Updates and Social Engagements

I think it's time for a run down of what's happening in the run up to Publication Day for Out of Sight Out of Mind - and beyond.

First off, my website has had an update www.evonnewareham.com if you'd like to take a look.

There will be contests and competitions over at Choc Lit on the way to publication day, to win books and, of course, chocolate. Check that out at Facebook and on Twitter.

I'll be appearing on various blogs and review sites, talking about the book - updates on those nearer the time.

And as for personal appearances this year - I will be at the RT Booklovers' Convention in Kansas City in May. I first attended the convention in Pittsburgh, as a finalist in the American Title contest, and promised myself that I would be back when I was a published author. Well, that time has come - I will be one of a team of authors from Choc Lit who will be at the convention in May.

Also in May I will be at Crimefest, in Bristol, appearing on a panel entitled - Crime & Crossover: Different Genres, Different Audience? It's an international mix of authors who all combine Something Else with their crime - in my case, of course, romance. It sounds like it will be fun.

In September I will be giving a talk at the Tenby Festival - as Out of Sight Out of Mind is set partially in Tenby, it will be lovely to be there to be part of the celebrations.

I'll be posting more details of all these events, as they loom on the horizon.

In the meantime, please remember just one date
Paperback publication of Out of Sight Out of Mind - 7th March 2013.

The Journey of a Book

I can rarely pinpoint a single source for the idea that kicks off a book, so I don't know how I decided that I wanted to write a book about mind reading, which eventually turned into Out of Sight, Out of Mind. It wasn't the nuts and bolts of  thought transference that interested me, but the emotional life of the characters, coping with a 'gift' that set them apart and might equally be considered to be a curse. Even more, I wanted to look at how they would react to meeting the person who might be their soul mate, when they were afraid to reach out, because of past hurts. Also they both have secrets to keep. My hero, Jay, has an added complication as he has no memory, but suspects that there is something very nasty lurking in the parts of his mind that he can no longer reach.

The first drafts of the book were written over five years ago. At that time expert opinion suggested that there was no market for any kind of paranormal fiction in Britain, and that if I wrote it, I would never be able to sell it. When you write part time, around the day job, writing time is precious, and if you hope one day to be a published author you can't waste that precious resource on a book that no-one will want, however much you love it. Because of this, I did something that I rarely do, which is write out of order. I wrote the scenes that were clamouring to be written, got them out of my system, then put them away, with regret, in the infamous bottom drawer, where all half finished manuscripts lurk.

I don't know how long they were there. I went on to other things. I never forgot them, but I couldn't use them. Then I picked up a copy of Romantic Times magazine, and saw the call for entries in the American Title contest - paranormal entries. Was mind reading paranormal enough? The dictionary suggested that the paranormal is something outside the scope of regular science. Right - that was good enough. I got out all the bits of the book, sorted them into piles on the floor, and re-read them. I still liked what I had, so then it was a matter of linking, redrafting, pulling the whole thing together ...

Jay and Madison developed and grew  in the time I worked on the book, and showed me complex bits of their characters that I'd not previously seen. It was  wonderful to have an excuse to write an idea that had never really left me. And the result was Out of Sight, Out of Mind.  


And of course, now Britain reads paranormal, along with the rest of the world.

Update for readers of RT Book Reviews

Just a quick message for readers in the US and Australia - if you have a copy of the June issue of RT Book Reviews you'll find an update on what contestants from all five American Title contests are doing now. Worth a read for some great stories. And I'm there - right at the end of the article.

A Question

What do a homeless man with amnesia and a reclusive research scientist have in common?

Well - for a start, they can both read minds ...

And they might just be about to fall in love ...

And someone is defintly out to get them ...

They're Jay and Madison, the rather unusual hero and heroine of Out of Sight, Out of Mind the book that took me to the final of the Romantic Times Magazine's American Title Contest for the first time.

Now I'm thrilled to be able to say that Choc-lit will be publishing Out of Sight, Out of Mind as my second book from them, in the autumn of 2012.

As hinted above, it's a paranormal. Not the claws, paws, fangs, fins type, just two human characters, with human problems that are complicated by the paranormal power that they share. Both Jay and Madison have secrets. Unfortunately Jay can't remember what his are. But someone else knows, and that's where the trouble starts.

If you want to read a little more, please check out the 'Books' pages on my website.

It looks like 2012 is going to be a very exciting year for me.