Early 20th century fashion - love it!

If you're loving Downton Abbey, you're probably also loving the fashions. I'm totally hooked, and have got out my grandmother's pearls to wear with my - er - jeans? I need some new clothes, immediately! Yes, I know - any excuse...

I love reading and writing about this period of history, and hope lots of other readers do, too. Anyone with a Kindle or who wants to download books electronically on to a PC can find my novel The Silver Locket, set during WW1 and featuring a beautiful country house, on offer right now at http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Silver-Locket-ebook/dp/B004D4ZYTQ/ref=zg_bs_362279031_37.

Short Story Competition - Win Money and Chocolate!

The first Choc Lit short story competition is now open to anyone - published or unpublished, experienced or new to the game - who fancies writing a story which features chocolate in some way.

The details are on this link at http://www.choc-lit.co.uk/html/choc_lit_short_story_competiti.html

Mentioning chocolate is the only must-do, apart from the fact that your story can't have been published before. Romantic, mysterious, erotic, suspenseful, paranormal, fantastic - the choice is yours.

National Chocolate Week

It's National Chocolate week - who needs an excuse - and, to celebrate this, independent publisher Choc Lit is promoting some of its Kindle titles at the irresistible price of 86p each.

My own novel The Silver Locket is included in this promotion, and is on this link:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Silver-Locket-ebook/dp/B004D4ZYTQ/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1318237827&sr=1-1. The cover art - isn't it pretty - is to the right of this post.

Choc Lit wins prizes - hurrah!

It's with great pleasure that I am telling you about the success of my fellow Choc Lit authors in the Big Red Read competition, run by Redbridge Libraries. The winners were announced at a ceremony held last night.

Juliet Archer won the Fiction Award for The Importance of Being Emma, and Sue Moorcroft was runner-up with Want to Know a Secret.

Christina Courtenay won the Historical Fiction Award with her lovely novel set in Japan, The Scarlet Kimono, a story which is very close to my heart because I read an early draft of it and said I was sure it would be published and do really well some day.

Anyone else who wants their fortune told, please send me a large sum of money now!

You can see photographs of the authors on my post of 30th September.

Book of the Month - October 2011

On this unseasonably hot but very welcome Saturday in October, I have great pleasure in presenting my October Book of the Month, which is Star Struck by Jane Lovering. It's about 30 degrees in my back garden - which is lovely, the strawberries are in flower again, poor confused babies - so it's particularly appropriate that I should be telling you about a book set in the Nevada desert.

Jane is a rising star in the world of romantic comedy with a welcome sharp edge to it. She writes about characters who are damaged in some way, but who want to get on with life and love anyway, so the reader always wants them to triumph over their difficulties.

In Star Struck, Skye Threppel is slowly and painfully recovering from a devastating road accident. At the instigation of her best friend's brother she finds herself going to a convention for fans of a science fiction television series, hoping to meet her hero. She does meet him, but she also meets equally damaged screen writer Jack Whitaker, and he's running away from something, too. So - will Jack and Skye be good for each other, or will they be very, very bad?

This lovely book invites us to find out.