Summer Update

September already? Well, I hope you had a lovely summer! Here's what I've been up to ...   

Book Launch for Trust Me I Lie

My latest novel, Trust Me I Lie, came out at the end of June - and a huge thank you to everyone who bought it. I celebrated with Novelistas Ink in the usual way ...

There are more photos on the Novelistas' News Page.

And you can read an extract from Trust Me I Lie either on my website or on Wattpad.

Guest Blog Posts

Being Anne: The Enduring Appeal of Fairy Tales

My Reading Corner: Creating an 'Unlikeable' Heroine

Author Interviews

Becca's Books: Do I base my characters on anyone I know? Are there any particular themes I like to use? How do I choose my settings?

With Love For Books: Which of my own personal experiences end up in my book? If I could choose to be one of my characters, which one would I be? Where do my stories come from?

Simona's Corner of Dreams: What was the inspiration behind Trust Me I Lie? Did I always dream of being a writer? Which books have influenced my life most?

Upcoming Promotion

Finally, I'll be running a price promotion to celebrate my birthday at the end of September. Keep a look out for A Girl's Best Friend, which will be FREE to download from 20th September to the 24th, inclusive. All details/links here:

Never miss a post! See that little box in the left-hand column, near the top, that says 'Follow by Email'? If you add your email address, you'll receive my latest blog post almost as soon as I've written it.

Photos Copyright: 

Trust Me I Lie book launch: Cheryl Lang and Juliet Greenwood
Little Red Riding Hood: Fotolia

5 Random Things From My Desk

For this week's blog post I thought I'd write something completely different.    

I should be writing my new novel but yesterday afternoon I ended up tidying my desk instead (expert procrastinator, remember?) and, along with a forgotten bar of chocolate (still within sell-by date: yay!), I found a selection of random objects that to anyone else might seem totally weird.

Reno from Final Fantasy

I won Reno in a competition organised by one of my favourite authors, Anne Stuart. Anne used Reno as inspiration for one of her own characters in a book called Fire and Ice. She's blogged about it here. He usually sits on my tub of paperclips. I love him.

I've also got a Ninja Minion, a glow-in-the-dark polar bear and a large pink frog wearing a crown, but we won't go into that.

Hotel Business Card

This is an advert for the Waterton Park Hotel, where my husband stayed about a year or so ago. He had the  idea the photo would appeal to me because it's of a Palladian house built on an island in the middle of a lake, and he thought I might want to put it in one of my books! It was one of those really strange coincidences because he was unaware I'd just created a similar house (Hartfell) in Trust Me Lie - although in my book the house is a very modern one.

Postcard of Marilyn Monroe

I found this old postcard when I was sorting through some old photographs. It was sent to me over 30 years ago by my school-friend Tracey. She had recently moved away and would write to me every week with a Marilyn Monroe postcard - one of my favourite actresses. I kept all the postcards but this one somehow came adrift from the others and now sits on my desk.



Packet of Forget-Me-Not Seeds

If my friend Sophie Claire is reading this, she will not be pleased with me! These seeds were part of a goody bag from the launch of her book, My Forget-Me-Not Ex. Part of the goody bag included a cute little terracotta pot to plant them in, so I had no excuse not to do so.

Sorry, Sophie! I'll sow them soon, honest!




The English Housewife in the Seventeenth Century

by Christina Hole (1953)

I have lots of modern paperbacks piled up on my desk but this is a book picked up on my most recent trip to a second-hand book fair. I love second-hand book fairs, particularly the really old books with interesting inscriptions and pretty bindings.

But I bought this book because I love history but I don't know much about the seventeenth century other than the events of the Civil War. Here's an extract:

"Cottage women could not afford many candles, and for all ordinary purposes they relied upon rushlights which they made themselves ... The rushes grew wild in the water-meadows and under hedges, and the grease in which they were coated came from the scourings of the frying pan and the cooking pot. They were gathered in summer while they were green and kept in water until the housewife was ready to make the lights. Then the green rind was peeled off, leaving a narrow strip along one side. The next step was  to bleach the reeds by putting them out of doors for two or three nights and letting them soak in the dew, and afterwards they were dried in the sun. Then they were laid in long iron pans filled with melted grease, and when they were thoroughly coated and dried, they were hung in bark containers on the wall."

