In Praise of Books

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Old Books by Jan Jones

soft feathery pages
fat with words
overflowing with memories

how long since I read you
since I absorbed you into my consciousness
to be gently, insidiously, edged to the archive shelves of my mind

you fit easily to my hand
fall open as I blow off the dust
I smile
and curl into the library chair
melting back in time
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Gadding about!

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Goodness me, I am all over blogland today.

First you can catch me on the sparkly new Robert Hale Ltd blog talking about romance and my #RoNAs shortlisting.

And then head over to Historical Romance UK where I sigh wistfully over Dan Snow and contemplate the Painted Hall at Greenwich.




Comments on both sites - or even here - welcome!
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Written on the Wind - part one

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Hooray! The first part of my new serial for Woman's Weekly is out this week!

Written on the Wind is about Annie Farrow - an artist who makes beautiful, stylised mobiles. Her dream is to create larger installations whilst supporting herself with her artwork, but this seems unlikely until her great aunt leaves her a house on the edge of the North Yorkshire moors.

However, Annie discovers that the wild seclusion of Moor End House doesn't quite provide the uncomplicated lifestyle that she'd thought it would.


Issue is March 6th 2012 - on sale 1st March!

(And yes that IS David Essex on the cover)

Interview at RNA blog

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Today I am being interviewed over at the Romantic Novelists' Association blog. See you there!
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RoNA Rose Shortlisting!

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The Kydd Inheritance shortlisted for the RoNA Rose 2012!



The news is now out and I am so, so, so thrilled to be able to announce that I have been shortlisted for the Romantic Novelists' Association awards for the third year running!

This year, the awards have a new logo and a new name: the RoNAs. There are six awards being made - Contemporary, Epic, Historical, Romantic Comedy, Young Adult and the RoNA Rose for category and hardback-only romance.

The Kydd Inheritance is a Regency love story set amidst secrets and skullduggery. Nell Kydd has to outwit her dangerously creepy uncle, reinstate her dangerously adventurous brother and come to terms with his dangerously attractive friend, Hugo Derringer.



The winners in each category will be announced at a wonderfully posh "Bubbly and Bites" event at One Whitehall Place on Monday 5th March. It would be a terrible waste not to buy a new frock for it, yes?


I'm delighted to see so many of my friends on the 2012 shortlists. The full lists are as follows:

Contemporary:

Chances, Freya North, (Harper Collins)

Christmas at Tiffany’s, Karen Swan, (Pan Macmillan)

It Started with a Kiss, Miranda Dickinson, (Avon (Harper Collins))

Summer of Love, Katie Fforde, (Arrow (Random House))

The Untied Kingdom, Kate Johnson, (Choc Lit)

To the Moon and Back, Jill Mansell, (Headline Review)

Epic Category: 

Crimson China, Betsy Tobin, (Short Books)

Jubilate, Michael Arditti, (Arcadia Books)

That Liverpool Girl, Ruth Hamilton, (Pan MacMillan)

The Kashmir Shawl, Rosie Thomas, (Harper Collins)

The Lantern, Deborah Lawrenson, (Orion)

Historical Category: 

A Gathering Storm, Rachel Hore, (Simon & Schuster UK)

Daughter of Siena, Marina Foriato, (John Murray)

Highland Storms, Christina Courtenay, (Choc Lit)

Perhaps Tomorrow, Jean Fullerton, (Orion)

The Noble Assassin, Christie Dickason, (Harper Collins)

Romantic Comedy Category: 

Lizzy Harrison Loses Control, Pippa Wright, (Pan MacMillan)

Please Don’t Stop the Music, Jane Lovering, (Choc Lit)

The Look of Love, Judy Astley, (Transworld - Black Swan)

Who’s Afraid of Mr. Wolfe?, Hazel Osmond, (Quercus)

Wrapped Up in You, Carole Matthews, (Little Brown Book Group - Sphere)

Young Adult:

Angel Fire, L. A. Weatherly, (Usborne Publishing)

Artichoke Hearts, Sita Brahmachari, (MacMillan’s Childrens’ Books)

Dark Ride, Caroline Green, (Piccadilly Press)

My So-called Phantom Lovelife, Tamsin Murray, (Piccadilly Press)

RoNA Rose: 

Flirting with Italian, Liz Fielding (HMB Riva)

A Christmas Knight, Kate Hardy (HMB Medical)

Ordinary Girl in a Tiara, Jessica Hart (HMB Riva)

The Kydd Inheritance, Jan Jones (Robert Hale)

The Dangerous Lord Darrington, Sarah Mallory (HMB Historical)

Winning the War Hero's Heart, Mary Nichols (HMB Historical)

Further information can be found at the RoNA Awards site and the Romantic Novelists' Association.

