Novelicious - The Female Fiction and Chick Lit Blog

The Miranda Dickinson Book and Album Competition Winners

Yo. 

Here are the winners of Cesca's Miranda Dickinson competition, in which she gave two readers the chance to win a copy of Miranda's newest book, IT STARTED WITH A KISS, as well as a SIGNED copy of her album!

The winners are...

MARY WARD

and

SHARON GOODWIN

to claim please send your full name and address to kirsty@novelicious.com. 

Thanks to all who told us about their best ever kiss - there were lots of lovely entries.

To visit Miranda's Blog, click here!

Review - Highland Storms by Christina Courtenay

REVIEWED BY DEBS CARR

It's 1754 and Brice Kinross is slowly coming to terms with the loss of his sweetheart to his brother. When Brice's father asks him to leave his home in Sweden and return to Rosyth, the family estate in the Scottish Highlands, he is only too happy to do so. However, since the Jacobite Rebellion when the Highlanders were subjected to cruel treatment by the Redcoats, the locals don't take kindly to strangers and are suspicious when Brice returns to his Rosyth unnannounced. Under the direction of the foreman, Seton, a sly man with his own agenda, the Highlanders do not make Brice feel welcome and are relieved to see the back of him after his initial visit.

Marsaili Buchanan, the beautiful, young housekeeper at Rosyth has to fend off Seton's constant advances. She is determined not to let him have his own way and is guarded by her companion and bodyguard, a Deerhound called Liath, who does his best to keep Seton from getting too close to his mistress. She initially believes Seton's assurances that Brice is a traitor to their cause, but soon works out that Brice isn't the untrustworthy cad Seton insists him to be. She is aware that Seton has been creaming off the profits from the estate and Brice soon realizes this too.

Persuade Me - Competition Winner...

The winner of the copy of Juliet Archer's wonderful book, Persuade Me is...Margaret Powling.

Margaret, please can you email your address to me and I'll forward it to Choc Lit so that they can send you your copy.

Thank you to everyone who entered.

Winners - The Woman He Loved Before by Dorothy Koomson

  
The winners of the four copies of The Woman He Loved Before, Dorothy Koomson's brilliant new book are as follows:

Review post winner- Andrea Harrison

Novelicious Chats To... post winner - Zoe

My Writing Room post  winner - Mummy V

All 56 comment names into the hat winner - Mel Butcher

Please email your address to me at: debs (dot) carr (at) jerseymail (dot) co (dot) uk and I'll pop your copies in the post.

Congratulations and thank you for entering.

Review - The Woman He Loved Before by Dorothy Koomson

REVIEWED BY DEBS CARR  

Libby is in love with her handsome husband Jack. It wasn't love at first sight though when they first met at the car showroom, but they're together now, and happy. Or they are until they're involved in a car crash and Jack, who was driving and far less severely hurt than Libby, did something he can't forgive himself for. He has something to hide and knows that by telling Libby the truth, he's probably going ruin what they have together.

Libby is aware that Jack is still in love with his dead wife, Eve, and having seen a picture of their wedding day at his parent's home, she can understand why. He doesn't like speaking about Eve and Libby tries not to broach the subject, but when she's at home convalescing after the accident, she discovers Eve's diaries and as she secretly reads them, she learns the truth behind the woman who haunts their marriage.

All is not as it seems, Libby discovers, and as she reads on, she finds that she has far more to be worried about than the insinuations of the embittered policewoman who interviews her after her crash, and who had also been the investigating officer at Eve's untimely death several years before. Libby has to decide her best course of action, but it isn't easy when she's not sure exactly who she can trust.

This incredible story kept me spellbound from start to finish, and I know it's often written that something is 'unputdownable', but in the case of this book it really is. The twists and turns in the storyline had me gasping in surprise a couple of times and the ending made me cry.

It's a brilliant book and I'm thrilled that we have four copies to offer as a giveaway here at Novelicious. A definite 10\10 for me. Don't forget to leave a 'pick me' comment below to be in with a chance of winning one of the copies.

Novelicious Chats to... Dorothy Koomson

INTERVIEW BY DEBS CARR

Dorothy Koomson is one of our favourite authors and she's kindly answered a few questions I put to her.

