Fairlights - the final episode

.

The fourth and final part of Fairlights is out now, in which the Fairlight once more comes into its own.

Before it can do so, however, Sorcha has to face every single one of her nightmares. And even then, it may not be quite enough to avert tragedy.

Happy reading...
.

Fairlights - part three...

.

Third part of Fairlights is in this week's issue of Woman's Weekly.

 In this episode, we find out some of what happened in the space where Sorcha's memory has gone missing. She also finds a set of accounts of the Fairlight (the beacon on top of the pele tower) which raise more questions than they solve.

Only one more episode to go now.
.

Popped out for a chat

.

I'm not here today, I've popped out for a chat with a splendid group of ladies known as The Romaniacs.

Do come on over and find out what they asked me.

I'm told there will be tea...
.

Fairlights - part two

.

Today's Woman's Weekly contains the second part of Fairlights (I know! Where did the week go?).

In this episode it becomes apparent that something is very, very wrong with Sorcha's memory.

Warning: contains open spiral staircase
.

Fairlights!

.

My new serial starts today in Woman's Weekly (12th February issue). It is set in a house on a cliff above a fishing village.

Sorcha Ravell's family has lived at Fairlights for generations - now Sorcha is moving back to turn it into a boutique hotel.

But when she gets there, all is not quite as she remembers...

My thanks go to artist Jane Human who has created Fairlights exactly as I imagined it. I was just SO thrilled when I opened my copy this morning and saw the artwork for the first time.
.

'Fairlights' teaser

.
Where does the time go? I've been struggling with a cold, but even so...

This is just a small teaser for next month's serial, to start in Woman's Weekly in the February 12th issue. It is the gatehouse at Roche Abbey and through that (mercifully locked) door is the most terrifying spiral staircase I've ever seen.

You can find out how I wove it into Fairlights next month...
.

Happy New Year!

.
Happy New Year!

Today I am over at the Historical and Regency Romance blog talking about Christmas reading material.

Wishing you all the very best of everything in 2013!
.

Merry Christmas!

.

This year's tree is up and decorated. It is about two foot shorter than in previous years (and that's without the foot I usually have to lop off to get it in the room), but we still managed to crowd all our tree ornaments on.

The decorations have been added to over the years. As well as the general ones, we each have 'our' special ornaments that we place - and woe betide anyone who tries to sneak them on first. Just one of the family traditions that binds Christmas together and keeps it working.

Some branches this year have several baubles dangling off them but we couldn't miss them out, now could we?

MERRY CHRISTMAS, EVERYONE ! ! !
.

Thinking back

.
So, in between peeling potatoes and watching last night's Led Zeppelin concert on television, I wrote this poem...






Wishing by Jan Jones

Listening to Led Zep
And wishing I was that girl again
And thinking of decisions taken
Or not taken

And wishing

Watching them grown up
Golden
Head of an irascible angel
And feeling the weight of the years
(but still fancying them, even now)

Old rockers...
Are just like me

And now they have experience in their voices
and richness in their movements
and a thousand different paths
and a thousand different lives
flash before me

And though I would never, never unwant my children...

I’m still thinking

And wishing

.

Remembering...

.

Flanders meets the High Street
by Jan Jones
 
Standing in Waitrose at eleven o’clock
All life suddenly suspended
 
A woman reaching for cereal
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.
So wrong.
 
The cashiers sit down
People move
 
Two minutes of life, gone in the blink of an eye.
.
 

The Lion

.
And here it is...

My quirky, lively story about a pampered cat, a put-upon niece, lack of amenities, artists' block ... oh, and a lion.

It is in the new Woman's Weekly Fiction Special (6 Nov-5 Dec), and I had enormous fun writing it.

This isn't a lion, by the way, it's Archer. And he isn't pampered at all, oh no.
.

Mansfield Park

.

Yesterday I went to see a new adaptation of Jane Austen's Mansfield Park for the Theatre Royal Bury St Edmunds. This is going to be a challenge, I thought. A four-hundred page book by one of the wittiest writers I know featuring a largely internalising heroine that takes me well over a day to read even knowing it so well - distilled into a two hour stage play.

But it was BRILLIANT.

A very few characters had melted away, a lot of thinking had been précised down into salient-point speeches, but what was left was pure, rich, essence of Austen. In a lot of ways, the very paring down of the text brought out the humour in the book. It certainly contributed to an instant identification of who each character was and what they were like.

Mr Rushworth declaiming

With a very clever, elegant set designed to suggest the Georgian era, the play flowed effortlessly from one scene to the next. The actors brought masses of energy and realism to their roles and I believed in each and every one of them. One of the lovely things was that the parts had necessarily to be doubled now and then, and it was evident how much the actors really enjoyed the light relief of portraying the raucous, shambolic Portsmouth household for a few scenes after the intense, restrained Mansfield Park itself.

Fanny Price

I can only applaud the stupendous acting from all concerned, the sympathetic direction of Colin Blumenau and the writer of the adaptation, Tim Luscombe. I didn't want the evening to end.

All in all, this was a fantastic production - it's on tour later this autumn, so go and see it if you possibly can.
.

Gone visiting...

.

I'm off visiting my good friend Kate Hardy today to congratulate her on her 50th book for Mills & Boon.


I shall be talking about serials and offering a slightly different prize...

See you there.
.

Life Imitating Art

.

One of the features of the Romantic Novelists' Association Conference is the annual Chairman's competition for the Elizabeth Goudge Trophy. This is only open to members of the RNA attending the conference, and usually takes the form of a chapter of a novel or a short story.

The 2012 competition was for a short story in which an animal played an integral part.

Being up to my eyes in conference administration without a single animal idea in my head, I decided to leave it for this year. But then this insane first line crept stealthily into my head...

Any writer will know what happened next. I abandoned the admin and wrote. And I have to say I felt MUCH better once I'd finished, even though it was a completely mad story.

It didn't win, but it did come fourth (after Alison Maynard, Judy Astley and, er, someone I've forgotten, sorry). So I expanded it a bit, polished it some more and sent it off to Woman's Weekly, who bought it.

So when you read the opening line, just remember that I WROTE IT FIRST

Pardon? You don't understand? What am I talking about? Oh, silly me...

The insane first line in question is:

"It's about the lion," said the woman on the doorstep.

and what was in the news on the bank holiday weekend just gone? That's right, a lion sighting in Essex...

Life imitating art, see?

.

summer song

.
Summer has reappeared and taken me by surprise. After a wonderful Romantic Novelists' Association Conference - of which more anon, since I have no photos of my own and will have to borrow from my pals, I have a poem for you...


SUMMER SONG by Jan Jones

Warm breeze on my skin
watering the garden in the last slow light
of evening

a dog barks
a child cries
the stallion in the field tempts the mares
still watching long-legged, awkwardly adolescent foals

and I am slow
and warm
and stupid from working through the haze of the day
half in my created world
half in summers long past
when I was invincible and laughing and willing
and the stallions came whistling

.