Run Rabbit Run blog tour!

You can win stuff...just follow me!

I shall be talking about how I came up with the title, what makes Luke different from Harker, interviewing Sophie herself, and giving away chocolate bunnies. Sound good?

Monday 5th March: Jera's Jamboree
Monday 12th March Nut Press
Monday 19th March Katy Little Lady
Monday 26th March Book Babe
Monday 2nd April Lucie Wheeler
Friday 6th April Dizzy's Little Book Blog
Saturday 7th April Choc-lit Blog

Romantic Novel of the Year

Tomorrow, I'm off to London for the RoNAs, or the Romantic Novel of the year Awards. Yes, that's right, I'm taking Eve and Harker to the fanciest of fancy hotels for a champagne reception, because The Untied Kingdom is short listed for the Contemporary RoNA. Eve will enjoy it, Harker will hate it, and I'll, well... I'll have fabulous shoes.

Wish us luck!

Run Rabbit Run trailer

After a few false starts, mostly because I hadn't a clue what I wanted to do with the trailer, I've got something I'm happy with*.

Thanks everyone who's said how much they're looking forward to the book. The paperback is out in April, but it's available right now on Kindle in the UK or in America, and should be up soon for Nook and other e-readers. It's already had a few lovely reviews, and I've been simply amazed at the number of people who've already Tweeted and emailed to say they've enjoyed it. You guys rock!

*NB: this is pretty much how I write books.

Run Rabbit Run out on Kindle!

That's right! As an extra special treat for those of you who had a fabulous Valentine's Day or those who didn't, for those who care about it and for those who don't--oh hell, a special treat for everyone!

Run Rabbit Run is now available on Kindle!

You can buy it in the UK or in America, and I daresay other countries as well. I'll keep you posted about other websites and devices.

How about a little sneaky peek? Oh, go on then.

Four in the morning and I was painting over the number plate of my boyfriend’s car with black nail varnish while I hid in a camera blindspot in a car park in Dover for the early crossing to Calais. A 3 turned to an 8, a P turned to an R. Job done, I sprayed the whole thing with hairspray to fool the cameras, and got back into the car to wait, hat pulled down low over my face.
In the ladies’ room on the ferry, I nabbed a shower cubicle and, wincing, cut off my long blonde ponytail. Masses of hair fell into the shower tray, clogging the drain. I poked it all down with my hands and rubbed some cheap brown dye into what was left hanging around my ears.
The result was not pretty.
The bar area of the ferry looked like a refugee camp, tired families and lone backpackers setting out their own little camps, marked with rucksacks and coats and unfeasibly large pushchairs. I glanced longingly at the bar, and had it not been for the long drive ahead of me I’d seriously have considered beer for breakfast.
Little cameras blinked everywhere. Trying not to be noticed, I found an ATM and withdrew everything in my bank account as Euros, then went out on deck, huddled into my coat, and mainlined black coffee.
An hour later I drove off the ferry and onto the wrong side of the road. French lorries beeping madly at me, I swung the Vectra back into the right-hand lane and followed signs towards Paris. I didn’t want to go to Paris, but it was a start.
Twelve hours after that, having stopped once for coffee and refuelling, eyes blurry with exhaustion, I saw a sign for a campsite in a small seaside town on the Riviera and pulled in. I drove up to one of the bright courier tents belonging to those big luxury camping companies and asked if they had any pitches available. They did. I paid in cash, registered with a fake name, and hauled the car around to a small plot with a big tent on it.
I had a pillow and sleeping bag, a handful of personal possessions, clothes and toiletries. The lot of it was dumped on the floor next to the camp bed, onto which I fell, exhausted and near tears.
You would not believe the trouble I’m in.

Want more? For only £1.99 of your British pounds or $3.13 of your American dollars, you can have it all.

Let me know what you think...!

Valentine's Day

It's a bit weird really.

As a romantic novelist, V-Day is a reasonably important and obvious promotional opportunity. I ought to be celebrating it. But personally, the idea of just one day to celebrate romance, just one in all the year, sounds like a really sucky idea. A generic gift, a card with someone else's sentiments printed inside...exactly the same as everyone else gives and everyone else gets. I reckon you ought to be celebrating your romance with the one, individual, unique person you're in love with. And that it shouldn't be confined to one day of the year, celebrating some saint who died a horrible death.

