Mansions, margaritas and crocogators

Or: What I Did On My Holidays

So I've been busy for a while, what with the release of Impossible Things and (amongst a whole load of boring real life stuff) organising my trip to New Orleans for the RT Booklovers Convention. Oh, and writing my new book. I keep forgetting about that one.

Me, doing my best impression of the Chosen
at the Impossible Things launch

The book launch went really well: a great turn-out, a great evening, and we even raised over £100 for Guide Dogs for the Blind--which as anyone who's read Impossible Things will know, is tremendously relevant to the story.

I've also had some really lovely reviews for the book, including a C+ from Dear Author--which as any DA reader knows is pretty damn good! (hell, it's the highest grade I got on my A Levels, so I'm really not complaining)





And so to New Orleans! I've never been to the RT convention before--RWA, yes, several times, but not RT. I'd heard it was bigger and madder than RWA, which in turn is bigger and madder than any of the UK events I've been to. I'd heard right. But who could resist The Big Easy?

Not me! I spent a few days there, acclimatising--and not just to the weather, which threw everything in its tropical arsenal at us, thunderstorms included--and seeing the sights. What sights!

We stayed in the French Quarter, which I believe is the oldest part of New Orleans. Due to things like fire, flood and war, most of the buildings are only a couple of hundred years old--although one, Madam John's Legacy (the green-painted building with the white shutters) , is held to be the oldest building in the city, and has been used frequently for filming (Claudia's feeding frenzy in Interview With a Vampire, much of which was filmed in New Orleans; and more recently the slave auction in Twelve Years a Slave).

The French Quarter is home to Bourbon Street, which reminded me a bit of Austin's Sixth Street, and a bit of the Vegas Strip, and a bit of why New Orleans has a reputation as a party town! 

We toured the Laura Plantation, which was a fascinating recreation of a Creole plantation run by four generations of women. The house has been restored to the brightly painted Creole style, after it had been painted white when Louisiana tried to homogenise its culture.

We even went on a swamp tour, travelling through a bayou absolutely swimming with alligators. They were actually quite sweet--reminding of nothing so much as eager dogs moseying up for a treat. Our guide threw marshmallows into the water to get their attention--gators will investigate anything white on the surface, which is why if you ever knock a golf ball into a swamp, you should probably just leave it there.

I even got to hold a baby gator--well, a 5yr old. Her mouth was taped, because an alligator has very weak muscles for opening her mouth. They're all about snapping it shut!

 

We toured the Garden District, which is terribly beautiful, full of wide avenues and the most envy-inducing mansions. The main shopping streets have a relaxed, artsy atmosphere, with brewpubs and indie shops.

We travelled on a streetcar--no, it wasn't called Desire, but there did used to be a line running to Desire Street, which is where Mr Williams got his title from.







 New Orleans is famous for its above-ground cemeteries--well, if you lived somewhere with a water table that high you wouldn't bury people underground, either! St Louis No.1 is one of the most famous, and it's right in the middle of the city.







Another thing the city is known for is the motto: Laissez le bon temps roulez! And staying about twenty yards from Bourbon Street, we did just that with a drink or two...

 ...or three...

 ...or four...

...or five...

And finally onto the convention! Where, alas, I was far too busy to take pictures, but here someone was kind enough to take one of the Choc Lit team. L-R: Christina Courtenay, Sue Moorcroft, me, Liz Harris, Janet Gover, and a friendly bookseller!

I also presented my first ever workshop: Some Assembly Required: A Whedonite's Guide to Characterisation, which with the help of my good friend JT Bock, went really well! Over the next few days I'll put up some of my notes from it.

Phew! Now, I think to get over that I might be in need of a little holiday...

The best wedding date

And a happy February to you too!

