Free for one weekend only ... a little bit of summer love.

Just in time for Valentine's Day, my Regency short story collection Midsummer Eve at Rookery End will be available for free download for a limited period (this weekend only 11th-12th February 2012) on Amazon. Spread the word! 
 
Amazon operate on Pacific Standard Time so for readers in the UK/Europe, Midsummer Eve at Rookery End won't show as available for free until later on during Saturday 11th.

Happy Valentine's Day :0)

Interview on FlyHigh

You can read an interview with me right now over on Maria's fabulous blog, FlyHigh.

Simply follow this link and leave a comment to have a chance of winning copies of the Brief Encounters short story anthology!

Take a tour around one of my favourite places...

18th century Attingham Park in Shropshire.   Attingham is of my favourite National Trust estates and NT's fifth most popular property!  The house is open again from this weekend for specialist guided tours giving an insight into the Attingham Rediscovered restoration programme.  Do book a ticket if you can, it's a fabulous place which I've blogged about before here and here.

This delightful little video gives a flavour of what Attingham has to offer  :0)

An early Christmas present and a sneak peek at 2012...

The paperback edition of Brief Encounters is now available from Amazon and other on-line retailers.  Full details are still appearing on Amazon as I type, but check out this gorgeous new cover (which will feature on the e-book too)!

Nell, Phillipa and I hope you'll enjoy these six short, sweet, sexy tales - described by Christina Jones as 'a fabulous literary box of chocolates, with something for everyone to enjoy'.

This will probably be my last blog post before the festive season commences in earnest and I have to run around like a crazy person getting everything sorted, so I'd like to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and happy and healthy 2012!

And for a sneak peek at what's coming next year, look out for two new releases from me - Unexpected Pleasure and A Bright Particular Star...  More details to follow ;0)

Return of Garrow's Law

Hurrah - dust off the periwigs and the silks, the wonderful BBC TV series Garrow's Law returns for a third series this Sunday at 9pm!

The legal drama is inspired by the life of the pioneering 18th century barrister William Garrow.  Episode 1 of Series 3 focuses on the true story of James Hadfield, accused of attempting to assassinate King George III. Garrow risks his reputation to defend the indefensible.  And he changes British law forever.

 Meanwhile, William and his beloved Lady Sarah are finally living together but things are not all rosy.  Lady Sarah is desperate to see her baby son and starts a legal challenge to her jealous husband, Sir Arthur Hill.

William Garrow is played by Andrew Buchan, John Southouse by Alun Armstrong, Lady Sarah by Lyndsey Marshal, Sir Arthur Hill by Rupert Graves and John Silvester by Aidan McArdle.

You can find out more on the BBC website for Garrow's Law (including the real cases behind episode 1) and at Mark Pallis' blog.  Mark is the Legal and Historical consultant for the show.   There is also The Garrow Society website, which has information on Garrow's trials, family stories and web links.

Here's a fabulous taster for Series 3, but beware, spoilers ahoy ;0)

Guest author - Hazel Osmond

A very warm welcome to my blog for guest author Hazel Osmond, who writes contemporary romantic comedy.  Hazel's fabulous debut novel - Who's Afraid of Mr. Wolfe? - is available now from Amazon and many other outlets and she's currently working on her second book, The Genuine Article.

Here Hazel gives her view on that most elusive and inexplicable entity, a writer's 'voice'....


You write funny….

Many thanks to Elizabeth for giving me the opportunity to write this piece – it’s been brewing away in my brain for a while and concerns what I feel is one of the mysteries of writing: where does the writer get her voice?

It’s a question that intrigues me because up until five years ago, I wasn’t listening to what now appears to be my writing voice, but trying to summon one up based on what I believed I should be writing. I put it down to ‘doing’ an English degree and to equating ‘being serious’ with ‘being taken seriously’.

It will not surprise you to learn that the pressure to write something weighty and profound resulted in a blank mind and a computer screen to match. Soon the only writing I was doing was advertising copywriting– nothing wrong with that and I will always be grateful that advertising taught me the importance of being entertaining, brief and direct… but where was that book I was going to write?

It took Richard Armitage, the actor, and the discovery of fanfiction to wake me up and show me that my voice was romantic and funny, and to convince me that making people laugh is not a barrier to making them cry a few pages later.