The 'Write A Great Synopsis' blog tour lands...

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The synopsis - love it or loathe it, every writer has to tackle one some time. I really don't find them simple and nor do most of my writing pals, so I was delighted when my friend Nicola Morgan casually announced on Twitter one day that she thought she might have a go at a How To...

Not only that, she's done it and jolly good it is too! So I thought I'd ask her a few questions.

 

Jan: Hi Nicola, welcome to my blog. I know you are on a whirlwind tour, so I won’t keep you long. Thank you for sending me Write a Great Synopsis. Definitely a keeper, and I enjoyed all the very valuable advice, but a few questions occurred to me as I was reading through it.

Nicola: Hello, and thank you for letting me visit!  Is that a Botham’s of Whitby Landlord cake I see on the table?

Jan: Er, yes. Do cut us both a slice. Oh, you are. [Pause for satisfied chomping] Where was I? Oh yes, in your acknowledgements you thank everybody who has ever moaned about the stress of writing synopses for giving you the idea to write this book. Did you really not know that lots of people had problems writing them?

Nicola: I actually really didn’t. There was never a sudden moment of awareness, just a gradual realization that everyone seemed to complain about doing them. Want to know a secret? Just to keep people happy, I used to pretend I hated them, too. I didn’t want to be like that teacher’s pet who loves weekly maths tests. Then I decided I wasn’t going to be a teacher’s pet, just an enthusiastic teacher!

Jan: Very glad you did! Like you, I adored doing précis exercises at school, but I also enjoy filling a whole book with words. I often think writers hate doing a synopsis because we are unwilling to admit that our wonderful characters, complex plots and witty words can be reduced or cut at all, let alone condensed down to a single page. Do you think that may have something to do with it? What would be your response?

Nicola: No, I think that’s an ex-post argument. I’m not sure why it would be so bad to admit that our complexities can be distilled. I think the problem really is that we’re so close to our book that we can’t see what to leave out. We both love our book too much and yet don’t trust it enough to let it stand on its own – like a parent who won’t let a son or daughter be independent. We’re too emotionally attached. The difficulty is that we do need emotional attachment in order to do a good job of distilling the book, but we also need distance, in order both to omit the right stuff and also to see the whole picture from an outsider’s viewpoint.

Jan: You are probably right. Now, in the book, you say: “The tone or voice of your book is conveyed seamlessly by the language of the synopsis.”  This is where I get stuck - how to make it so when a synopsis is third-person present tense narration and most novels, er, aren’t?

Nicola: Now, Jan, I know that you’re a good enough writer to do this without thinking, so you are just playing devil’s advocate, for which I thank you!  

[Jan: Ha! Little does she know] 

Nicola: Conveying tone by language is writing – without that skill, a writer has no voice, and writing a synopsis is only writing. I don’t see difficulty in creating a light tone (for example) in a synopsis for a light-toned first-person narrative and I think it would be the natural thing anyway. You wouldn’t write the synopsis in heavy, ultra-formal language if your novel was a modern comedy, would you?

[Jan: er...]

Nicola: The point I was making is that the voice or tone of the book does need to be suggested in the synopsis, not by saying “My book is hilariously whimsical” but by perhaps using the odd phrase of hilarious whimsy in the synopsis. It should come naturally, once you know that’s what you’re meant to be doing. In WAGS, you’ll see several examples – both in the two synopses that I offer myself, and in the sample synopsis by M Louise Kelly, which I specifically say I’ve chosen because it “nicely shows how to convey the tone of your story in the synopsis.”

Jan: Thanks very much - and the best of luck with the book. Where can people buy it?