Now, I've been busy organising things like the book launch for Impossible Things, and various interviews, talks and guest blogs relating to Impossible Things, and freaking out over the fact that its nearly release time for Impossible Things (!!!!!) and so blogging has fallen by the wayside. Also I've been busy attending the wedding of my lovely friend Lisa, who said such nice things in her wedding speech that I asked her if I could share it here.

Before I do (obviously, Lisa said yes!), here are some of the upcoming events I've got planned:

Dates unconfirmed, but soon: 
Australian Romance Readers Association release day blog
Shaz's Book blog: Interview
Free flash fiction from Choc Lit: Pirate Smile
Choc Lit blog: interview with Kael from Impossible Things

Wednesday 5th February: How to Write a Romantic Novel panel with Jan Jones & Louise Allen at RAF Lakenheath (only available to RAF/ASAF personnel, I believe, but I'll share some of the content with you later if you like).

Friday 7th February: Impossible Things available as a paperback!

Sunday 9th February: 8pm BBC Radio Cambridge, live on air with Sue Marchant. You can listen live on the BBC website, or I believe it's also syndicated to other East Anglian BBC stations.

Tuesday 18th February: Bookpushers guest blog.

Tuesday 18th February: Impossible Things book launch. Reports will follow!

And now to Lisa's wedding speech, reproduced here by kind courtesy of the bride herself. I haven't posted all of it, just the bits that particularly seemed relevant as a writer and a romantic!

I kind of felt these speeches were a bit heavily weighted with males, so sorry JR but I’m going to be a typical woman and keep you waiting a bit longer. I just wanted to say a few thank-yous myself.... 
...As many of you know there is an aspiring side of me that would like to leave behind the world of property one day and be a fully published, grown-up author, like some of my friends here today.  My writing over the past few years has also provided me with some very good friends, especially my good friend ‘that’ Elley Westbrook over there.  We both met when we began creative writing classes together and struck a friendship over the drinks afterwards where we would compete over who had the most awful life.  I am pleased to report that both of us are now competing over who has the best one instead. 

Then there’s my good friend Alison, now a published novelist, don’t you know [with Choc Lit, no less!].  Not only is she inspirational in a literary capacity but quite often she is good at giving me the ‘talking to’ I need, be it about my writing, or otherwise. 

Me, Lisa, & Alison

Then there’s the tremendous Kate who likes to talk about heroes and hot men and brought the wonderful character Harker to entertain my singleton life.

[See why I wanted to post this? Harker got mentioned in a wedding speech! How often does that happen?]

And that is where my writing stemmed from.  I was unhappy and I wanted a hero to come and save me.  So I wrote about one instead.  Now Matt thinks I have an unhealthy obsession with Sean Bean, but I don’t really, it’s Richard Sharpe.  It’s the man who knows his own mind, is slightly on the bad side of good and doesn’t give a damn what he says or what he does as long as it’s for the greater good.  Of course, he’s hot, mean, lean and pretty much can fix every problem as well as treating his heroine like a princess.  And I didn’t know that when I went on a date with the ‘hot electrician’ from work that that was who I was going on a date with but, happily for me, that’s exactly who I got and it’s worked out rather splendidly.

Now [PICK UP FRAME] this is what Matt, has to put up with looking down on him in the living room every evening when he watches television and I have promised that when we move Mr Sharpe is going to be relegated to the downstairs toilet.  However, having found my perfect hero, I really felt that today was the day to show Matt my commitment, so, Bollyknickers, if you would like to come up to collect this, I know you’ve coveted it long enough...

[And then she picked up another frame and had it sent over to me. And what was in the frame, you ask?]

Sharpe! She gave me Richard Sharpe!

...A good author friend once said to me that real life isn’t like a book.  In a book the story builds from a crap existence to a happy ever after but she said that real life just muddles on from one event to another.  But I like to think I’ve proved her wrong.  I’ve had my inciting event, I’ve had my turning points, I’ve even had my darkest moments and today I get my happy ending. So I would be grateful if you would raise your glasses and toast Matt, my hero.

