Good News Week!

It's been one of those weeks - I'm happy to say that I've just signed the contract for a brand new novella, which will be coming out as one of Choclit's e-book line - Choclit Lite.  It's a bit different from what I usually write. Quite a bit lighter - crime, but no dead bodies at all. (Don't worry, the bodies will be back in the next one.) The novella is a little holiday from the dark stuff -  lots of fun chasing my hero and heroine around the Italian Riviera for 50,000 words or so. I can't give you a title yet as the publisher is thinking of changing it - until then, we're all in suspense.

The other big news was a complete surprise and I really mean complete. Last year my debut novel, Never Coming Home had quite a bit of success in some of the contests organised by regional chapters of the Romance Writers of America - ones for published authors, judged by readers, booksellers and librarians.

I didn't plan on entering Out of Sight Out of Mind, my 2013 paperback release, for any of them, because of the cost of postage, etc.  But my friend, the American author, Barbara Longley, who I got to know when we were both competing in the American Title contest, had entered her contemporary novel Far from Perfect for the 2013 Maggies - run by the Georgia chapter of the RWA - and won her category. Inspired by Barbara, I thought I'd have a go. I hadn't tried that contest in 2013. I had nothing to lose but the postage.

My entry went off, went through the judging, and a few weeks ago the finalists were posted. Out of Sight Out of Mind wasn't one of them. I was disappointed, naturally, but that's life.

But yesterday I got an e-mail from the organiser. There had been a glitch in the scoring, and Out of Sight Out of Mind was a finalist after all!

The Maggie Awards for Excellence have been given out by Georgia Romance Writers for over three decades. It is a highly respected award in the writing community. I'm thrilled and honoured to have been chosen as a finalist. 

As a taster for the book, the video is below.

The video for Out of Sight Out of Mind

Choc Lit and National Express - a Valentine Gift

I promised that I had something special to announce on Monday, and here it is. 

A very special promotion. 

A very special Valentine present.

Be one of the very first to read Out of Sight Out of Mind

Following other successful partnerships between Choc lit and  National Express, Out of Sight Out of Mind is to be available as an exclusive pre-publication download in the run up to 14th February - a Valentine gift from Choc lit.

From 3rd to 23rd February you can read the book, in advance of it's official release date. 

Find out more at   www.nationalexpress.choc-lit.com

To celebrate my second book, I've changed the wall paper for my twitter account to the Out of Sight Out of Mind cover. And my updated website will be unveiled soon. I'll keep you posted. 

It's here!

I'm holding a printed copy of Out Of Sight Out of Mind in my hand - and it's gorgeous. The book opens with my heroine, Madison, investigating a dark alley where she may have sensed an interesting presence - interesting to her, because she's a scientist who reads minds. The cover designer, Berni, has perfectly captured the sense of loneliness and menace that I was trying to convey in the opening pages. Of course, Madison does not stay alone for long, but her first encounter with Jay, the hero, is not exactly a conventional romantic meeting ...

A photo can show the look, and the glorious colour, but it doesn't show you that the white writing of the title is embossed, so that there is texture as well as colour. As you might have guessed, I'm rather pleased with it. Thank you Berni!

The book will be available in paperback on 7th March, but before that there is a very special promotion, celebrating the run up to Valentine's day. Drop back on Monday, please, when I can reveal more about it. At the moment, it's a secret.

In honour of book two, I'm planning to change my twitter logo @evonnewareham  to my fabulous new cover. (Wish me luck with that. I'll need it!) and my website is getting an update. I'll let you know when all that goes live. In the meantime, I'm going back to admiring the book. And maybe stroking the cover, if no-one is watching ...

Up Close ... in Uxbridge

I have a very exciting date on Thursday evening, at Waterstones in Uxbridge. I'm introducing Choc-lit's latest release, Up Close and its fabulous debut author, Henriette Gyland, at her official launch. Up Close is a romantic thriller and I have to say, as another author of romance from the dark side, it is nice to have some company down in Choc-lit's slightly creepy basement. Henri's book is set in Norfolk, has tons of atmosphere and a hot hero in a wet suit - what more can a girl ask for?

I'm especially looking forward to Thursday as I lived in Uxbridge for many years and still have friends in the area, although I have not seen some of them for quite a while. They are coming to the launch party, so it should be a really fun evening all round.