All that trouble to go to when you consider all we do now is reach out and click on an electric light!

Now, what weird and wonderful things are lurking on your desk?

My desk: The tidy version
(for the untidy version you need to click here)

Related Posts: 

Where I Write (for Novelistas Ink)

A Room of One's Own

Never miss a post! See that little box in the left-hand column, near the top, that says 'Follow by Email'? If you add your email address, you'll receive my latest blog post almost as soon as I've written it.

Trust Me I Lie (or, the true confessions of a writer on social media ... )

I've never been great at lying. If you're worried that your bum looks big in whatever you're wearing, I'm not the person to ask for an opinion. I'm also a blurter, so I've probably let you know before you've even thought to ask. Or, as my husband puts it, 'Louise, you have the subtlety of a breeze block'. It's one of the reasons I prefer the written word. I can go back and check how many times I've put my foot in it before I hit send/post.

Not me, obviously
(I need to have a nice photo here to illustrate
the post when it's auto-shared on social media)

But being a writer means I get to lie for a living. All those characters and events in my books? Totally made up. (You probably guessed that, right?) What a great life I have, drifting around in my pyjamas, drinking endless cups of coffee (actually, it's decaff), waiting for the muse to strike - when I'm not down the pub with my mates celebrating the launch of another book ... 

Me with Novelista Trisha Ashley

Yeah, right. 

Don't believe everything you read on social media, particularly anything tagged #amwriting. Because, obviously, I can't be writing if I'm on Twitter. And if I do have a writing day planned, just putting #amwriting in my status is enough to put a curse on it. I'll have some kind of domestic disaster and, instead of actually writing, I'll be lying in a foamy puddle trying to unblock my washing machine. Or one of my children will get sick (and then we'll all get sick), or something important will drop off my car and I'll have to get it fixed.

My real writing life is opening my laptop at 7.00 am (or earlier) and thinking 'I'm sure I was only here a couple of hours ago', and I probably was if I was on a deadline. My real writing life is having my laptop crash three times while I'm trying to do an essential update to my website. My real writing life is struggling with the tenth rewrite of the chapter-from-hell when I have the kind of migraine that I could quite cheerfully drive a stake through my head if I thought it would help. 

My not-quite-so-real writing life is smugly announcing on Facebook that I've written over 10,000 words that day and isn't that brilliant? Of course it is, I usually only manage 1,000 a day if I'm lucky. But some poor would-be writer will see that update and think I'm writing that amount every day. The same would-be writer who sees a photo of me at a book launch and thinks what a wonderful, glamorous life writers lead. (See puddle story). 

What else do I lie about? Well, there's my bio for a start. I used to have a beautiful view of Snowdon (famous Welsh mountain) from my window - but then we moved house eighteen months ago and now I have a beautiful view of the village bus stop instead. Doesn't have quite the same ring, does it? Although I can probably still see Snowdon if I go into my bedroom, stand on my dressing table and lean out of the window.

Beautiful view of Snowdon!
(one of those blue smudges ... )

Then there is the photo of my desk, which accompanies all those 'Where I Write' blog posts. All nicely tidied ...

Here's what it actually looks like right now (it usually looks worse). But I did dust first - I don't want you thinking I'm a total slob.

And then there's the photo of me, with make-up, looking all glamorous with my hair straightened to an inch of its life by a professional hairdresser. (When I try it, I just burn my fingers).

And here's how I look the rest of the time (taken yesterday on the webcam).

Yes, I really do look that harassed. And this is the first time I've used the webcam, hence the pained expression. And I hate having my photo taken.

So there you go, I'm a writer on social media.