So I started wondering how some of my characters would demonstrate romance. I can't really see Major Harker buying fluffy teddy bears and pink champagne, but that doesn't mean he's not romantic:

“Here.” Someone was holding out something soft and woollen…yes, a pair of socks. She started to look up to see who it was, but then registered the missing little finger, and said, “Thank you, Major.”
“Welcome. Sorry, ain’t got any spare boots for you.”
“That’s okay. I’m fine.”
“Yeah, you must be, it’s all you’ve said all day.”
She looked up to see what he meant by that, but he was gone, vanishing into the darkness outside the firelight. Eve put the clean socks on, and when she looked up he was back again, this time holding out a guitar as if it was a bunch of flowers.
Eve stared for a second.
“I can’t put that on my feet,” she said.
Harker grinned at her. “Can you play it?”
“I…I’m a bit out of practice.”
“Found it in the 33rd’s stores,” he said. “Probably get used for firewood if no one can find a use for it.”
A stab of feeling caught Eve at the thought of destroying a musical instrument, even one as shabby as this. “Needs tuning,” she said distantly.
“You can tell by looking at it?”
“Yeah. One of the strings is loose. Might not be any good.”
“Well, maybe we can replace it. Be a shame to let it burn. What’re guitar strings made of?”
“Nylon and steel,” Eve said.
“Oh. Well, it’s yours if you want it.”
He held it out, and Eve took it.

He works out what Eve needs, what she wants, and then he gets it for her. Way better than some overpriced roses if you ask me.

I also wondered what Luke from Run Rabbit Run would do for Valentine's Day. I strongly suspect that he wouldn't be inclined to hearts and flowers, and besides I don't really think Sophie would appreciate a generic gesture either. I can't give you an excerpt from the book that demonstrates Luke's romanticism without giving away a giant spoiler...but let's just say he doesn't do things by halves.

What do you think is a great romantic gesture? What's your favourite one from fiction?

And what do you think to my wonderful Valentines present, which arrived by UPS this morning?

And the nomination goes to...

...me!

That's right, me! I'm delighted to announce that The Untied Kingdom has been shortlisted for the Romantic Novelists Association's Contemporary Romantic Novel of the Year Award!

On 5th March I shall be attending the very swanky awards ceremony where I shall pit the might of a former popstar and a man who thinks combs are for nancies against... oh my giddy aunt. Have you SEEN who else is on the shortlist?

Contemporary category: - shortlist of SIX:

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)

Ooh boy. Come on Harker, we're going to need the big guns here...

Vlog

No, not a typo: I'm talking about video blogging. Which is a whole new portmanteau of a word, isn't it? I'm thinking about doing a video Q&A for Run Rabbit Run, where you ask me questions about the book, the Sophie Green series, writing in general, or indeed my cats, and I'll post little videos with my response here on my blog.

What do you think of vlogging? Do you like it, hate it, have no idea what it's about? Let me know...

The secret diary of Spike, aged 5 3/4

It's been a season of upheaval here, even worse than it was when I was four, and the humans decided to have half the house torn down and rebuilt, which resulted in a lot of noise from the builders and even more from the Demon Puppy.

I have seen many changes in my nearly six years, such as the terrible, terrible day five years ago when the Demon Puppy was first brought home. I still haven't forgiven the humans for that, although Younger Female confides that she and I are of the same mind on this. I weathered the loss of my very silly, but very loveable sister, Sugar, and the arrival of the Young Pretenders, Jack and Daisy.

Then there was the Stray, who came to us as a skinny little waif the humans immediately fawned over, but I wasn't fooled. It wasn't long before the Stray got comfortable in my house and started eating everyone else's food and scratching all the humans. And yet still they let her stay! I don't understand these creatures. I mean, she's nowhere near as cute as me. Pretty enough, I suppose, if you like that sort of thing.

Anyway, I have cultivated my air of aloofness to the point where I can be in the same room as up to two more cats, and maintain the fiction that they don't exist. For some reason the humans think this is funny. I don't care, so long as they're generous with the snacks. Which, lucky for them, they are.

But lately disturbing events have transpired. Younger Male has returned to the house, with his Female. I do not mind this, as they at least recognise my magnificence, and brought me presents at the Tree Festival. But disaster has struck. They brought with them--I can hardly say it--another dog.

It's a disaster. Disaster. Temporary Dog is only my size, but he yaps and chases me. I Do Not Like This. Even worse, Demon Puppy has taken to defending me against him, as if I can't do it myself. Does she think I'm part of her pack? I'm a cat! I'm THE cat! And now the humans praise her for defending me (see above re: self defence. Why do they think I've got these claws?), which means that as soon as she hears me come in, she chases Temporary Dog. Even if he's not actually chasing me.

