I miss them, their staff, and the joys of finding something unexpected on display at the front of the shop, or nestled between the books I was browsing. On the other hand, the internet has opened up a wealth of opportunities for authors to meet each other: I met Phillipa in person at last year’s Festival of Romance, I’m going to my third Meet for Writers and Readers of UK LGBTQ Fiction (http://ukglbtfictionmeet.co.uk/) later in the year, and I regularly have lunch with Charlie Cochrane and Kay Berrisford who are two other local authors I initially met online.

I’m not a member of the RNA yet, but watch this space once I go back to those novels I mentioned earlier.

Thank you, Phillipa, for hosting me today.

No problem, Stevie – good luck with the anthology!

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May 18, 2012

It was the RNA Summer Party last night, of which more below but first I have to say that our short story collection, Brief Encounters is FREE on Amazon Kindle for a limited time – probably only this weekend.

Get it from Amazon UK HERE

Get it from Amazon USA HERE

Brief Encounters is a sparkling anthology of six romantic short stories. Sweet and sexy, contemporary and historical – the collection has something for everyone and is written by me, Nell Dixon and Elizabeth Hanbury.

I have two extended short stories in the collection. They’re called The Feast of Stefan – a snowy romantic mystery (I’d love to know what you think about it!) and Bolt from the Blue which is a romantic encounter set in the mountains of Bannerdale – the village where Decent Exposure was located.

Please, please don’t be shy about posting a review if you’ve enjoyed the stories on Amazon and/or Goodreads.

Onto the party. I went with Nell and Elizabeth on the train and we met other RNA members at the bar above Waterstones, Piccadilly before heading to the Royal Overseas League where over 300 authors, editors and agents had gathered. The winner of the Joan Hessayon award for New Writers was Evonne Wareham and the winner of the Romantic Novel of the Year was Jane Lovering’s Please Don’t Stop the Music. Many congratulations to both.

I also met my lovely new editors from Piatkus and tons of friends, old and new, including the Romaniacs.

I haven’t taken any photos but there are many on the RNA Blog and here’s a snap of the Coffee Crew’s footwear:

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May 16, 2012

In between writing, I’m making my final preparations for the RNA Summer Party tomorrow.

I’ve got my party ticket and train tickets for author friends, Nell Dixon and Elizabeth Hanbury as we’re heading off to London together. I’ve not decided on the party outfit yet because the weather is crazy in the UK at the moment. One minute we have sunshine and the next hail and sleet. On Sunday I’d decided to wear a summery dress and sandals but now I’m thinking a black dress and thick tights.

This year the party is extra special. As usual, the winner of the Joan Hessayon New Writers Award will be announced. I’ve got a soft spot for NWS award, having been thrilled to win it for Decent Exposure back in 2007. The award is sponsored by Dr David Hessayon, to honour of his late wife Joan, who was member of the RNA. Under the NWS, manuscripts submitted by unpublished writers are read by an experienced writer or editor who provides valuable feedback. Any manuscript that’s subsequently published as a debut novel is eligible for the award, which is judged by a panel of RNA members.

I love seeing the newly published authors celebrating achieving their dreams. I’ll never forget standing in that line-up, trying to actually believe my debut novel had been published – still have to pinch myself!

This year the party is being held at a bigger venue, The Royal Overseas League, because for the first time, the RNA is also using the event to announce the winner of the Romantic Novel of the Year 2012 Award from the winners of five category winners in March.

They are:

Christina Courtenay- Highland Storms (The Historical Romantic Novel award), Choc Lit

Katie Fforde – Summer of Love (The Contemporary Romantic Novel award), Random House

Caroline Green – Dark Ride (The Young Adult Romantic Novel Award), Piccadilly Press

Jane Lovering – Please Don’t Stop the Music (The Romantic Comedy Award), Choc Lit

Rosie Thomas – The Kashmir Shawl (The Epic Romantic Novel award), HarperCollins

It should be a wonderful, exciting evening and the chance to meet up with lots of friends – and also I get to meet my new editors at Piatkus for the first time.

By the way, I did manage to get some Olympic tickets for the Canoe slalom events – my daughter does a lot of kayaking and has been on the Olympic course so we’re very excited to actually be ‘going to the Olympics’as spectators.

And finally .. check back here on Friday because I will have news of how you can get some FREE short stories for your Kindle over the weekend.

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May 14, 2012

My mission for this week, should I choose to accept it is:

1. Finish the synopsis of my 2013 release for Piatkus Entice
2. Write some more of the above book
3. Finish my commissioned writing work for clients
4. Do some more posts for my blog tours to launch Fever Cure and Just Say Yes
5. Get everything done in time for Thursday so I can bunk off to the RNA Summer Party and Romantic Novel of the Year Award
6. Get my hair cut
7. Try and get some Olympic tickets for anything that’s not Greco-Roman wrestling or football.

Number 7 is so time-consuming and complicated and I suspect, impossible, that I may not get 1-6 done.

See you next Christmas!

UPDATE: Yay!

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