Trust me, I lie.

Related Posts:

Writers Write (or, what I really do all day)

Trust Me I Lie is also the title of my latest book (see what I did there?)

When Milla Graham arrives in the picture-perfect village of Buckley, she tells everyone she’s investigating the murder of her mother who died eighteen years ago. But there’s already one Milla Graham buried in the churchyard and another about to be found dead in the derelict family mansion.

Obviously she’s lying.

Detective Inspector Ben Taylor has no life outside the police force. Even his own colleagues think he’s a boring stick-in-the-mud. But now he’s met Milla and his safe, comfortable life has been turned upside down. She’s crashed his car, emptied his wallet and is about to get him fired.

He knows she’s a liar because she cheerfully told him so.

Unless she’s lying about that too …

Amazon UK

Amazon USA

Never miss a post! See that little box in the left-hand column, near the top, that says 'Follow by Email'? If you add your email address, you'll receive my latest blog post almost as soon as I've written it.

Photo credits: Girl with fingers crossed: Shutterstock

New Book: Trust Me I Lie

In which I talk about the inspiration behind my latest novel.

Writing a book is like baking a cake. There is not just the one idea (ingredient) but several, all coming together to create the story. I had the original idea many years ago, while chatting to the crime writer Jessie Keane about the plot of her book The Make, in which the main character's brother ends up in a coma. And for some reason (I have no idea why - that's just how my brain works!) I thought of the classic fairy tale, Sleeping Beauty.

I've always loved fairy stories, particularly those with a darker edge, although I still prefer them to have a traditional happy ending! I blame my grandparents, who bought me two huge books of fairy stories when I was about six years old. Although I still own them, they are in a crate in storage so I can't show you a photo but oh, I did love them! I also owned the Ladybird versions, particularly Cinderella, which I loved because she got to go to the ball three times, in a succession of spectacular dresses. Yes, I know, I'm shallow: what can I say?

So, Sleeping Beauty + ballgown obsession = girl being found dead 'as though sleeping' in vintage Dior. This, for writers, is also known as the light-bulb moment!

The next ingredient (the location) popped into my head during one of my walks through the Welsh countryside near my home, where I stumbled upon a ruined mansion called Baron Hill, which looked as though it had come straight out of Sleeping Beauty. Although built in 1618 by Sir Richard Bulkeley, it was rebuilt in the late 1700s in a Neo-Palladian style. It was damaged by fire around the time of WW2 and has been left to become derelict. It is a very sad-looking place and, although there has been talk of restoring it, I feel it is far too gone to save it.

 

Although I've 'borrowed' part of the history of Baron Hill - built in the 1600s, and destroyed by fire - Baron Hill has been abandoned for far longer than the house in my novel.

When I started writing Trust Me I Lie I decided I was going to call it Something Wicked, but the more I wrote, the more I realised the title didn't fit. I'd also had the idea for a historical backstory, similar to my novel Breathless, but I soon realised that didn't work either. So I split the story into two books: the first one became my novella Something Wicked, the second became Trust Me I Lie. If you're a writer, I don't recommend doing this - I recommend properly planning your novel in the first place! (See my post, How I Write). But I've learned from this, and hopefully won't make the same mistake again. (Knowing me, I'll just make a whole load of new ones ... ) 

And the last ingredient? I moved to a village just outside Llandudno, where I came across these curious statues dotted around the town. Known as the Alice in Wonderland Trail, they reference the fact that Lewis Carroll's inspiration for Alice (Alice Liddell) once lived in the town. (And I've blogged about that here).

Any other completely random facts? Well, the scene where my heroine, Milla, finds two strange men trashing her sitting room is based on a nightmare I once had! And anyone who's read Nemesis might recognise Milla's apartment - it's the same one Alicia lived in before her marriage. And finally, if you want to see more photos of Baron Hill and the things which inspired me, be sure to check out my Pinterest board!

I hope you enjoy the book!

