The Tour Continues ...

Tuesday 21st February Sarah's Book Review
Thursday 23rd February Novelicious
Friday 24th February Trashionista
Tuesday 28th February Book Babe
Friday 2nd March Lou Graham's Blog
Wednesday 7th March Choc Lit website

The Writing Room

See mine today at the Novelicious blog.

The Blog Tour, Week Three

First I have to congratulate three, yes three, fellow Choc-lit authors on making the short list for the RNA RoNAs. The Awards night on 5th March will be a nail biting affair. Linda and I will be nail-biting on 17th May - but that is another story.
Release date, and launch night for Never Coming Home (Waterstones, Cardiff) are getting close. More on that next week.
In the meantime the continuing tour dates are below --  extracts, me waffling and competitions!
If you drop in and leave a comment, you might win something.

Friday 17th February Debs Daydream http://bit.ly/1zi2K1
Tuesday 21st February Sarah's Book Review
Thursday 23rd February Novelicious
Friday 24th February Trashionista
Tuesday 28th February Book Babe
Friday 2nd March Lou Graham's Blog
Wednesday 7th March Choc Lit website

Stop Press - Want to see where the books (mostly) get written? My 'Writing Room' will be featured on Novelicious on 21st February.

Still Touring

As I'm guest blogging all over the place in the next few weeks, I'm confining myself to information only on Evonne On Wednesday.

Many thanks to Jera's Jamboree and the Nut Press for letting me have a fun time, and talk myself hoarse. Shaz and Kath - you are stars.

The tour continues on Friday at Love Reading, Love Books. There have already been two chances to read snippets from Never Coming Home and to win a copy of the book, plus a Wispa bar. There will be more.

In an update to the schedule I will now be making a guest appearance on the fabulous Trashionista blog around the time of the release date, which is 8th March.

Please check for any further updates - and if you haven't caught up with the tour yet, you are very welcome to drop in - even better, be brave and leave a comment. You might win something!

Friday 10th February Love Reading Love Books http://bit.ly/r2hVSX
Tuesday 14th February Katy Little Lady http://bit.ly/9SrNPP
Friday 17th February Debs Daydream
Tuesday 21st February Sarah's Book Review
Thursday 23rd February Novelicious
Tuesday 28th February Book Babe
Friday 2nd March Lou Graham's Blog
Wednesday 7th March Choc Lit website

Never Coming Home - on Tour

This is it - what may be my first and last opportunity to pretend to be a rock-chick.

The 'Wispa it ...' blog tour will be kicking off on Friday on Jera's Jamboree. 'Wispa it ... ' (Wispa, like the chocolate bar) will be featuring snippets from Never Coming Home, just to whet your appetite, along with give aways and interviews and Q&As based loosely on the theme 'How did I get here?'.

The programme is below - and I hope you'll be able to drop in to some or all of the dates to enjoy the tasters of NCH and find out a bit more about my writing history and about the book.

I'll post any updates and links as soon as I can.

A great big thank you to all the lovely bloggers who are hosting me - it's going to be a lot of fun.

Friday 3rd February  Jera's Jamboree  http://bit.ly/yLWYr5
Tuesday 7th February The Nutpress http://bit.ly/9jmjPE
Friday 10th February Love Reading Love Books
Tuesday 14th February Katy Little Lady
Friday 17th February Debs Daydream
Tuesday 21st February Sarah's Book Review
Thursday 23rd February Novelicious
Friday 24th February Trashionista
Tuesday 28th February Book Babe
Friday 2nd March Lou Graham's Blog
Wednesday 7th March Choc Lit website

Jacobean Inspiration

Blogging about villains on the Choc-Lit site on Friday got me thinking about my own villainous impulses.  American author Karen Rose claims that accidentally reading Edgar Allen Poe at a tender age put her on the path to writing nail-biting thrillers.  With me it was theatre, and specifically the play The White Devil, which I saw in London as a young teen.  I've seen the play a number of times since, notably a performance in Greenwich, with Rupert Everett and Ciaran Hinds amongst the cast, but that early experience is the one that fixed the idea of what made a villain firmly in my head.  I'd gone to see the play with a friend, because a TV actor, on whom we had a severe crush, was starring in it.  Neither of us knew what we were getting into -- I don't know what impression it made on Diane, but I loved it.  Webster is not the sort of play that you would choose for an impressionable adolescent’s first trip to grown-up theatre, - decadence, corruption, excess, evil, dense poetic language -- I didn't understand all the poetry, and still don't, but the sheer fascination of the words and the performances had me hooked.  It simply glittered, and I was entranced.  Just about everyone in the play is a villain of some sort -- Duke, assassin, Cardinal, courtesan. 

Say the word villain now, and it automatically conjures up in my mind sword fights, poisons, women in rich Renaissance costume, eavesdroppers hidden behind tapestries -- the whole works.  And that, I realise, is what is in the back of my mind when writing a thriller -- a Jacobean body count – why have one body when you can have a whole stage full -- and a villain with endless fascination, but no redeeming features at all.  The body count in Never Coming Home is 10 -- and some of them very nasty ends indeed. Where it comes from I don’t know. Perhaps I’m tapping into whatever prompted Webster, with his parade of evil, and Shakespeare, with the last act of Hamlet and a stage littered with corpses.  It's gruesome, scary and a heck of a lot of fun to write -- well not fun, exactly.  At least …

On a much lighter note, today, 25th of January, is Saint Dwynwen’s day.  Not much is known about her, except that she has an affinity to Anglesey, to wells and to the sea and has become the Welsh patron saint of lovers – Wales’s answer to Saint Valentine. 

Happy Saint Dwynwen’s day!

Interview in Writing Magazine

Just a quick reminder that I am talking about being a debut author to Adrian Magson in the February edition of Writing Magazine. The one with Sophie Kinsella on the cover.