Nicola: Thank you! And thank you hugely for letting me come and sit myself down here today. The cake was delicious. People can buy it (the book, not the cake) on their choice of ebook site – I’ve tried to gather various links on the relevant page of my website but the Amazon UK link is here. Remember, you don’t need a Kindle to read a Kindle book or even any e-reader at all: with the free software, they can all be read on laptops or even phones, if your eyes are that good! NB: it’s at a silly cheap price till the end of January!

Nicola also has a fabulous draw going on  at the moment. All commenters below (by Feb 15^th) will be entered into the Big WAGS Competition, with chances to win a critique of your synopsis by the Crabbit Old Bat herself! One comment per person on each blog – though you can add to your chances by commenting on the other posts on the tour. Details of all stops on the tour will appear on her blog Help, I Need A Publisher as they go out.

Happy synopsis-writing!

Penny Jordan

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This is going to be a hard post to write. Yesterday I attended the funeral of friend and writer Penny Jordan. Penny was 65, but looked and acted and had the drive and outlook of someone far, far younger. We were members of the same email group, to which she was posting right up until the day we heard that she had been taken into hospital gravely ill.

It was cancer. We'd known she had 'boring tummy trouble' for quite a while, but no one had any idea how serious it was. She hadn't wanted it widely known, because she didn't want to be treated any differently to normal.

Penny always knew what she wanted. She was a perfectionist in her home and in her writing and in the wonderful parties that she threw. She was also modest and unassuming. These twin facets of her character were reflected in her funeral and the gathering that followed. There must have been something like two hundred people in the very handsome St Mary's Church, Nantwich. Wintry sun flooded through the stained glass to light up the brickwork with unexpected colour. Everyone in their best - not necessarily black - as Penny had asked. There were family, friends, neighbours, writers, editors, publishers, representatives of the RNA, of her local chapter and email groups, other people Penny had worked with over the years.

The service was simple, but uplifting. A compassionate vicar, poems read by her nieces, heartfelt singing, the coffin - absurdly slight for such a hard-working, dynamic person - mounded with white roses.

And then afterwards at the elegant restaurant she often went to, with good food, good wine, good company.

I believe she was with us, slipping in between the guests, just checking all was well. Rest in peace, Penny. You will never be forgotten.

Penny wrote as Penny Jordan for Harlequin Mills&Boon and as Annie Groves for HarperCollins. She was awarded a Lifetime Achievement star by the Romantic Novelists' Association in 2011. 
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Wet Sundays

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I haven't posted a poem for a while, so here's one for the weekend. When my kids were younger, we used to spend a lot of time at the swimming pool!

Rainways by Jan Jones

Hurrying along the rainways
Mums with bags and children shouting in front
Passing posers from the squash courts pretending it’s dry
Kids in threes, rolled towels
Oldest one hand tight on money

Then

Inching delicious, past grave babies slowly rotating
Plunging silk ripples, sea-person hair
Lightflight fantastic
Oiled limbs
Untrammelled
Blue laughter, blue laughter, blue laughter

Children scramble free
Restless to do everything
Pirate slide, bubble seats, giant floats
Warm water, cold water, blue flume, black flume

Detached on the side, half-smiling
Girls whose swimsuits never get wet
Ankles dangling

And in the middle, Sunday fathers
Centred on their vanished world
Buying love, attention, anything on the menu
Desperate for a fleeting touch, hauling minutes out to hours
Fixing this pain in their memory
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A Sense of Perspective

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This was my birthday loot - gorgeous, eh? A whacking great crate of booze.

Except it isn't, of course. When seen in perspective, it is an elegant small crate of liqueur chocolates.

Which made me think - there are times when everything happens at once. I feel a bit off-colour, perhaps, or a piece of writing has taken longer than I expected, and all of a sudden the small jobs are all bumping into each other and spilling off the To Do list and events seem to spiral out of control.

But today I heard some grim news about a friend that made all my clicketty, fidgetty worries fall silent.

So this year I'm going to keep things in perspective. I'm going to widen my field of vision and decide what is important at any one time.

And I'll start with a liqueur chocolate, that pencil and the next scene in the serial-in-progress.

Happy balancing act to you all.
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Birthday roses and ginger brack

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When my mother was alive, she used to give me flowers every week. Partly this was to say thank you for taking her shopping and running her around. Mostly it was because she thought they brightened a place up and besides, she liked buying flowers.

