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Showing posts from January, 2012

Chocolate Book Review no. 5 - The Companion of Lady Holmeshire by Debra Brown

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I'm going to come right out and say that I loved this book. It was well written, meticulously researched, and beautifully brought together at the end with one shock revelation after another. It made many great moral points about social injustice without being either preachy or irrelevant to the modern reader, and it was very satisfying to see some of the more arrogant characters get their comeuppance. I thought the dialogue was especially good, and I warmed to Winnie and Wills from the beginning. I particularly loved the handling of the romance between servants Simon and Anne, and I found myself really liking Genevieve too, despite being convinced that I shouldn't because she was betrothed to Wilfred, our dashing hero. I enjoyed how that little love triangle worked out. To be completely fair I usually try to find something to criticise in the books I review, but was hard pressed to do so here. I did get confused by the large number of characters and occasionally had to go bac

Why Being a Part-Time Writer is a Full-Time Job

No time to blog today, I have to: Link to my new book ( No Escape ) on Shelfari so that it appears on the widget on my blog Update my Facebook page with a reminder to enter the competition to win a copy of No Escape. Read a recently published book and post reviews on Amazon, Shelfari and Goodreads so that the author will return the favour and give me some publicity for No Escape. Add an Amazon link to my blog so that readers can buy No Escape. Fix a problem with my author website which has lost the side menu. Update said website  to announce the release of No Escape. Arrange to have my profile put on LDS Author Network Send a chapter of a current work-in progress to a beta reader Beta read two novels and report in detail to the authors regarding suggested improvements. Research the cost of antique suits of armour for Blackwood, a work-in-progress about an antique shop. Organise a launch party for No Escape. Look into the possibility of doing a blog tour to publicise No Es

A Resolution

It's new year, and amidst the usual resolutions I make at this time every year (lose weight, go to bed early, keep a journal, stop making resolutions I never keep) I have added a new goal: I'm going to write a minimum of 500 words a day. That's easy actually. An email to my boss, shopping list, couple of Facebook comments, submission letter and I'm halfway there... No? Right. Because when I say write I mean write. As in, creatively. As in, novel. And that's a bit more difficult. In fact, I'm starting to feel (on only day 3) as though I've signed up for a whole year of NaNoWriMo purgatory. But I've printed out my "Don't Break the Chain" chart  so that I can keep tabs on my goal, and I'm going to be reporting my progress weekly on my Facebook page so that I can be accountable to all my lovely readers. And 500 words a day means that I can write two 80,000 word novels a year which would seem to be somewhat conducive to keeping the pu