1. The Woman He Loved Before is your seventh novel, can you tell us something about your road to publication?

I’ve been published for eight years now, so it feels a long time ago! I’ve been making up stories since I was about 13. I loved drama and fiction, so read and watched a lot of television from around then. (I’m tempted to dig out my old notebooks and give those early stories a read again soon.) When I got older, I thought more about trying to get my stories published. I sent out a couple out to agents and I’m really grateful that they didn’t get taken up because my writing has moved on so much from then, I’d probably cringe at the thought of some of them being ‘out there’.

 In 2002, I was working on the book that would become The Chocolate Run when I went to visit a friend in Leeds. Whilst I was there, I had the idea for The Cupid Effect. When I returned to London I sat down and wrote it. Because I could see the story so clearly in my mind, it was pretty easy to write. Originally I sent out the first three chapters to quite a few agents who all basically told me to go away. So I finished the book - I could do so without being too disheartened because I believed in the story. (That’s one of my biggest tips to unpublished authors – write a story you love and believe in because it’ll keep you going.) When I finished, I sent it out to agents again and got the same response: ‘Go Away!’

 So I sent it to a publisher. It landed on their slush pile and I heard from them three months later. I’d been considering giving up the whole writing thing by that point but my friend Janet (who is very much like Jess in The Cupid Effect) reminded me that I couldn’t actually do that. I write because I love it.

The day my life changed, I remember laying in bed, thinking: ‘I need a sign or something that tells me I shouldn’t give up trying to get published’. A few minutes later, the postman rang my buzzer and had a letter offering me a two-book deal! My life as a published author began at that moment.

2. When you begin a new novel do you start with the plot or with the characters?

I love writing about people so when I write a book I often start with the basic premise of the relationships and characters in the book and the detail of the plot grows from there.

For example, with The Woman He Loved Before, I originally wanted to write about a woman who feels second-best in her marriage and how a traumatic experience forces her to re-evaluate her whole life and her relationsip. As I planned out the novel, the idea of telling the first wife’s tale grew. This also involved unravelling what was going on in the first wife’s life that influenced her husband so deeply that he found it hard to get over her. When I hit upon the first wife’s big secret, I knew I’d found one of the core elements of the book. I find, when I’m writing, as soon as I find one of the core elements, the story pretty much reveals itself to me.

3. How long does it take you to write a book and can you tell us about your typical writing day?

It takes between nine months and a year to get all the text down on the page for a book, but longer in terms of researching, coming up with the idea, sitting with it, exploring it and then finally writing it. I do a lot of pre-story work in terms of mulling over the story to see if it’ll work as a novel. A lot of stories are a great idea and plot, but can’t be sustained as a novel – yet. I sometimes revisit themes and ideas to see if they’re ready to become novels if that makes sense?

I don’t have a typical writing day. I know some authors are very regimented and good about doing a set number of words and/or hours a day. I’m more disciplined in that I will sit down and write but not in any set way.

If I’m not actively writing a book, I’m usually reading and researching and working through the story. I manage my time like this: I wake up, mentally go over my ‘to do’ list at the top of which is usually ‘write next book’ and by the time I go to bed I find I’ve generally done the things that people have nagged me for the most. In between that I squeeze in research or writing scenes that have popped into my head. The nearer I get to deadline, the more writing I try to squeeze into the day, which usually spills over into night. When deadline looms I will cancel virtually everything and concentrate – night and day – on finishing, then editing and rewriting the book.

It’s not very organised in the traditional sense, but it works for me.  And that’s important for anyone who wants to become a writer, to find a system that works for them.

 

My Writing Room – Dorothy Koomson

POSTED BY DEBS CARR

We asked Dorothy Koomson to tell us a bit about her writing space and she very kindly agreed to do so.

Crikey! I feel a complete fraud doing this piece because I don’t have – and never really have had - a writing room. Or even a specific place I write. Apart from my bed. I write a lot in bed.

I didn’t stop working full-time as a journalist/Deputy Editor until after my fourth book, Marshmallows For Breakfast, was published, so I had to squeeze in writing whenever and wherever I could. That meant getting on the train, elbowing people aside to commandeer a corner seat to write on my 20-minute journey into London or even sitting in during my lunch-break wherever I was freelancing writing in my notebook.

I’m lucky in that I don’t need a special place to write. Ideally I’d be able to sit down, but if not, writing long-hand - as I often do – means I can still write if I’m standing up. If I’m in my bedroom or the kitchen or the living room, I’ll very often have the television on because I’m a complete television addict. (I was going to say I was committed to research, but that wouldn’t be the entire story.)

