Alchemy is a collection of short pieces of prose – or flash fiction – interspersed with poetry, by Jade Kennedy. Alchemy is available to purchase as an e-book on Amazon UK and Amazon US.

I was asked by Jade Kennedy if I would like to read and review her collection of flash fiction and poetry many months ago, but with a huge pile of books waiting to be read it has taken me some time to get to it. However, it was worth the wait.

Initially I wasn’t sure if I’d like such short pieces of fiction and I felt the opening piece A Collection wasn’t as strong as many of the other pieces, but soon I grew accustomed to the rhythm of them, and found myself drawn into an ethereal world of half seen images, ghostliness and other-worldliness.

Jade Kennedy writes like a painter, using skilful similes and metaphors that bring alive her descriptions, particularly those of the natural world. There are mists and fogs, stars and sands, waves and waterfalls that link closely and evocatively with the emotions of the narrative voice.

However, the real strength for me in Jade Kennedy’s writing is her poetry. I’m not sure whether it was the formatting of the e-book I had, but many of the lines were fragmented and disjointed, suiting perfectly the content of the poems. There’s a kind of mysticism and longing in her lines that I found frequently very moving. Reading the poetry evoked feelings of longing and sadness, but also optimism and hope. One line from The Lies I Told My Mother I thought summed up the quality of Jade Kennedy’s writing so well. She says ‘Leave that which scars the spirit to fade beneath the dust.’ I think those are wise words for us all.

It’s a huge shame that this kind of writing is so underrated as talents like Jade Kennedy’s are in danger of being lost in the face of the huge publishing houses and big name authors. I think she deserves recognition and praise for her writing as she really has ‘fingers tinted in poetry’.

You’ll find Jade on Goodreads, Google+ and on her blog. You can also follow Jade on Twitter.

My enormous thanks to Sophie Christopher at Penguin Random House for an advanced reader copy of The Finding of Martha Lost by Caroline Wallace in return for an honest review. The Finding of Martha Lost is published by Doubleday, an imprint of Transworld Books, on 10th March 2016 and is available from Amazon UK, Amazon US, Waterstones where it is their Book of the Month, and Penguin.

The Finding of Martha Lost

Martha is lost. She’s been lost since she was a baby, abandoned in a suitcase on the train from Paris. Ever since, she’s waited in station lost property for someone to claim her. It’s been sixteen years, but she’s still hopeful. In the meantime, there are mysteries to solve: secret tunnels under the station, a suitcase that may have belonged to the Beatles, the roman soldier who appears at the same time every day with his packed lunch. Not to mention the stuffed monkey that someone keeps misplacing. But there is one mystery Martha cannot solve. And now the authorities have found out about the girl in lost property. Time is running out – if Martha can’t discover who she really is, she will lose everything…

My Review of The Finding of Martha Lost

Martha is a foundling who’s never left Lime Street Station in Liverpool, where she lives and works with Mother in the lost property office. She is the Liver Bird of Lime Street. But in the heatwave of 1976, Martha’s life is going to change.

The Finding of Martha Lost is utterly astounding. It’s a book that’s almost impossible to review because it is so fantastic.

Martha is completely compelling. From the moment she speaks to the reader in the opening sentence of the book there is an endearing breathlessness to her wonderful personality, even in the face of adversity. Martha is simultaneously innocent and wise in a glorious creation. Quite how Caroline Wallace has created such a fabulous character is difficult to define. It’s partly because Martha suffers at the hands of Mother, the woman who has brought her up, partly because she spins instead of walks taking me back to the feelings of uninhibited pleasure in my own childhood, partly because Martha has magic in her fingers, partly because she has such an affinity with books. But Martha is so much more than the sum of her parts. I didn’t just love her, I wanted to be her. If the world were filled with Marthas it would be a better place. Reading about her has restored my faith in humankind. I’ve ended up reading The Finding of Martha Lost by being rather in love with George too.

At the risk of sounding pretentious, I think what makes The Finding of Martha Lost such a perfect book is that it has all the hallmarks of classical Greek drama. There’s the unity of time in 1976, the unity of place in Lime Street Station and the unity of action as Martha tries to find out who she really is. There’s such a satisfying unity of theme too; it’s not just Martha who is lost. My heart went out to William, living in the shadows, to Elisabeth searching for her own happiness and even to the monstrous Mother in her misguided manner of looking for faith. The items in the lost property come alive under Martha’s fingers so we have more loss and sub-text giving layer upon layer of interest as Martha understands the stories behind the items. I loved the echoes of and references to writing and fairy tales too. This is very fine writing indeed.