Since she died, I've tended not to buy flowers for myself. Not sure why, it just felt slightly wrong. Now and again, though, when I see some particularly pretty ones, I feel a sharp prod in my back and a voice in my head telling me to stop messing about and for goodness sake put them in the trolley.

Which is why I bought these today for my birthday. I could feel the approval as I went through the checkout.

And because it is my birthday, I am also eating Ginger Brack and drinking tea. She would have approved of that too.

[Ginger brack from the wonderful Bothams of Whitby]

A different kind of launch!

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Yesterday I went to the launch of Beryl Kingston’s new novel from Hale:  Off The Rails about George Hudson of York. Born in 1800, Lord Mayor of York for three terms and known as the 'Railway King' because of his assiduity in becoming chairman of as many Railway Companies as possible, he was a colourful and not always fiscally responsible character. Indeed, his creative accounting led to his being imprisoned later on in his career.

The launch was held in York's Holy Trinity Church with its Georgian box pews, giving a semblance of privacy to the worshippers - and as we discovered, cutting off the worst of the draughts! It was lovely for me sitting in the pews and imagining what my own characters might get up to in the semi-privacy. Some of the pews were large family ones and some were a lot smaller. Certainly hands touching when sharing hymn books and feet rubbing against each other would not have been an impossibility.

Beryl Kingston with 'George Hudson'

Ahem. Back to Beryl's launch. The pulpit is a central one (giving a landscape feel to the church rather than a portrait one) and the ‘difference’ in this launch was that a local actor used the pulpit as a focal point for a dramatic monologue by ‘George Hudson’ himself, romping entertainingly through his timeline. I shall, of course, read the book, but the dramatic content brought the man very vividly to life and will enhance the experience.

The mulled wine and sausage rolls that followed were more than welcome on a very cold day!

[Many thanks to Holy Trinity and Mike Jarman for photographs]
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Penny Plain - final part

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The final part of Penny Plain is now out. All the loose ends get identified and tidied away neatly, just as they should.

I'm going to miss seeing the illustrations each week

A Wonderful Coincidence

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The story behind Part Three of this year's Penny Plain Mysteries is one of those  serendipitous coincidences that we are told never to use in our writing, because no one would believe it. But this one DID happen, so I did use it - albeit in a fictitious manner.

Earlier this year, when I was writing the second series of Penny Plain, I received an email through my website from Betty, now living in Canada, to say that she always had People's Friend sent to her from the UK and had thoroughly enjoyed the first Penny Plain story.

Betty in 'them thar' days

She went on to say that she had particularly liked the unusual jigsaw-code-breaking strand, and mentioned that back in the 1950s she had worked on aircraft crash data, trying to establish the weak points in the new aeroplanes then being developed.

At which point I leapt off my chair shouting "Yes, yes, yes!" and "FABULOUS!" and "I don't believe it!" Because - as I immediately emailed back to her - I was at that very moment writing the new series of Penny Plain which included a mysteriously crashed plane from the 1950s!

We have since kept up a regular email correspondance, and I was so grateful for the easiest research ever, that I wrote Betty - in very fictionalised form - into this week's episode.

Whetted your appetite? Good - go buy it.

Penny Plain - episode two

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The second part of The Penny Plain Mysteries is out today. This episode centres on the rather worrying goings on at Fellside Farm. I love the way the illustrator has captured a typical Lake District farm with the hills in the background.


And the ice cream? What does that have to do with the story? You'll never know unless you buy the issue.

Penny Plain rides again!

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Where is the year going? I delivered the second Penny Plain Mysteries serial back in the spring and thought of the November publication date as months away. Which it was, of course. So I forgot about it and got on with other projects.

So imagine my surprise when I opened up the first page of this week's People's Friend to find this! (Several other people in my aisle of the supermarket were likewise surprised. One lady rushed over thinking I was having a minor heart attack.)

It's the first time I'd seen the illustration and I love the way the artist (Ruth Blair) has got the characters just right.

It's another four part serial involving - oh, let me see - 1950s aircraft, the Women's Institute... and ice cream. And an overarching mystery and a few other bits and pieces as well.

You'll have to buy it to find out. Just like the lady in the supermarket.
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