Trust Me I Lie

When Milla Graham arrives in the picture-perfect village of Buckley she tells everyone she’s investigating the murder of her mother, who died eighteen years ago. But there’s already one Milla Graham buried in the churchyard and another about to be found dead in the derelict family mansion.

Obviously she’s lying.

Detective Inspector Ben Taylor has no life outside the police force. Even his own colleagues think he’s a boring stick-in-the-mud. But now he’s met Milla and his safe, comfortable life has been turned upside down. She’s crashed his car, emptied his wallet and is about to get him fired.

He knows she’s a liar because she cheerfully told him so.

Unless she’s lying about that too …

Amazon UK

Amazon USA

Related Posts:

Alice's Adventures in ... Llandudno

How I Write

Ten Authors Who Influenced Me (or, you are what you read)

Never miss a post! See that little box in the left-hand column, near the top, that says 'Follow by Email'? If you add your email address, you'll receive my latest blog post almost as soon as I've written it.

Characters: What's in a Name?

In which I talk about how I find names for my characters.    

This blog post was prompted by three conversations I've had with my readers over this past month, about how I name my characters. Two pointed out I'd chosen the same name as one of their relatives (sorry, it's purely coincidental!) another queried why I'd named a character after a dog(!)

Like most authors, I have a book of baby names (although the only time I've ever used it was when I was trying to choose a name for my own children) but I try not to pick a name at random, even for the minor characters. The name has to mean something. I have more trouble with surnames - they are sometimes chosen at random. Luke McFadden, the hero from Why Do Fools Fall in Love, owes his surname to one of my husband's books on computer programming. I'm not the only author to do this. Ian Fleming took the name of James Bond from a book on birdwatching!

More recently I've been delving into my family tree and borrowing their surnames. Lydia Cavill, the police inspector in Nemesis, who also features in Trust Me I Lie, was the name of one of my several times great-grandmothers. Vines (spelt Vynes in Nemesis) and Groves (Nemesis) are also family surnames. Halfpenny (Breathless) was the surname of a lady I got chatting to in a Jacuzzi!

First names require a little more work. They have to suit the character who has taken up residence inside my head and, for me at least, they have to have some kind of meaning. Sometimes I do cheat - Shelby (Why Do Fools Fall in Love) was just a name I loved - at the time I didn't realise it was also the name of a car designer (and therefore a car!) As Shelby is not the kind of name that occurs very often in the UK, I felt I did have to give a reason for calling her that. So I decided her mother had been a huge fan of Hollywood movies, and gave Shelby three brothers: Harrison, Cary and Irving. As in Harrison Ford, Cary Grant and Irving Berlin (the man who wrote White Christmas).

To Joseph Halfpenny (Breathless) family comes before everything, so I had him name his daughters after his aunts: Phyllis, Selma and Connie - giving them overly 'old-fashioned' names to emphasise the point. (Sorry, if your name is Phyllis, Selma or Connie!) In Nemesis I had a character who was so eccentric she called her three children Summer, Autumn and Wynter, but in the final rewrite she was edited out - leaving me with three siblings called Summer, Autumn and Wynter, and readers perhaps wondering if I was the one who was eccentric.

And the character I named after a dog? Well, that would have been the bodyguard, Bruno, from Why Do Fools Fall in Love. And the idea behind that was that I kind of imagined him to be a human version of a bulldog.

Of course sometimes this method does land me in trouble. In my novella The Indecent Proposal I needed a name for a famous singer, but every time I created one I liked, I found (via Google) there was already a singer with the same name! My creations became sillier and sillier, and still there were singers out there with exactly the same name! Eventually the poor girl ended up being called Destiny Swan. Why is this a problem? Well, for my next book I've decided to use her as one of the main characters. There is no way I'm spending a whole book calling the girl 'Destiny'. She's going to have to be nicknamed 'Desi' - and lump it!

So, how do you choose your characters' names?

