Novelicious - The Female Fiction and Chick Lit Blog

Novelicious Undiscovered 2012 is Live!

Now you get to see why team Novelicious have been a bit giddy these past few weeks. Click on the picture to get all the juicy details about The Novelicious Undiscovered 2012 Competition!

Novel News - Katie Fforde Digital Short: The Undercover Cook

The Undercover Cook, a short story digital by Katie Fforde, has been released ahead of her next novel Recipe for Love, which is due out in March. Both books have a foodie theme. Yum!

The Undercover Cook is available on Amazon for 85p

Meet Emily, a young woman who dreams of being a prize-winning investigative journalist. Her first assignment is to a top restaurant where tempestuous chef Theo Milton reigns supreme. Very soon romance starts to sparkle amongst the pots and pans. And Emily finds there's more than cooking on her mind. 

Visit Katie Fforde's re-designed website

More about Recipe For Love (Out in March)

The Secret Dreamworld of an Aspiring Author: Novel News - Millie and the American Wedding by Anna Bell

Millie's about to reject the invitation to an American wedding from a long lost college friend Kristen when she accidentally agrees to be bridesmaid at it. Which doesn't seem too bad, what with the wedding being in New York and coming complete with bachelorette party, rehearsal dinner and all those American traditions seen in the movies. But then you add to the equation that she's slept with the groom, and her ex boyfriend Rob (the only love of her life to date) is going to be the best man at the wedding. And not only is he best man, but he's already married, and she's going to the wedding single.

And if that wasn’t enough for Millie there’s also the maid of honour from hell, Collette, bridesmaid dresses that don’t fit, maxi dress malfunctions and secrets from her college life that she wanted to leave firmly behind in the past and on US soil.

As Kristen gets ready for the best day of her life, Millie gears up for the worst week of hers.

So there you are, writer’s Tuesday readers. There is the synopsis of my e-book and you can buy it now on Amazon! I still can’t quite believe it, I keep bringing up the link to the site to see the lovely cover that Novelicious’s own editor Kirsty designed. I can’t quite believe that that is my book. It’s dead funny to see my author page on Amazon and to think I’m an indie author. Although to be honest, I’m still desperate to be a published author too, so I’m not going to give up trying.

Now this last week before publication has been far from calm. I started waking up in a cold sweat last week, panicking that I’d ruin a career in writing before I’d even started. Thinking that people would give me no star or one star ratings that would ruin my writing reputation and then no agent would touch me with a barge pole.  By the time it got to Friday I felt that I had gone completely mad. I mean, here I was on the verge of publishing an ebook and no one had read it but me. Yes people had listened to it, but no other human eye had read it. Yes, I know, you’re thinking I’m crazy. So I sent it off to my step dad, who proofread (and nudged me in the right direction) on a lot of my university essays. So I was preparing myself to get brutal feedback. I sent him instructions to read the first three chapters as a test sample. And then the email came back I’d misspelled the word ‘stared’ I kept putting ‘starred’. ‘That was it,’  I said down the phone. ‘That’s it,’ he replied. He also told me that far from chick lit being his cup of tea he was sucked into the story, but he stopped reading in chapter 3 as instructed in case he got embarrassed if it got ‘smutty’. And from then on I’ve been serenely calm and just so excited about the launch.

I want to say a huge thanks to all the lovely comments I’ve had on Novelicious and twitter encouraging me with the ebook – and if you read it DO let me know what you think!

Novel News - Jenny Colgan Cupcake Cafe Sequel Announced!

Hurrah! The sequel will be called Christmas at the Cupcake Cafe and as far as I know is set to be released in October of this year.

I am most excited to revisit Issy and her delicious cakes! How about you?

Visit Jenny Colgan's Website

Our review of Meet Me at the Cupcake Cafe

Jenny on twitter

 

Review - The Promise by Lesley Pearse

REVIEWED BY DEBS CARR

Belle Reilly is only twenty, but has survived a painful, brutal and terrifying past. She is now happily married to her childhood sweetheart, Jimmy, and they live with his uncle Garth and Mog, Belle’s surrogate mother, above the public house Garth owns and runs with Jimmy.

Belle has realized her dream to own a hat shop. She has built up a respectable business for herself as milliner to the ladies of Blackheath and the surrounding area. She is happy and hopes that the cruelty of her past is now firmly behind her. One day, Etienne, her rescuer and the man she fell in love when she was sixteen, walks into her shop. He has tried to keep away from the beautiful girl that captured his heart a few years before, but his guilt at the part he played in her past kept him away and from telling her how he feels. He has only come back to see for himself that Belle does have the life he believes she deserves.

