It's publication day!

Just jumping in to tell you all that today is the official launch of the RNA's new anthology, Truly, Madly, Deeply. And I'm thrilled that I have a story in it!

The anthology contains 24 specially-selected stories from bestselling authors including Adele Parks, Katie Fforde, Carole Matthews, Miranda Dickinson and many more - and the eBook edition includes 10 additional stories!

You can buy the ebook here, but if you'd just like to buy the 'chunk' that contains my story (shared with Maureen Lee and Cathy Hartigan), you can buy it for a bargain basement price of £1.59 from my Amazon page. 

My story is a historical - the first I've written. It's set in Calcutta in 1939, at the outbreak of the war. The heroine is an eighteen-year-old who has been abandoned in a Scottish boarding school by her parents for most of her young life and whose life is just coming good when she is summoned to India.

I'd be delighted if you'd give it a go!

A CELEBRATION OF AWARDS (AND READERS) by Gill Stewart

A selection of recently short-listed titles

A while ago I made a comment on this blog about some awards being  ‘…presented by literary…  writers to other literary… writers’, not necessarily for books that readers want to read.  So today I want to celebrate the shortlists for the Romantic Novelists Association Romantic Novel of the Year awards.  These are awards selected by readers for readers!

There are 5 categories for the awards:

Contemporary Romantic Novel

Epic Romantic Novel

Historical Romantic Novel

Romantic Comedy Novel

Young Adult Romantic Novel.

The winner of each category then goes forward to compete for the overall title of Romantic Novel of the Year, for which there is a very generous £5,000 prize.

It’s great to see this celebration of romance, of the readers and the writers, and already the awards have had quite a bit of coverage in the press.  I have to admit, being a long-time member of the RNA and now on the committee, it could be said that I am slightly biased here.  But hey, we’re all biased in some way.  And I just want to celebrate a list of books that are so diverse and so enjoyable.

The shortlists include a first novel by an eighteen-year-old Welsh A Level student (‘The Kissing Booth’, Young Adult), a 22^nd novel by a man writing under the pseudonym Jessica Blair (‘The Road Beneath Me’, Epic Romantic Novel).  They take in well-known, multi-published names such as Jenny Colgan (last year’s winner) and Veronica Henry, up against much less well known ‘newbies’ like Carol McGrath and Liz Harris.  They also include books from relatively new publishing houses ChocLit and Accent Press alongside long-established ones such as Penguin.  It’s great to be able to celebrate this range of writers, publishers and unashamedly romantic novels.

Winners of each category and the overall winner of the Romantic Novel of the Year will be announced at the Awards Ceremony on 17^th March 2014, with the awards presented by Darcey Bussell CBE.  More details can be found on the RNA website http://www.romanticnovelistsassociation.org

Champagne Moments

by Jennifer Young

Image by BerndtF, public domain 

Less than a year ago, things weren’t looking good on the writing front. Wait; that’s an understatement. Things were looking pretty damn desperate.

I was struggling to write anything at all. Then I’d have a great idea and set to, yet somehow between my head and the page those sparkling phrases lost lustre and appeared in front of me in different shades of grey (but not, alas, fifty of them).

Years ago I took on board the eternal writers’ advice: never give up. I clung to it in my struggle. I sent things out. They came back. I sent them out again, over and over, until the game changed when I received a damning crit for a piece of work that I’m still deeply attached to. Heroine? A spoilt princess. Hero? Who’d want to read about him? Villainess, motivated by unjust hatred for our heroine? I can quite see where she’s coming from. Most damning of all, I was advised to go and find someone who actually knew about writing to read my work before putting it out to anyone else; I might learn something. How my writing buddies, Jenny and Dianne, must have laughed at that one!

After that I lost my motivation. I wrote…nothing. On the rare occasions when those sparking phrases popped into my head, they came with the ball and chain of that phrase; who’d want to read that? In short, I gave up.

My last piece of work was still out there, clinging on in cyberspace with two publishers. inevitably, the next thing that came in was a rejection. But it was a rave rejection. It told me all the things they liked about it. That didn’t hurt quite so much but I still knew that I was never going to put anything else out, ever again. Then, in late July, came the email. They liked it. They wanted to publish it. I went away on holiday to think about it and I came back believing. (And, incidentally, with a host of fresh ideas.) I decided to accept.