Still, I'm told he won't be here long. Younger Male and his Female are moving out soon, which of course is a shame since there will be fewer humans to worship me, but then again I hear dark whispers of an event that would put the arrival of the Temporary Dog in the shade. The humans seem delighted with the news, but I'm declaring here and now that if Younger Male and his Female bring their human kitten into my house, I'm leaving home.

Still, we must look on the bright side. Since it's winter, I'm looking especially magnificent. And how could anybody be upset for long when they look like this?

Quoth

The very wise and lovely Julie Cohen calls the self-doubt stage of writing a book 'the crows of doubt'. You know, the bit where you're convinced the book you're writing is terrible, that the characters are one-dimensional and unsympathetic, that your plot is nonsensical and has more holes in it than Blackburn, Lancashire, that none of your jokes are funny and that your mystery plot isn't mysterious.

I rarely feel like this while actually writing.

I feel like this whenever I have to revise a book.

This is Quoth, the raven. All right, so I don't have a soft toy crow.

I know a first draft is generally terrible. I don't mind that. I can go back and fix problems, rewrite the bad stuff, cut the really bad stuff, and generally make the book something I'm not ashamed to put my name to. But all of this is before anyone else has seen the book.

An editor's job is to make the book better. Put another way, her job is to find all the flaws in the book. Put another way, her job is to find all the many, many ways in which your book sucks, and point them out to you.

Put another way: her job is to make you wish you'd decided to clean toilets for a living, instead of writing.

This is the stage I'm at now. Actually this is the stage I was at in September, but my book is so bad we're on the fifth round of revisions, and my conclusions are thus:

• I'm not funny.
• My characters are inconsistent.
• My mystery plot could be solved in five minutes, if only the right person asked the right question on page forty.
• I'm really not funny.
• Any lines I believe to be lovely, concise, beautiful in their simplicity, aren't the poetry I believe them to be, but are in dire need of more exposition before they can make sense.
• I don't know anything about automatic cars, or house construction, or MI5.
• I'm going to offend people who like The X Factor.
• I'm really, really not funny.

The thing about edits is that I know the editor doesn't hate me, or my book, and wants to make it all better...so I ought to listen. But I also know whose name is going on the front of the book, and even though I'd really like it to be Alan Smithee at this point, I know it's going to be mine. There are lines in some of my books that the editor put in despite my protests, just to explain something. And they make me cringe, because they're not lines that I wrote and they're not lines I like. But anyone reading the book won't know that. They'll think I wrote those lines. And here's the problem: I don't know if the reader will read those lines and think, "Thank God she explained that, because I had no idea what it meant," or if they'll think, "Well, thank you Captain Obvious, for beating me over the head with that explanation."

Because here's the big thing I'm learning from edits:

• My readers aren't psychic. 
• But neither am I.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got some toilets to clean.

New year, new book

Happy new year! Did you have a good Christmas? Stayed at home, did you, or...oh yes, and how is your sister? Mmm-hmm, oh dear. Well, it's going around this time of year, isn't it? We've all had it too. Did you do anything for New Year? No, fairly quiet one this year, a few drinks then I went to a friend's. Yep, of course I had the traditional hangover! Went for a lovely walk in Southwold the next day though. Great way to start the year.

I was going to post over Christmas, except that a) the above pretty much comprises every conversation I've had over the last couple of weeks, and b) that's a lie, and I wasn't. Too busy eating all those fiddly little canapés you only get at Christmas and drinking my own body weight in wine.

But here it is, the first full working week of 2012 (last week didn't count. Monday was a Bank Holiday, remember?) and I've a reprieve from edits on Run Rabbit Run for now, so I'm sneaking in a little bit of work on my WIP.

This is the title-less epic fantasy known in Narnia-ish fashion as The Warlord, The Blind Slave, And The Dog Called Brutus. That's not its real title, of course. It doesn't have one yet. I might call it The Impossible Tattoo, but then again I might not. It's a story about Krull the Warlord: scourge of the seas, terror of the Empire, and maker-up of words. Well, that's how his best mate describes him, anyway. It's a story about a blind slave who has had everything stolen from her: her freedom, her own will, even her name. And yet she's about to become the most powerful woman in the world. And it's a story about a dog called Brutus, who may or may not be a wolf. Okay, it's not about Brutus, but I still think he's pretty cool.

So, what are you working on?