Talli takes on Amazon!

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It is always satisfying to take on the big boys by playing them at their own game. That is what Talli Roland is trying to do by recruiting as many bloggers, facebookers and tweeters as she can to publicise her debut novel THE HATING GAME.

Help THE HATING GAME hit the Kindle bestseller list at Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk by spreading the word today. Even a few sales in a short period of time on Amazon helps push the book up the rankings, making it more visible to other readers.

Amazon.co.uk: http://amzn.to/hNBkJk

Amazon.com: http://amzn.to/hX2ieD

No Kindle? Download a free app at Amazon for Mac, iPhone, PC, Android and more.

Coming soon in paperback. Keep up with the latest at www.talliroland.com.

About THE HATING GAME:

When man-eater Mattie Johns agrees to star on a dating game show to save her ailing recruitment business, she's confident she'll sail through to the end without letting down the perma-guard she's perfected from years of her love 'em and leave 'em dating strategy. After all, what can go wrong with dating a few losers and hanging out long enough to pick up a juicy £2000,000 prize? Plenty, Mattie discovers, when it's revealed that the contestants are four of her very unhappy exes. Can Mattie confront her past to get the prize money she so desperately needs, or will her exes finally wreak their long-awaited revenge? And what about the ambitious TV producer whose career depends on stopping her from making it to the end?

The Penny Plain Mysteries!

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Hugely excited to get The People's Friend this morning (Nov 27th 2010 edition) and to find the first part of MY SERIAL on the opening two pages.

Doesn't it look fabulous? The idea came way, way back when I was clearing out my mother's house and found a strange jigsaw puzzle rolled up in her games box. I blogged about it here. The answer to my mystery was sadly prosaic, but what a great story it could have been, I thought, and the idea made itself at home in my head. While I wrote a two-part gentle mystery, I fell in love with my characters so started a second adventure. I sent The Jigsaw Puzzle out into the world, it came back, I sent it out again. People's Friend loved it but wanted a longer serial so I finished the next two-part mystery and tied all four together with an over-arching story.

And even though I say so myself, it's jolly good. Go on, go and buy the magazine today.
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National Short Story Week

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This week is National Short Story Week here in the UK. All flavours of short stories are being celebrated, from literary to flash, but I'm just going to talk about the ones close to my heart.

Yes, that's right... the truly terrific ... WOMEN'S MAGAZINE SHORT STORIES.

Womag short stories probably have the largest readership of any in the genre, yet they get the least press. They are carefully crafted, they have no wasted words, they are perfect to pick-you-up, to make you laugh, to make you think and sometimes to make you cry. They fulfil a need, in these busy days, for a tiny escape from the daily round.

Back in the early days of the Romantic Novelists' Association, women's magazine fiction editors were larger than life and lions in their field. [There is a whole chapter on the importance of the magazines in Fabulous at Fifty, well worth buying.] Writers of short fiction were lauded (as indeed they should be, she says with no ulterior motive, dear me, no). And yet the market for magazine fiction is now shrinking to make space for paying adverts and celebrity interviews.

Fortunately, some of our best known magazines are still buying good quality stories and still delivering them week after week for a ridiculously low price to a huge section of the buying public.

God bless 'em.

Psst... and on Wednesday this week (24th November) the inestimable People's Friend is publishing the first episode of my serial The Penny Plain Mysteries. Put it on your shopping list for the next four weeks.
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RNA Winter Party 2010

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What can I say? The 2010 Romantic Novelists' Association Winter Party was just fantastic. So many of my favourite people all in one place. This was the culmination of a year of celebrations for our 50th Anniversary and in particular tonight we were concentrating on one of the things the RNA does best - the New Writers' Scheme. The RNA is the only professional UK writers' association to actively promote good writing in its genre. Every year a handful of writers make it from unpublished to published. Every year one of those writers is awarded the Joan Hessayon Trophy for best début novel of the year.

 

NWS Winners over the years

This year we gave shiny rosettes to all the NWS graduates present. It made for a VERY sparkling occasion.

NWS graduates

Katie Fforde

Diane Pearson

Jan Jones

Giselle Green

Norma Curtis and Trisha Ashley

Jane Smith with niece Daisy

There were speeches, draw winners, wine, canapés,  champagne, talk and laughter. Lots and lots of laughter. And that, of course, is one of the other things the RNA does so well.

Catherine Jones, Tony Mulliken, Roger Sanderson

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We will remember them

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Flanders meets the High Street
by Jan Jones

Standing in Waitrose at eleven o’clock
All life suspended
One woman reaching for a steak&kidney pie
An old man gripping his wire basket
Me with my trolley as thousands of cheerful, too-fast soldiers
March before my eyes in jerky shades of grey

PALs: joining up together, fighting together
Dying together.
A village wiped out. A community blasted.

The cashiers sit down again
People move
Two minutes of life, gone in the blink of an eye.
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The Kydd Inheritance - first sighting

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Eeek! Haven't blogged for ages. I'll get some retrospective posts up in the next few days, but just now I'm overjoyed at the first sighting of my next Regency The Kydd Inheritance.

It is available for pre-order at the Hale book site at a whacking 30% discount!

The Kydd Inheritance is the prequel to Fair Deception and Fortunate Wager, my Newmarket Regencies.

Here is a tiny snippet of the scene that goes with the cover...

As they penetrated further across the heath, the gloom deepened and the rain increased. All the lurid romances Nell had ever read unfurled their pages in her head. She was not laughing at the idea of highwaymen now - there were no other travellers on this stretch but themselves and every bush seemed to hold twice its complement of shadows.
    “Nell,” said Hugo’s low voice after perhaps ten minutes of her seeing ghosts behind every tree. “I do not wish to alarm you, but I believe there to be a horseman in that copse ahead of us to our right.”
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