Review - The Scarlet Kimono by Christina Courtenay

REVIEW BY DEBS CARR

This is Christina Courtenay’s second book with Choc Lit Publishers, her first, Trade Winds was short listed for the Romantic Novelists' Association's Pure Passion Historical Novel Award 2011.

Taro Kumashiro is a Japanese warrior lord. He is powerful, wealthy and used to getting what he wants, but he is also brave, decent and incredibly attractive. When Taro’s sensei warns him about a red-haired, pale-eyed woman, Taro isn’t too concerned and believes his loyal retainer is simply being over protective and worrying too much.

Hannah Marston lives in Plymouth with her parents and brother. Her father has ambitions for her marriage and when she's told who he intends as her future husband, she runs away and hides on what she hopes is her brother’s merchant ship. She soon discovers that she was mistaken, but is looked after by Hoji-san, a kindly man who helps to keep Hannah (in disguise as a boy) away from the rest of the crew.

Interview with Margaret James, On Writing Historical Novels

 
Hello Margaret, thank you so much for agreeing to answer some of my questions for the site.

1. I’ve just finished reading, The Silver Locket and enjoyed it very much (I can heartily recommend it too). Could you tell us where you begin when writing a new historical novel? Do you start with the characters, or the period the story is set in, or something else entirely?

I start with the characters, always with the characters. I don’t quite know how it happens, but I suppose it’s a bit like having someone coming up to you in the street (or wandering into your mind) and saying: hey, write about me!

So then I want to know a bit more about my characters, and I start asking them a few questions. Rose Courtenay turned out to be a nicely-brought-up young lady living in Dorset in the early years of the 20^th century. What was I going to do with Rose, I wondered. The obvious answer was to send her off to have adventures, and with a world war looming it seemed likely she would want to take part in some way.

Once I’ve got my main characters sorted out, I start planning. I’m a great planner, and I like to have an outline to follow, even if I don’t follow it to the letter. I couldn’t write a novel without planning it first.

2. I’ve spent the last eighteen months researching and writing the first draft for an historical novel, which is set, coincidentally, during WW1, and although I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the research, I’m finding it a little difficult to ensure that I keep the story fluid whilst including the important historical facts. In your novel The Silver Locket you interweave the information so well that it’s absorbed without the reader somehow realizing it. I was wondering if you have any advice as to how you go about this?

I did some research into the sequence of events on the Western Front, which is where a lot of my story is set. I made a time line so that I knew when the key campaigns and battles took place. I read memoirs and biographies, Siegfried Sassoon’s poetry, and Robert Graves’s autobiography, Goodbye To All That. I chanced on a fascinating book by Paul Fussell called The Great War and Modern Memory, which really helped me to understand the mindset of people at the time.

Since this is a novel, not a history book, I didn’t tie myself too closely to historical facts, especially if they didn’t fit my story. My hero Alex Denham is in an imaginary regiment, some of the place names in France are invented, and I moved Alex and Rose around to suit my story line.

3. People of Rose Courtenay and Alex Denham’s class and era had upbringings and speak/act differently to how people of this present time conduct themselves. Was it difficult to write their stories so that the reader is inadvertently held in that period at all times?

I don’t think people in 1914 spoke very differently, although of course their slang was not the same. I didn’t make my characters sound old-fashioned, because I wanted them to be accessible to people today. Social etiquette was different, of course – I can’t imagine a young man of today addressing a woman of the same age as Miss Whatever until she told him he could use her first name!

4. Rose joins the VADs and Alex is in the infantry. How difficult was it to ensure all the details of, for example, where they could be stationed, how their uniforms looked, or how the hospital wards/trenches were run?

It wasn’t difficult at all, because there is plenty of documentary evidence available, and of course you can check almost anything on Wikipedia. I recommend a wonderful book called The Roses of No Man’s Land, a compilation of nurses’ and doctors’ memoirs made by the journalist Lyn MacDonald. I also read Vera Brittain’s Testament of Youth, which is full of information about how the medical care of troops was organised, and how the medical staff themselves managed to work effectively under such difficult circumstances.

I read some military manuals on the mechanics of warfare at the time, and now I feel I could probably conduct a trench raid myself! There are millions of photographs of nurses and soldiers which show us exactly how they looked. I spent lots of time in the Imperial War Museum just looking, and consciously (and subconsciously, I’m sure) absorbing masses of information.