A couple of weeks after that I was on my way to meet friends for lunch. Outside the venue I stopped for a second to check my emails - and there it was, the final confirmation that my novel was to be published. In four months I’d gone from nowhere to somewhere. Six months further on, the book’s out and there’s no stopping me writing.

Fittingly, the friends I was meeting were all writers and we were meeting not just for lunch but to drink champagne. Believe, that’s my advice. Oh, and find some writer friends. And, most importantly of all, drink champagne with them on the day your dream comes true.


Thank You For The Music is published by Tirgearr Publishing.

A Costly Mistake, by Mary Smith

I am sure most of us are aware of the consequences of using pictures without checking the copyright and/or usage permission. I remember a couple of years ago getting in a bit of a panic over an image I used on this blog. I can’t remember where I came across it but it fitted the theme of my blog post and it seemed to be on a free site. When someone asked where I’d found it I panicked and pulled the image. It actually turned out the person wasn’t checking up on whether or not I was avoiding paying a fee but because she wanted to use it on her blog.

It taught me a lesson about checking the royalty/fee situation thoroughly before using any image. And I was lucky; I learned my lesson without any financial cost – unlike author Martin Crosbie. When he posted a feature on Indies Unlimited ‘Getty Images sued me for using one of their images’ and I asked if it would be all right to share his post on Novel Points of View blog.

He agreed and here it is:

“When I needed a cover for my first novel I purchased a few from several different royalty-free image sites, and then picked one. As I was perusing images, I saved a few in case I wanted to buy one of them later on. Months later, I inadvertently used one of those saved images in a blog post I wrote for my personal website. There was a small ‘Getty Images’ watermark in the corner of the image but I didn’t see it. Getty did though.

“The image ran on my site for six months and then I received a letter from Getty’s legal department claiming I owed them $1200 for copyright infringement. After several weeks of discussion the amount was reduced to $500.

“I do things a lot differently now. My cover designer charges less than half of that to put together a professional cover for one of my books and I don’t buy any pictures for my blog posts, or anything else for that matter. It was a lot of money; I paid Getty though. I’d used their photo and I owed the money, and when I checked their website $500 was the amount they were charging for that very expensive image. So, if you think your little blog isn’t being examined, think again. As their letters to me pointed out, even if you’ve purchased the image elsewhere, or don’t understand copyright laws, you’re still liable. I don’t put a lot of effort into my website, I devote my time elsewhere, but one of Getty’s bots saw the picture and they were happy to send me a letter. Be extremely careful that the pictures you’re using are either free images or that you’ve paid for them.”

I know I’ll be extra careful about using images – how about you?

Many thanks to Martin for letting me share his post. Martin Crosbie was born in Scotland and now lives near Vancouver, Canada. He is the author of the Amazon best-seller My Temporary Life and his self-publishing journey has been mentioned in Publisher’s Weekly, Forbes Online Magazine, and Canada’s Globe and Mail newspaper. He has also published an excellent guide to ebook publishing called, How I sold 30,000 eBooks on Amazon’s Kindle: An easy-to-follow self-publishing guidebook.  Learn more about Martin at his website http://www.martincrosbie.com or his Amazon author page

Cooking up a new book, by Jenny Harper

Making cakes is a great displacement
activity from writing!
Photo Ardfern, Wikimedia Commons.

I'm back at the beginning again. I've spent the last couple of months editing, rewriting, proofing and scaling the vertical cliff that was my learning curve for uploading to Kindle and CreateSpace. Now it's time I started another book.

Part of me is itching to write! Another part is groaning, because I know that the next three or four months are going to be frustrating to the point of head-banging.

Why? It seems to take me an age to settle on a good idea, create and get to know my characters, add in the kind of complexity I like in my books, go off down half a dozen blind alleys, rename the main characters, change the plot ... well, you get the picture.

I envy writers like fellow NPoV blogger Jennifer Young, who comes up with loads of great plots with apparent ease! For me, it's hell.

'Just relax and the ideas will come,' I'm told. Wrong. Just relax and I'll find myself making cakes, seeing friends, watching telly, going for walks – all very pleasant, but not contributing much to the ideas pot.