All the characters are so beautifully defined so that it felt as if I were reading about people I knew. Even the heat of the summer becomes a character in its own right. The Finding of Martha Lost called to me when I wasn’t reading it and I put the day on hold to finish it, so hypnotic was the writing and so vivid the descriptions. Caroline Wallace evokes the era so well. The music and fashions, the Beatles hangover and the story of Mal Evans serve to weave a spellbinding tale. There’s a lightness of touch so that a single word of prose or a brief exclamation from the characters can convey huge emotion or move on the plot with enormous impact.

Martha thinks ‘Books are magical’ and this one certainly is. I laughed aloud frequently. I sobbed a couple of times. It’s taken me much soul searching to decide ultimately what I feel about reading The Finding of Martha Lost and, because so many things Martha says resonate in my heart, in the end I’ve decided on one word – joy.

Now I’m off to arrange all my books by the colours of their spines!

You can follow Caroline Wallace on Twitter and I really think you should.

I’m delighted to be part of the launch celebrations of Leigh Russell’s novel Journey to Death which was published by Thomas & Mercer on 3rd March 2016. Journey to Death is available on Amazon UK and Amazon US in both e-book and paperback. Leigh has kindly told me all about the inspiration for Journey to Death.

Lucy Hall arrives in the Seychelles determined to leave her worries behind. The tropical paradise looks sun-soaked and picture-perfect—but as Lucy soon discovers, appearances can be very deceptive. A deadly secret lurks in the island’s history, buried deep but not forgotten. And it is about to come to light.

As black clouds begin to gather over what promised to be a relaxing family break, Lucy realises that her father stands in the eye of the coming storm. A shadow from his past is threatening to destroy all that he holds dear—including the lives of his loved ones.

A dark truth is about to explode into their lives, and that truth is going to hit them right between the eyes.

The Inspiration for Journey to Death

A Guest Post by Leigh Russell

The story of Journey to Death was inspired by a first hand account I was given of a political coup in the Seychelles in the late 1970s. Interested in the impact of politics on ordinary people, I invented the story of a love affair between two people from different cultures, torn apart by circumstances.

For a fiction writer, weaving a real historical incident into my narrative posed an interesting challenge. After the episode in the 1970s, the narrative shifts to the present day. In the idyllic holiday resort of Beau Vallon Bay, the disturbing fall out from affair in the 1970s gradually emerges.

The political unrest that casts a shadow over events in the beginning of the book is only one strand of Journey to Death. The main story focuses on the adventures of Lucy Hall, who arrives in the Seychelles in the present day. I wanted Lucy to be young at the start of the series, to allow her room to develop as a character.

In some ways a retrospective love story, in some ways a novel about life on a tropical island, Journey to Death is mainly a novel about a girl maturing into adulthood, learning to make decisions that impact on others, and taking responsibility for her own life.

Before the manuscript for Journey to Death was ready to go to my editor, I felt I owed it to my readers to check that my descriptions of the location were accurate. In asking readers to suspend their disbelief, authors have to do their best to create a world that seems authentic. So I packed my bags and flew off to the Seychelles.

Although the research trip was hard work, it was also wonderful; I was not prepared for the beauty of the islands. It would be hard not to feel inspired by the beauty of the sun setting over the Indian Ocean as ‘grey clouds suddenly flared with orange light, and the sea shimmered pink and golden beneath the setting sun.’

Many different things influenced my writing of Journey to Death: historical events, real and imaginary people, and places. All of these contributed to the novel and each, in their different way, add a different layer to the narrative.

About Leigh Russell

Internationally bestselling author Leigh Russell is published in English, and in translation throughout Europe. Her Geraldine Steel and Ian Peterson titles have appeared on many bestseller lists, including #1 on kindle. Leigh’s work has been nominated for several major awards, including the CWA New Blood Dagger and CWA Dagger in the Library, and her Geraldine Steel and Ian Peterson series are currently in development for television with Avalon Television Ltd.