To Matt!

Lisa & Matt, in a rather shoddy shot taken with my iPhone (sorry guys)

And I got the best wedding date ever. Look! I went home with Richard Sharpe!

He's mine now...

Impossible Things now available as an ebook!

Yes, that's right! You can now buy Impossible Things as an ebook from Amazon UK, Amazon US, and the iBookstore. Other formats to follow soon.

If you'd rather read it as a paperback, you don't have long to wait: only a month until 7th February!

Impossible Things at Christmas

In the world of Impossible Things, there is no such thing as Christmas. Except that there is, because wherever there's a winter there's a festival in the middle of it, from the Winter Solstice to Saturnalia and on to the our own Christmas, with all its holly, and feeling jolly, and...other things ending in olly.

In Krulland, land of ice and snow and more importantly, my hero Kael, Midwinter is a good old-fashioned feast day in the middle of the darkest part of winter. Here's a little excerpt from Impossible Things on the subject...

Despite Kael’s best efforts, the story of Ishtaer and the Wild Hunt spread through the castle quicker than a forest fire. As with every other story he’d heard about her, it soon became wildly exaggerated, with fire-breathing giant Huntsmen and hellhounds the size of stallions. Ishtaer had, according to rumour, screamed some exciting, inspirational and snappy lines at the invaders, his favourite of which was, ‘You shall not take this place! It! Is! Defended!’

‘I never said that,’ Ishtaer muttered as they passed a family retelling the story amongst themselves.

‘No, I think Eirenn was responsible for that. Don’t worry about it. It makes people feel safer that there’s someone here who frightened off the Wild Hunt.’

She frowned at him, but said nothing. Three days into the Dark, and everyone was getting bored and fractious. Stories were one of the best ways to pass the time, and Eirenn was pretty good at telling them.

‘Are you looking forward to Midwinter?’

‘Yes,’ she said, and added, ‘although I don’t really know what to expect. In Ilanium it was all visits to the Temple and prayers and readings I didn’t understand.’

‘Well, here we have visits to the longhouse for feast food and stories even the kids can understand. Uh. I did mention to you about Midwinter gifts, right?’

She smiled. ‘Yes, you did, and I went shopping in Utgangen with Aune.’ She hesitated. ‘We must write and find out how she’s doing, after the Dark.’

He smiled at the ‘we’. ‘Absolutely. But I did enquire about her sister and it seems she’s a stout farmer’s wife who has been known to intervene in fights between full grown men and come out the champion.’

‘A fierce pair of sisters.’

‘Yeah. I think she’ll be all right.’

‘I hope so,’ Ishtaer said quietly.

‘You can’t save everyone, Ishtaer.’

‘Neither can you,’ she said, and his heart clutched.

He thought again about the gift he’d bought, totally on impulse, walking back from the town hall in Utgangen. The covered market, the only way to shop in such frigid temperatures, was warm and glowing and he’d wandered through, looking for trinkets for the boys for Midwinter. What he hadn’t expected was something calling out to him from one small stall, crying like a siren that it would be perfect for Ishtaer.

He hoped she wouldn’t take it the wrong way. And then again, a small secret part of him hoped she would.

That night they sat around the huge fire in the longhouse, a fire that would burn continuously throughout the Dark, and told stories. Eirenn told once more his very popular and heavily embellished version of Ishtaer’s encounter with the Wild Hunt, and she sat there smiling, saying nothing. Between them sat Garik and Durran, the younger boy curled up against Ishtaer’s side. She put her arm around him, whispered something in his ear that made him smile, and turned her attention back to Eirenn.

Kael’s heart ached at that, even worse when Mags caught his eye and sent him a very speaking glance. We look like a family, he thought, and wished painfully that they were.

When Durran finally drifted off, halfway through Old Alvar’s traditional tale of how the Wild Hunt came to be – traditional in that he traditionally never told it the same way twice – Kael glanced over and saw that Garik was fast asleep, and Ishtaer was about to nod off too.