Novel News - The Desperate Bride's Diet Club by Alison Sherlock

This is the chick-littiest cover we've seen in yonks! The concept is pure chick lit too. We cannot wait for this one.

Every bride dreams of looking beautiful on her wedding day. Doesn't she?

Violet doesn't. She is dreading it. In fact she can't think why Sebastian ever asked her to marry him. When they met, she was a size 14-16. Now she is size 20.

How will she ever find a dress which doesn't make her look ridiculous? And fat.

Dieting club New You! promises the answers. But things just go from bad to worse. It is time for Violet to come up with some solutions of her own...

The Desperate Bride's Diet Club is released on the 26th April. More here. (Amazon)

Novel News - A Message To Your Heart by Niamh Greene

We really enjoyed Niamh Greene's last book here on Novelicious and are excited to find that Niamh will be back in June with her new book, A Message To Your Heart. Not only is the cover perfectly whimsical and romantic, but the story sounds pretty magical too!

 Can't wait.

Literary agent Frankie Rowley is far too practical to believe in fairytales, or coincidences, or fate.

She's also far too busy to spend time with her family or friends, who all reckon the strongest relationship she has is with her smart phone. (And why not? At least it never judges when she cancels dinner for the millionth time.) So when she loses that beloved phone on a work trip to San Francisco, Frankie is totally distraught. How will she survive without it, especially when the worst PA in Ireland has been left in charge back home?

Meanwhile, Frankie's being stalked by a crazy Irish American, ignored by the author she's in the city to meet and played by a scheming boss with more on his mind than work. It seems like her perfectly ordered life is starting to crumble into chaos – especially when she begins to receive mysterious text messages on her replacement cell phone, messages that are most definitely not for her . . .

Frankie just doesn't know what to think. She definitely does not believe in fairytales, or coincidences, or fate. So why do all these things seem to believe in her?

MORE ABOUT A MESSAGE TO YOUR HEART

NIAMH GREENE'S WEBSITE

My Writing Room - Sophie Duffy

My Writing Room is a fabulous fortnightly event, in which some of our favourite authors show us where the writerly magic happens, and tell us a little about their writing life.

Today we have a nosy at the writing space of Sophie Duffy. Sophie is the author of The Generation Game, which Debs reviewed last year.

 

My Writing Room by Sophie Duffy

I have always written in bed. All my homework, O levels, A levels, first degree and Masters, were all done, studied and revised for in whatever bed I had at the time – the 2 foot 6 inch childhood bed, the dodgy-springed-ever-so-slightly-Tracey-Emin student  bed, the marriage bed. My bed is my office – it has all I need – a notebook, my phone, my laptop, Filofax, pen, Habitat blanket. And my dog to keep me silent company (not that she’s officially even allowed upstairs). Plus the room overlooks our garden and I can watch my kids doing dare devil stunts on the trampoline and in the distance is the sea – which I can hear in winter when the surf’s up and busy.

I started writing fiction about ten years ago when the kids were aged 3, 5 and 6. Spare time was scarce and I had to fit writing in where I could – while they watched Teletubbies and Blue Peter, while I was cooking tea, while they were busy with Lego and Barbies. I never had the luxury of writer’s block as there wasn’t time. I learnt early on to write in short bursts and I have never quite recovered those early years of mad creative energy. At the weekends I would retreat to bed and instead of catch up on sleep I would write. It’s all I could think about.

Now they are teenagers and I have longer stretches of time, I find other ways of filling it when I know I should be writing – my younger self would be telling me to get on with it and I should listen to her. But life changes. I’ve changed. Now I have the dog for company during the day and I go out for walks on the beach and wrestle with story ideas and character traits. But it’s still my bed I come back to.

The bedroom is not the tidiest but it is full of family nostalgia which inspires me; family is what I am interested in and what I write about. There are old photos of my brothers and me, long-gone family members, my babies. My grandmother’s Edmund Dulac illustrations cover two walls. Books and old papers are piled up on the floor next to my side of the bed. A chair lurks somewhere beneath discarded clothes that wait to be hung up again. I suppose my writing room reflects the kind of writer I am (chaotic). It also reflects my writing which is down-to-earth.

Now if I could just get the dog off my feet I could get on with some more...

VISIT SOPHIE'S WEBSITE