Panel at Lakenheath

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I haven't done any promotion for a while, so it was lovely to be invited to take part in "A Touch of Romance" at the library on Lakenheath Air Base in Suffolk last week.

After the nicest and most courteous car-search in history, my fellow panellists and I were made very welcome with tea and chocolate biscuits. I cleverly forgot to take my camera, but the room soon filled up with a mix of readers and writers. Everyone was attentive, laughed in the right places (thank you, you have no idea how encouraging that is) - and the questions were so interesting and flowed so well that we went way over our allocated time.

Even so, we barely scratched the surface when it came to research, developing characters and our own individual methods of writing. I think all of us could have talked for much longer!

Many thanks to Lakenheath Air Base library - and of course to my fellow Romantic Novelist Association members Louise Allen, Jean Fullerton and Roger Sanderson. I think we made a pretty good team!
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RNA Love Story of the Year 2011

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Woohoo! At last I can announce my sheer delight at being on the shortlist for the 2011 Love Story of the Year!

I was thrilled to be shortlisted in 2010 with my Regency romance Fair Deception - I’m stunned and ecstatic to have made the cut again this year with the sequel, Fortunate Wager!

Fortunate Wager is a story very dear to my heart as it is set where I live in Newmarket. I loved stepping back 200 years or so to find out what the town would have looked like and felt like then.

The Love Story of the Year is administered by the Romantic Novelists’ Association. The full shortlist for 2011 is:

Abby Green - "Bride in a Gilded Cage" (HM&B)
Jan Jones - "Fortunate Wager" (Hale)
Caroline Anderson - "Mother of the Bride" (HM&B)
Valerie Holmes - "Moving On" (Thorpe Large Print)
Mary Nichols - "The Captain's Mysterious Lady" (HM&B Historical)
Louise Allen - "The Piratical Miss Ravenhurst" (HM&B Historical)

To be in such company is an honour in itself, but the overall winner will be announced at the Pure Passion Awards Champagne Reception on Monday 7th March. The event takes place in the Gladstone Library at One Whitehall Place... and I for one can’t wait!
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Capturing the moment

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All writers are observers. We carry notepads, murmur into recorders, rattle fingers over netbooks. Which is all very well if you are scribbling overheard scraps of conversation, or if you are gifted enough to be able to produce spot-on descriptions with zero notice. (I'm not, by the way. We are talking blood, sweat and concentrated staring into space here.) But what if you want to capture the essence of a moment? Something that you can refer back to months or even years later. Something that takes you back to Yes, then, that was it, that was how I felt at that exact moment in time.

As I'm sure I've said before, I use poetry. It doesn't have to rhyme. It doesn't have to be grammatically correct. But done right it will have its own internal rhythm and it will have the right keywords, in the right order, to capture the moment.

Last night, waiting in the car park to give my son a lift home from the late bus, I saw something I'd never seen before. It was beautiful, scary, left my heart pounding in my mouth and was over in seconds.

So once it was settled in my head, over my last mug of tea, I wrote it into a poem. A tiny, reusable, time capsule.

This is an example. There was no time to film it.

Otherworld Running
by Jan Jones

After dark is a lawless world
of energy and dares
of scary, arc lit follow-my-leader
of grace
streamlined running
lithe darting
dodging
one-handed hurdling
trellis climbing
roof sliding . . .

Then, gone
all of them

as suddenly as they were there

melted away

The last bus rolls in
With yellow windows and solitary passengers

As I start the car my heart subsides in painful jerks to my chest
the echoes of slapping feet held suspended in my mind

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Things to lift the mood

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Yes, I know, they aren't remotely in season, but when it's a grey January day and you are walking head down against the drizzle past a market stall selling a pot full of your favourite colours, what else can you do but buy them?

Enjoy!

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1st Kydd Inheritance review!

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What a lovely way to be greeted on a grey Sunday morning! A Google alert to this review by the very fine Bookbag people.

Sue describes it as
"a splendid Regency romp with a heroine you will love for her acerbic tongue, kind heart and her no-messing attitude, be it bulls, uncles or Captains who are in the firing line"

and adds that
" I read it in one sitting so keen was I to find out how it all worked out, and just when I thought it was all going to work out very satisfactorily there was another twist in the tale and I was back on the edge of the seat."

I'm always grateful when people take the trouble to review a book. This particular one, coming unexpectedly on a grey day, has started a train of thought in my head which I'll muse over and return to tomorrow.

If anyone would like to order The Kydd Inheritance - either for themselves or through the library - Hale Books have a very attractive short-term offer on their website right now!
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New Year, new book

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It's nowhere near the end of the month, and look what arrived today! My copies of The Kydd Inheritance, that's what!

Aren't they lovely and shiny? I keep wandering past and stroking them.

This is the prequel to Fair Deception, and tells the story of Kit Kydd's sister Nell.

It is officially published on 31st January. If you order it from Robert Hale Ltd before then, you can buy it at an astonishing £13.29 (with free UK shipping) instead of £18.99 - the offer won't last long though, so be quick.
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Happy New Year!

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Thank you all for visiting during 2010. My 2011 wish for everyone is simply warmth, somewhere to rest your head, a slipper each and your very own Christmas toy.
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Penny Plain Pt4

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In all the busyness of Christmas, I have quite forgotten to blog about the final episode of my four-part Penny Plain serial.

If you haven't got the 18th&25th December double issue of People's Friend yet, you might want to look for it in the next couple of days before it vanishes off the racks.


I really enjoyed rising to the challenge of writing a serial. Next one in progress already!
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Happy Christmas!

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Having spent October and November in Christmas-denial (I get so cross when shops start decorating early!), the festive season has now suddenly snuck up on me. Unfortunately, a stinking cold has also decided to visit, meaning that I have never been less prepared!

However, the tree is now up

the cards are up

the lights are up

and even my mini-tree is on the kitchen windowsill.





Just the presents to go then. And the cleaning. And the shopping. And the cooking...

Hope you all have a fabulous Christmas!
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Penny Plain Double Issue

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Well, that was a surprise! Bought this week's People's Friend magazine and discovered that it was a double issue.

So, Part Two of the Penny Plain Mysteries is near the beginning on page 12

and Part Three is near the end on page 70


and Part Four won't be out until the 15th December!
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Gone visiting again!

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I've gone visiting again. Fortunately this did not involve putting on coat, boots, gloves, scarf and woolly hat because today I have been Norm-ed from the comfort of my own PC.

In other words, Norm Geras asks me some questions...
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Penny Grubb - The Doll Makers

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It takes a very talented person to hold a book launch in London on the snowiest day of the year and coinciding with a tube strike.

Fortunately, my Hale stable-mate Penny Grubb is also a talented writer, so there were plenty of people who turned up at the stunning Author's House (ALCS HQ) to celebrate the launch of her second crime novel The Doll Makers - including a colour-coordinated contingent from Robert Hale Books.

Ruby, Paola, Penny Grubb,  Nikki, Jan (me!)

Cracking book, Penny!
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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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