Related Posts:

How I Create Characters

I Need a Heroine

Tales of Smugglers and Seaweed

Never miss a post! See that little box in the left-hand column, near the top, that says 'Follow by Email'? If you add your email address, you'll receive my latest blog post almost as soon as I've written it.

Photo copyright: Fotolia

Music: Wings to the Mind

'Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything' - Plato

Yes, I know, I'm not usually in the habit of quoting Plato, but he sums up how I feel about music. I love music. My mother once made a comment about how I live my life to a constant soundtrack and she was probably right. (Mothers usually are; mine definitely is). Music follows me everywhere - in the car, at the gym, all around the house - and I always have it playing on the laptop when I'm working. Especially while I'm working.

And this is why:

It's a better class of white noise. You can guarantee that the exact moment I've crafted the perfect sentence, will also be the exact same moment workmen will begin digging up the road or someone's dog will start barking and the sentence is lost forever. Because music is constant, once I get into the story I'm working on even that sound becomes background noise and I don't hear it anymore.

Some people have comfort food, I have comfort music. Writing is my job, so I can't just wait around for some kind of Muse to roll up and inspire me, as appealing as that might be. If the story is going badly and I'm feeling particularly fed up, I'll listen to something loud and kickass to snap me out of it, usually by Pink. Actually, thinking about it, maybe this is why my heroines are usually kickass too ...

Music can help me set the right atmosphere. It's fairly typical (now bordering on traditional) for me to be working on a Christmas story during a heatwave and a summer one after I've been snowed in and the heating's packed up. I've long been in the habit of creating a playlist of about 12 songs for each individual book. What can I say? I'm weird.

The weather was so hot during the writing of Something Wicked, I had to take my laptop out into the garden just to get some fresh air. I was supposed to be writing about a sinister blizzard - while trying not to get sunburnt! I couldn't play Christmas music, because it wasn't a Christmas story, so I dug out some old Halloween tracks instead. People Are Strange (Echo and The Bunnymen) helped me get inside the heroine's head on her arrival in a new village, where the inhabitants, both past and present, are eccentric to say the least. The witchy parts of the story were light-hearted, so another track I had stuck on repeat was Frank Sinatra's Witchcraft - there's definitely no nicer witch than Meg!

Although occasionally the music does creep into the story ... I was listening to a Little Boots album while writing Nemesis. The lyrics to her song Remedy, about dancing with the enemy, was very much how Natalie felt about Bryn. Then, when I was trying to think up a name for the club Natalie visits, it ended up being called Remedy too.

... Randomly ... I was writing a scene for my next book, Trust Me I Lie, when an old Tom Jones track came on the radio and I had one of those lightbulb moments. It would be perfect for the scene - but dare I use it? You'll have to wait and see!

Finally ... Have you noticed how the best songs are, in fact, stories? OK, very short, tiny snippets of someone else's life, but they are proper stories in which you, as the listener, have to do the rest of the work to fill in the blanks and finish it - and perhaps create a whole new story of your own? I can't think of a better way to kickstart the imagination.

Can you?

Related Posts:

Let It Snow
Seeking Inspiration
Keeping It (Un)Real
The Distraction of Silence - a track-by-track list of the songs which helped to inspire Nemesis (a guest post for Roz Morris)

Something Wicked

OK, first let me apologise for the blog posts slipping back to once a fortnight but I am in the middle of moving house (being me, I've blogged about that here!). Something had to give and I'm afraid it was the blog - I'm assuming you'd all rather read new books than blog posts?!! Normal service will be resumed in November.

So today's post is going to be a little bit different - a cover reveal for my next book, Something Wicked. Isn't it great? It was designed for me by the brilliantly talented Ravven.

SOMETHING WICKED

Evil can be tempting …

Ten years ago Katrina Davenport washed up on a beach, with no memory of how she got there. Now she’s returned to find out the truth.