He nudged her gently, and to his delight she barely flinched. ‘The boys are asleep,’ he said. ‘We should get them to bed.’ She nodded and rose gracefully with Garik already in her

arms. But when she headed towards the door leading to the part of the castle where they slept, Kael stopped her. ‘No. In here.’

‘Here?’

‘Yes. It’s traditional to spend Midwinter night all in the same room. Some people even spend the whole Dark in their longhouses. I guess it goes back to when the longhouse was the only room there was.’

‘But, the beds ...’

‘Follow me.

The benches around the edge of the longhouse were used for storage, and tonight they’d been packed with bedrolls and blankets. He made up a couple for the boys, close by each other, then another for himself and, casually, one for Ishtaer too.

‘It’ll tickle them no end to wake up with Brutus next to them,’ he added, and Ishtaer nodded, looking slightly uncertain. ‘You don’t have to stay here. You can go somewhere else, or back to your room if you like.’

She bit her lip and turned her head back to the huge central fire and the group of rapt listeners. Ishtaer was the only castle resident who hadn’t gone chalky white in the dark of the midwinter, where the weak sun showed for less than twenty minutes a day, and her bronze complexion turned golden in the firelight. Her hair shone like a crown.

I love you, Ishtaer, he thought, and wasn’t even surprised by the idea.

‘I’ll stay,’ she said, and he smiled.


Impossible Things is out in February.

Impossible Things teaser trailer 2: Krull the Warlord

Another little teaser. Don't worry, it's less scary than the first one!

Ishtaer's Dream

The first teaser trailer for Impossible Things...

Do you write chick-lit?

Here's a handy flow-chart to help you work it out.

click to enlarge

(normal blogging service will resume soon. I'm just doing edits on Impossible Things, and then I'll be back to tell you all about Impossible Things. Did I mention my book is called Impossible Things?)

Welcome to Ilanium

So, in between edits on Impossible Things, I thought I'd sketch out a map of the world it inhabits. I already had a very crude version on my computer, for reference, but here's a slightly prettier one. To the west, the New Lands where the story begins. To the north, Krulland where our hero dwells. In the centre, the city of Ilanium where our heroine learns...well, I'll let you read it to find out what she learns!

Mummy porn

Did I mention my trophy?

So, last weekend was the Romantic Novelists Association annual conference, which is always one of my favourite events of the year. This year it was in Sheffield, land of my forefathers, up in the Frozen North. Except, confusingly, it was quite the opposite of frozen, which is why so many pictures of us all are a bit...shiny. 

The Choc-Liteers glammed up for the Saturday gala dinner, including our lovely two new recruits, Rhoda Baxter & Alison May (front right).

As ever, it was a fab mix of informative and useful talks (thanks especially to Julie Cohen & Fiona Harper who helped me figure out a few things about my Wip, and Janet Gover who told me what not to do in radio interviews), and lots of socialising. Maybe a bit too much socialising. No...you're right. There can't be too much. 

Of course, on the Saturday night, the Elizabeth Goudge trophy was presented. This is open to all conference attendees, regardless of published status, and is entirely anonymous, which is really lovely. This year, the entry was the first chapter of a novel on the theme of ice. I wrote mine in about five minutes and raced for the last post, then forgot about it.

Then it won. 

No, look, it won! I won a trophy! Did I mention my trophy?

After the conference I needed to sleep for a week, but instead went on to Derbyshire for a few days holiday in the Peak District. It's quite astonishingly pretty up there, although I might have wished for slightly cooler weather--still, it's a wonderful excuse for a pint of cold lager in the afternoon!

Back to work now (well, maybe on Monday) with plenty of ideas for a new, improved Wip. Strengthen the theme, improve the structure, and don't forget to describe the heat oppression in those summer scenes.

