Originally posted on Heather Reviews:
For this week’s Friday Faves, I want to talk about some characters that have stuck with me after finishing a book. These were characters that – for whatever reason – I fell completely in love with and wanted to wrap in a blanket so that no harm would ever come…
(Please note: all screenshots were taken with the other person’s permission) These days, everyone’s after new ways of advertising and promoting. More importantly, everyone’s after free ways of advertising and promoting. My publisher, Cranachan, asked me to think of as many creative ways to publicise Mary’s the Name as I could. Having used Tinder (not very successfully) before, I knew […]
Read More Using Tinder to Promote ‘Mary’s the Name’It’s been a busy little period recently, book-wise! Saturday November 26th saw the cover of ‘Mary’s the Name’ revealed online. Putting a single image out there to define your entire book, which you’ve worked on for years, is quite a scary thing. We might not like to admit it, but we DO judge books by […]
Read More Mary Christmas (…sorry)Since signing my contract to publish ‘Mary’s the Name’, the question I’m most often asked is: ‘What’s the latest with the book?’ And no matter how much time seems to pass, my answer comes back the same: ‘Still just editing to get it perfect.’ Which, let’s face it, is the most boring thing you can […]
Read More Wait, you’re still editing?The set-up: (Tricky to give a brief summary for this one…) The story of how two very different people came to end up in a small tent in Antarctica together. We’re given glimpses into their lives’ when various comets are present in the sky, as they grow and deal with ghosts, both real(?) and imagined. […]
Read More Book review: The Comet Seekers – Helen Sedgwick (Harvill Secker)The set-up: 16 year-old Murdo and his father travel to the American south to stay with relatives. The pair have struggled since the deaths of both Murdo’s mother and sister Eilidh from cancer. It isn’t long before Murdo’s skill on the accordion is noticed by the locals and he receives the offer of a lifetime. […]
Read More Book review: Dirt Road – James Kelman (Canongate)The set-up: The world’s resources have been used up. The Government is finding ways to wipe out the parts of the population they don’t see as valuable. While her dad is gone for long spells trying to keep them safe and fed, 16-year-old Lalage and her mother make dangerous trips to the London Museum to […]
Read More Book review: The Ship – Antonia Honeywell (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)The set-up: Switching between the 1950’s and present day, Laura Powell’s debut tells the story of Betty Broadbent, a teenage girl helping her (unstable) mother run their seaside hotel. The novel opens with the hotel packed with reporters, there to cover ‘The Cornish Cleaver’, the town’s first serial killer. A relationship forms between Betty […]
Read More Book review: The Unforgotten – Laura Powell (Freight)Perhaps They’ll Listen Now It is June, 1889, and Vincent Van Gogh is painting ‘Starry Night’, the view from his sanatorium room. When I think of him, he is drinking mugs and mugs of coffee, smoking copiously and muttering that his art is nothing but swirly crap. Fast forward to June, 1971, and Don McLean […]
Read More Three Poems