She’s taken over her aunt’s coffee shop at the notorious Raven’s Cottage – once the home of a 17th century witch. Some locals believe the cottage is haunted by Magik Meg and her demon lover, but Kat doesn’t believe in witches, or ghosts, or anything that goes bump in the dead of night. Every strange occurrence must have a perfectly logical explanation.

Unfortunately it doesn’t matter what Kat believes, because something wicked has returned to Raven’s Cottage.

And this time it’s come for Kat.

(Winter 2014)

INSPIRATION

I've been working on the novel after this one (Trust Me, I Lie) which is set in a new village called Buckley. Those of you who've read Breathless, will know about the legend of the smuggler Black Jack. So I thought Buckley should have its own legend too - a witch known as Magik Meg. There wasn't room in Trust Me, I Lie to tell her tale, and if I tell you any more I'll be giving away spoilers - but one of the characters from Breathless does make an appearance.

Something Wicked is romantic suspense, with a bit of humour and a hint of the paranormal. It is set in the middle of winter, although it's not a Christmas book - I just wanted to write about snow! But if you're the kind of person who likes to peek at your Christmas presents early, head over to my website where you can read the first chapter.

More:

Keeping it (Un)real - my blog post about how I created the locations I use in my stories

Seeking Inspiration

I made a joke on Facebook yesterday, about spending the afternoon untangling the synopsis of my new book, Trust Me I Lie. It has two timelines, so I meant that I wanted to make sure each flashback scene was in the correct place. It is easier to experiment with moving paragraphs in a synopsis, than it is to move huge chunks of text in a 100,000 word book!

My friend (and fellow Novelista), Valerie-Anne Baglietto, misunderstood and thought I was stuck and in search of inspiration. She kindly listed all the ways I could kickstart my imagination: Create a Pinterest board (she knows how much I love Pinterest), create a 'soundtrack' of inspiring music or, failing either of those, eat cake! (The Novelistas have a bit of an obsession with cake!)

Valerie-Anne and I apparently share some methods in common. I've already created a Pinterest board. And I've blogged about the inspirational benefits of Pinterest before (here). It is easy to dismiss Pinterest as a time sucker - pinning and re-pinning pretty photos of dream houses and cupcakes, but for a writer it's incredibly useful. For my new book I have pinned photos of the ruined house where my novel is set, which is based on a real place called Baron Hill. I have famous quotes, which sum up the character of my heroine, who has a different temperament to anyone I've ever written about before, and references to all those dark, gothic-style fairy tales which I love, because I have a character who illustrates them.

I have a soundtrack too - don't laugh! It's an incredibly useful way of plunging yourself right back into your story when you've been interrupted by the more mundane aspects of life, such as the household chores! My playlist for Trust Me, I Lie has an eclectic mix of tracks, including My Superman (Santigold) Sweet Dreams (Emily Browning) and Once Upon a Dream (Lana Del Ray).

What else do I do for inspiration? As I've said, in Trust Me, I Lie one of the characters illustrates classic fairy stories, so I've been re-reading some of the darker ones. You know, the stories which don't always end with a Happy Ever After, because they were supposed to have a moral? For example, Little Red Riding Hood (Le Petit Chaperon Rouge), as retold by Charles Perrault, was intended as a warning to young girls to beware of smooth-talking strangers.

I've been taking photos of locations - mainly spooky old houses and woodlands. I don't have a scene set in a graveyard yet, but I'm sure it's only a matter of time! I've created a new village - Raven's Edge, which was briefly mentioned in Nemesis. I've been brainstorming ideas in my notebook and discussing the plot with the Novelistas, who have an uncanny way of pointing out all my plot holes.

Inspiration? Not a problem!

But synopsis wrangling ...


Related Posts:

I Heart Pinterest (for Novelistas Ink)
Tales of Smugglers and Seaweed (the inspiration behind Breathless)
Music: Wings to the Mind


Never miss a post! See that little box in the left-hand column, near the top, that says 'Follow by Email'? If you add your email address, you'll receive my latest blog post almost as soon as I've written it.