Now, did I mention my trophy?

Kindle books under £2.99

Have I mentioned that The Untied Kingdom is part of Amazon's Kindle books under £2.99 deal during June? Oh yes, it is! And not only is it under £2.99, it's under £1.99 too. In fact it's only 99p for the rest of the month! Go on, fill yer boots.

Kirkstall Abbey

So, after my talk at Leeds Met in May, I took a wander around the city where I was born, and experimented with my new camera. Some of these pictures are of locations I used in The Untied Kingdom...but as you can see, they look rather different now!

(for a larger version of each picture, click on it. They're pretty high-resolution)

The wonderful glass ceiling of the Victoria Quarter, just outside Harvey Nichols (who do a wonderful breakfast involving crumpets and melted cheese)

The Kirkgate, by which Eve and Harker enter the city. As you can see below...

...it looks somewhat different today!

Approaching Kirkstall Abbey, north of the city centre. It's beside a fairly main road now (which apparently once ran through the nave of the ruined church!) but still incredibly quiet and peaceful.

The Abbey seen from the northeast, looking towards the kitchens and Abbot's quarters.

Approaching the ruined church.

The infirmary (reduced to low stones on the ground now) with the Abbot's lodging behind it.

The east end of the church, where I can only imagine a rather splendid window once dominated. Now, it looks like a rather sinister gaping maw...

The Abbey from the eest.

The nave of the church, where Harker and his squad found soldiers billeted.

All that remains of the guesthouse from which the squad liberated the first computer. Now, I'm not saying Harker levelled it to the ground, but...

A tunnel which probably leads to something prosaic like a drain under the kitchen, but which for my purposes, leads to the tunnels where Eve was imprisoned.

A few more artistic shots of the Abbey...

From the south

Cloisters

Vaulting on the south side of the church.

Pillars in the nave of the church.

The interior of the church, looking east, with my friend Alysia at the end of the path for perspective. That's a big church, right?

In The Untied Kingdom, Harker and the squad visit Kirkstall Abbey a number of times, finding it at the centre of a huge refugee camp. I tried my hardest to find out the layout of the place before it was ruined, and was happy to find nothing to massively contradict me when I visited. Phew! If you're even in Leeds with an afternoon to spare, get the 757 bus to Kirkstall and spend an afternoon wandering around. It's even free to get in. Just don't, you know, get beaten up in in the cellars or lob any grenades around or anything. You're not in an alternate universe now...

Conversations with contemporary women writers

Behold! For I am a contemporary women writer--yes, I fulfil all three criteria!--and as such I have been invited to take part in a series of talks at Leeds Metropolitan University about, well, being a contemporary woman writer. As Johnny Bravo would say, "Enough about me. Let's talk about me. What do you think about me?"

This is Johnny Bravo. Not me. Although I do rock this look.

I might also read a bit from one of my books, and answer questions, which may or may not include, "Where are the toilets?" "When does the real author get here?" and "Where did you get those shoes?" If you want to know, you'll have to come along, because I haven't decided which shoes to wear yet. I mean, come along to hear me talk, too. Obvs. I am a Real Author. It says so on my business cards.

Anyway, I'm really excited about this, not just because it'll be my first solo engagement as a Real Author (eep!) but because I was born in Leeds and would quite like to see how the place has been doing in my absence. I used a few locations in a roundabout way for The UnTied Kingdom, and one I especially want to visit is Kirkstall Abbey, from which Harker and the squad rescued Eve, and which is in our reality a picturesque ruin (Note to self: don't forget your camera).

The talks are being held at Broadcasting Place, which I believe to be on Woodhouse Lane, in Leeds (there's a map here), and mine will be on Tuesday 21st May at 5.30. It's free to attend (although I think you might need a ticket: check the University's website for details). If you're in the area, pop along and listen to me rambling on about shoes, cats, and which celebrities I currently fancy. C'mon, it'll be fun!