I'm looking forward to visiting old haunts too, on my brief visit, which will be especially apt as my second book, Out of Sight, Out of Mind, which is out in March, is partially set in Uxbridge. Although I must admit, I have taken some liberties with some of the geography. I'm planning to take the camera - so there should be a location tour for that book, on the same lines as the one for Never Coming Home. If you haven't caught up with that yet, click the link above on Pages, to learn more about the locations and the writing of the book.

So - if you are around in Uxbridge, you might see me out, with the camera. And if you're in the vicinity of The Chimes Shopping Centre from 6.30 onwards on 13th December, I might see you  at  the Up Close book launch.

But will they like it?

Second books are notorious. They're legendary for being difficult AND scary.

Why?

For the author, there's the problem of producing something as good, if not better, than their debut. They may be producing it to a deadline for the first time. They have to think of something new and different, but sufficiently similar, so that any fans they may have acquired are not disappointed. The first book - well, that may have been the product of years of work, that has been refined over time, at a leisurely pace, with no deadline pressures and with no-one but the author and a few critique partners to please. Not that critique partners let a writer get away easily, but you know what I mean.

But the second book? The second book is the proof that the first one wasn't just a fluke.

I'm pondering all this, because I am in the middle of editing my second book to be published, and am closer to it at the moment than I have been in several years. I'm not quite a typical 'second booker' in that Out of Sight, Out of Mind was written before my debut novel, so I haven't been producing it to a deadline. As an unpublished manuscript it was actually more successful in competitions, so theoretically it has just as good a pedigree as Never Coming Home.  

But - the new book is different. Never Coming Home is a fast paced thriller, with a high, and rather gory, body count. Quite where all that gore came from, I'm not too sure.  A lot of people have said how much they enjoyed it, and how much they are looking forward to the next one. Out of Sight, Out of Mind is a love story, and a thriller, but it's not the same as its predecessor.

For a start, it has a paranormal element. Both my leading characters can read minds. I like to think I've explored that phenomena as a challenge that sets them apart and which they have to learn to live with, but some people just don't like anything in their reading matter that isn't 'real'. I think Out of Sight, Out of Mind is more romantic than Never Coming Home, as most of the scenes are between my hero and heroine and the focus is very much on the development of their relationship, which is actually one of the hinges of the plot. It has a few deaths, but nothing like the number in the first book. At the opening my hero is destitute and homeless, not exactly conventional stuff. So - a lot of things are very different ...

I still love the story. I hope other people will too ...

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.

Scary ... in a good way.

There's sometimes a fine line between excited anticipation and fear. 
Think about it - accelerated heart beat, nervous swallowing, shortage of breath ...
A couple of things this week are disturbing my peace - but for good, or bad?
First, I got the email from the lovely Lyn, from Choc-lit, with suggestions for the cover of the next book, Out of Sight, Out of Mind. Waiting for the four sets of artwork to download takes forever - is a minute really that long? Will I like them? Will I hate them? Will I like the one everyone else hates? Will they look anything like my mental picture of the book? What is my mental picture of the book? How on earth do you illustrate a romantic thriller about mind reading anyway? I needn't have worried. Illustrator extraordinaire Berni has produced four designs to fall in love with, each one illustrating something elemental about the book. At the moment, I want them all. Whichever one ends up as the cover, I shall be happy. But having the cover reminds me that the really scary stuff will be coming next. Editing. 

One of the other sort-of-scary things that comes with being an author is talking to people. Lots of people. In groups. Public speaking. I'm off to the Winchester Writers' Festival at the weekend, and as well as listening to other people talk, in a series of lectures and workshops, I'll also be amongst the Winchester 'graduates' who will be mentioned in the Plenary session that kicks off Saturday morning at the conference. I know this, because it's there in black and white in the newsletter that accompanies the programme. My name! I still haven't got used to that yet. There should even be copies of Never Coming Home for sale at the bookstall. I hope I'll have the chance to say a few words at the Plenary. Two of them will be thank you. Winchester is famous for its one-to-one sessions, where quite a number of writers have found agents or publishers. I didn't get my break that way, but success in the many competitions that are part of the conference did huge amounts for my confidence as a writer.


That's another sort-of-scary thing - there will be many people attending that festival who will be scanning the lists of competition finalists when they go up in the foyer of The Stripe at lunch time on Saturday. The feeling, when you see your pen name there, is amazing. Walking-on-air-all-the-afternoon amazing. And then there is the awards ceremony, waiting for the winners to be called - accelerated heart beat, nervous swallowing, shortage of breath ... 

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.