Win! Twenty packs of gorgeous IN MY HANDBAG goodies!

WIN GORGEOUS GOODIES FROM IN MY HANDBAG!

  

The team from the fantastic women’s fiction newsletter, In My Handbag, are giving away twenty packs of gorgeous In My Handbag goodies, including stylish stationery and two terrific new paperbacks – Adele Parks’ latest paperback MEN I’VE LOVED BEFORE and Julie Cohen’s GETTING AWAY WITH IT!

 Headline’s In My Handbag monthly newsletter comes straight to your inbox bursting with news of the most fabulous women’s fiction releases and great competitions.

 Sign up for the In My Handbag newsletter here

To enter the competition, email marketing@headline.co.uk before April 21st with the answer to this question:

 What is the name of Adele Parks’ latest paperback?

 For more news and competitions, check out In My Handbag on Facebook! 

 TERMS AND CONDITIONS

Win! 5 Copies of A Secret Kept by Tatiana De Rosnay to Giveaway!

The fine folk at Pan Macmillan have said we can give away five copies of A SECRET KEPT to you lot!

A bit about the book -

 An incredible novel, full of the ambience and colour of Paris , with a dark family secret at its heart. Brother and sister Antoine and Mélanie are holidaying on Noirmoutier Island , France , when, while out driving, a memory about their mother upsets Mélanie so much she crashes the car. Antoine is unscathed but his sister’s injuries are catastrophic; her journey of recovery is mirrored by Antoine’s quest to uncover their mother’s secrets. Add to this an estranged wife, difficult teenagers, a mid-life crisis and a new lover and you have a wholly captivating story. Antoine is an architect so to see Paris through his eyes is to discover hidden architectural gems in one of the world’s most beautiful cities.

For the chance to win a copy of a book by Europe's bestselling female novelist just leave us a comment below (NOT ON FACEBOOK) telling us why you want to read A Secret Kept

UK only

Closes Friday 15th April 2011

Visit Tatiana De Rosnay's website

Win! 5 Copies of Lizzy Harrison Loses Control to Giveaway!

Hurrah! We have been lucky enough to secure five copies of this fabulous book to give away to you guys!

All you have to do to enter is leave a comment and tell us why you want to read Lizzy Harrison Loses Control.

The competition is UK only and open until next Friday when we will pick five winners.

Visit Pippa's blog!

You can follow us on Twitter

Or friend us on Facebook

Good luck!

Win! Goodie Bags from Ireland!

Thanks to the lovely people at Discover Ireland we have some fabulous Irish themed Goodie Bags to give away this week!

We'll be giving away one bag (including luscious chocolates and what some may say is the best tea in the world!) every day this week!

You can enter by

  Following Novelicious on Twitter and tweeting the following:

WIN!A lovely Irish Goodie bag by following @novelicious and RT this! http://bit.ly/ffX4i0

OR

Liking our Competition Status on Facebook!

Good Luck!

We'll be announcing the first winner tomorrow

Visit the Discover Ireland Website! 

UK ONLY! 

WIN! A Signed Copy of The Way to a Woman's Heart by Christina Jones

To tie in with our fabulous interview with Christina Jones, the lovely lady herself is offering one of our readers a fantastic signed copy of her novel!

The blurb of the book reads...

Cooking seemed like the perfect distraction - until a delicious chef was thrown in the mix ...Escaping from corporate city life into the heart of the Berkshire countryside, Ella Maloney hopes to find rural tranquillity and a chance to sort out the problems in her long-term relationship. On arriving, she realises tranquillity is in short supply, but welcomes the distraction her chaotic new life offers - until she meets devastatingly gorgeous, but equally attached, chef Ash Lawrence, and realises that he's maybe one distraction too many. And when Ella's favourite top-rated TV cookery programme - Dewberry's Dinners - comes looking for a venue to film their latest show, she pulls out all the culinary stops in an attempt to keep her mind on the task in hand (and not on the sexy Ash), but it's hard to keep your head when all around you people are losing theirs ...

Sounds brill, no?

All you have to do to win a copy of the book is leave a comment below, telling us about the most delicious meal you've ever had! The competition will be open until Sunday 12th December and a winner will be chosen at random. (UK ONLY)

Good luck!