Having said that, of course, those great dinners with friends, all those places visited on walks, or city breaks, or holidays, provide lots of material for characters and locations, and I know my writing would be poorer without them. But still, I'm like a dog with bone - I get hold of an idea, then have to worry away at it, turn it that way and this, chew it over, rearrange its shape and structure, until it's finally something I'm happy to embark on.

My recent experience of preparing my books for Amazon taught me that a great one-paragraph blurb, combined with a two-line trailer really focuses the attention on the core of the story. I was determined not to move on to developing the idea until I got these two elements honed to perfection. After all, they will be the teasers that will intrigue readers and draw them to my book. The trouble is, what seems a good idea on Day One, somehow seems to have shifted by the time I get to Month Six!

I do have the beginnings of an idea. I think I'll note it down and put it in a sealed envelope somewhere safe. Remind me to look at it again in six months and I'll confess just how close/adrift the novel is by then!

Please tell me there are others out there who struggle with this first part of a new book too!

A SENSE OF PLACE by Gill Stewart

A sense of place is (in my opinion) essential in a good novel.

But how to get that sense of place, to evoke a world where the reader wants to be or, indeed, feels they have been?  There are many examples of books that have done this successfully, obvious ones like Hogwarts in the Harry Potter series or Winterfell in Game of Thrones (although you wouldn’t necessarily want to be there!) but many other books that have a charm that stays with you long after the reading do so because of their clear sense of being there.

 So how can we do it?  Here are a few suggestions:

Know it - Either the place should be based on somewhere you are very familiar with, or you have created a fictional world that is complete and about which you know every detail (where this alleyway joins that road, what the tiles on the roof are like, what the people eat). If it helps, keep photographs and maps to hand.

Describe it – By this I don’t mean paragraphs of description, I mean small snippets dropped in when appropriate, but giving that essential backdrop to the story and the characters’ actions.  The reader needs to know how it feels to be here, what it smells like.  Think of the little details – is the road cobbled or tarred?  Where does the sun rise, the wind blow from?  What people eat and drink and wear is a crucial part of bringing this new world to life – but again, don’t labour these points.  Drop them in a little at a time.

Refer back to it – Refer back to things that have already been mentioned, as you would in life.  The balcony that A stood on when she first saw B, the water in the lake was so much warmer than…  This gives the sense of continuity, of this being a place that has existed and still does.

Make it integral to the story – the setting can add to the story, almost like another character, influencing the plot and the characters’ actions.

As a writer, getting to know this secret world is one of the joys, something that grows as the book and the details of the world grow.

I'd be keen to hear of suggestions and hints that other people have.

New Year, New Me...

by Jennifer Young

It’s official. I’m excited.

It isn’t the fact that it’s the New Year and all my resolutions remain unbruised by the practicalities of everyday life, or the fact that now the Christmas and New Year festivities are out of the way I can finally get stuck in to the pile of books, paper and digital, that I’ve been accumulating (I’m already well into Jenny Harper’s Face The Wind And Fly - and loving every line).

No, what makes me excited is the fact that I have a cover for my novel. It’s not news that Thank You For The Music is due for publication in February (the 20th, since you ask, but more of that in weeks to come). This being my debut novel, the process is wholly new to me and so it’s shot through with excitement like a trifle is with sherry - and it’s just as intoxicating.

My publisher, the wonderful Tirgearr, asked what I’d like on my cover. I filled in a form, in great detail. People, objects, setting, plot summary, character descriptions - all variables which feed into a convincing picture of what the book is about.

I confess, I was nervous even as I pressed the send button on my email. What if I didn’t like it? What if I hadn’t described my characters in enough detail, or if I’d failed to get my ideas of them across? Imagine what a humiliation that would be for a writer. And, worst of all, what if I looked at the cover and felt that crushing blow that you feel when you stumble on the face of your favourite radio presenter and find, to your horror, that it doesn’t fit the voice?

My fears, as it turned out, were unfounded. A short while ago I was sent a couple of options and asked to choose, and to make any comments. The waves are there, lapping on the shore as I imagined they would; and my hero and heroine, in a tender embrace, hide their faces from the reader and leave enough to my imagination.

Either draft would have done but one stood out for me - and that’s the one you see here. You’ll see much more of it as the launch date approaches. Publication feels real, at last…