If I hadn’t been wearing intellectual blinkers, I would have picked up on the clues earlier. I might have realised that there was a reason why I day-dreamed love stories from an early age and continue to do so even when, and I say this at the risk of the curse of smugness shrivelling my vitals, I have been happily settled with the same man for A. Long. Time.

And the humour thing? Well, did I go for The Famous Five when I was little? No, and sorry to those of you who love those stories, but I much preferred the Just William books …and later, when my sister let me read her copies of Monica Dickens’ One Pair of Hands and One Pair of Feet I remember feeling as if I’d stumbled on someone who was completely tuned into how I saw life. By the time I discovered Dorothy Parker you might have thought my reaction to her would have told me something.

For all my short-sightedness, I suppose that somewhere deep down I was learning an important message: Richmal Crompton and Monica Dickens and Dorothy Parker had an absolute right to be funny even if, between the three of them, they did not possess one willy.

Of course it wasn’t all about women… during my teens I also had the great good fortune to need a lot of dental work. This of itself may be a funny thing to say, but what did all those hours at the dentist’s mean? Access to piles of Punch and writers as wonderful as Alan Coren.

So there we have it, my voice was in there all along but I wasn’t letting it out. I’m not saying it’s a better, more insightful voice than a serious one, but it’s true to my take on life – that humour, used properly, is a great leveller, comforter and humaniser. To write a book without it, or even a short story, just feels like I’m wearing someone else’s shoes. And they pinch.



 

Nell Dixon's new release is available now

While promoting the Kindle release of The Paradise Will and waiting for updates on other fronts, I'm busy sketching out ideas for a new story.  Once the original idea has ignited, I find my characters and plot need time to take shape, and then evolve.   Try and rush the process and it doesn't work.  It all has to make some sense in my head before I can start writing.  I make notes, decide on character names, do some reseach (a great way to procrastinate *g*) and I might even get the opening line sorted.  Sometimes I'll use visual prompts (currently a photo of a house, torn out of a magazine and stuck to the wall above my PC!).  It all feeds into a creative melting-pot which will hopefully churn out a first draft down the line.  We shall see ;0)

Meanwhile, it's a pleasure to announce that my author buddy and all-around lovely person Nell Dixon is launching a new book.   I can't wait to read it!  Here's more details and an excerpt to whet your appetite:-

Renovation, Renovation, Renovation is the new release from multi award winning author, Nell Dixon. 

Overworked, over budget and just so not over him! Kate would like an engagement ring from Steve but instead he's lumbered them with a thirteenth renovation project, and doing up Myrtle Cottage disturbs a ghost from the English Civil War who has romance troubles of her own.

Available from Amazon UK and Amazon.com 

Renovation, Renovation, Renovation is a contemporary romance with a twist. One of the residents at Myrtle Cottage, a fifteenth century house is a rather mournful ghost called Mary Ann. She was resident during a turbulent period of English history when Oliver Cromwell was coming to power and civil war raged throughout the country. Mary Ann’s story becomes entwined with that of Kate, the current owner bringing glimpses of the past into the present.

 Excerpt:

“Hey, Kate, can you get me the torch from the kitchen?” Steve’s voice was muffled but excited.

I went and collected the torch from the junk drawer and passed it to him. “What have you found?”

He’d pulled a crate into the fireplace and balanced on it, shining the torch into the flue. Knowing my luck he’d happened on some protected species of bat and we’d have to abandon the whole project or live in the Hammer house of horrors for evermore. I could hear him scrabbling around.

“This is so great.”

“What?” My curiosity was piqued in spite of myself. Maybe he’d found treasure – some previous owners nest egg of sovereigns perhaps?

Decorated with yet more dust and soot, he emerged from the fireplace clasping a small dirty brown object in his hand.

“I never thought we’d be lucky enough to find one of these. I’ve heard about them but never, ever thought I’d find one.” An excited grin split his face and he looked like a small boy who had just been given the world’s biggest treat.

He held the object out towards me almost reverently. “It was on a ledge, quite high up inside the chimney.”

As I looked more closely I could see that what he’d found appeared to be a child’s shoe. Much worn and filthy dirty from its time in the chimney. I failed to see why Steve was so excited.

“You do know what this is, don’t you Kate?” Steve touched it carefully with the forefinger of his other hand. Again a cool movement of air swirled around my feet and ankles.

“It’s a shoe.”

“It’s a spirit trap.”