Journey to Death is the first title in her Lucy Hall series published by Thomas and Mercer.

Links to all Leigh’s books can be found on her website and you can follow her on Twitter.

There’s lots more to find out about Leigh with these other bloggers too:

 

I’m thrilled to be part of the launch celebrations for Janet Ellis’s debut novel, The Butcher’s Hook. Published by Two Roads Books, an imprint of John Murray on 25th February, The Butcher’s Hook is the dark and twisted tale of a young girl in 18th-century London determined to take her life in her own hands. It is available to buy from Amazon UK, Amazon US, from the publisher and from all good book stores.

The Butcher’s Hook

At nineteen, Anne Jaccob is awakened to the possibility of joy when she meets Fub, the butcher’s apprentice, and begins to imagine a life of passion with him.

The only daughter of well-to-do parents, Anne lives a sheltered life. Her home is a miserable place. Though her family want for nothing, her father is uncaring, her mother is ailing, and the baby brother who taught her to love is dead. Unfortunately her parents have already chosen a more suitable husband for her than Fub.

But Anne is a determined young woman, with an idiosyncratic moral compass. In the matter of pursuing her own happiness, she shows no fear or hesitation. Even if it means getting a little blood on her hands.

A vivid and surprising tale, The Butcher’s Hook brims with the colour and atmosphere of Georgian London, as seen through the eyes of a strange and memorable young woman.

Getting the Right Setting

A Guest Post from Janet Ellis

The setting of any novel quickly becomes part of the narrative. It would be impossible to imagine the Larkins anywhere other than Kent . Cornwall  is as much a part of the story as Rebecca’s nameless heroine and if you took Damon Runyon’s guys and dolls out of New York, they’d probably never meet.

When I started telling Anne Jaccob’s tale in The Butcher’s Hook , she had to be in London. Not just because I live there ( although I am very fond of my home town, carbuncles and all),  but because Anne needed a grimy, busy and  vivid background. I knew initially that she would be living in the past, away from mobile phones and areoplane rides, but it was a while until it was obvious to me that Anne was a Georgian girl. The Georgian era is quietly insistent. Its bossy grandchildren, the Victorians, quickly took over the place- so that the way we celebrate Christmas, commute to work , bury our dead and much more besides is all a Victorian legacy. But throughout England, waiting to be spotted like a fine horse in a stable of  pit ponies, Georgian buildings stand quiet and graceful. The more developed the city becomes, the more the contrast between the sharp, harsher architecture of the twenty-first century and the calm, ordered, stately eighteenth version peeking out beside it.

It isn’t just the look of that time I find beguiling. Until time-travel becomes (a) affordable and (b) an actual thing, I relied on my imagination to supply the other details. London must have stunk! Open sewers, fires kindled with animal fat, horses in every street and a scant acquaintance with personal hygiene would have added up to a constant aroma, thick as jam. In those days, for the first time, the number of town dwellers outnumbered country folk and the city teemed. You could practically walk across the Thames going from deck to deck of the boat traffic  up and down its length and, as most people didn’t travel by carriage, everywhere was packed with pedestrians.

All in all, a perfect place to maroon a solitary, singular girl. I’m familiar with Marylebone and the area north of Oxford Street where the Jaccob family lived (the layout is the same)  and, in my mind’s eye, I liked to strip away everything built since Anne’s day and set her walking. Primrose Hill was a long way then from anything Kate Moss would recognise, but the ideal spot from which Dr Edwards could show Anne her city. ‘The bald head of St Paul’s’ still dominates the skyline and provides a useful marker for the lost traveller.

If they ever do get the time machine going, I’d love a ticket. What did London sound like ? Was it much colder then ? It must have been much darker without street lighting and who knows what lurked in the little alleys and backstreets, long since demolished. In the map of my imagination, there’s still much uncharted territory to explore.

———-

Janet Ellis trained as an actress at the Central School of Speech and Drama. She is best known for presenting Blue Peter and contributes to numerous radio and TV programmes.
She recently graduated from the Curtis Brown creative writing school. The Butcher’s Hook is her first novel.

You can follow Janet on Twitter and find out more about her on her website.

My very grateful thanks to Gaby Young at Penguin Random House for an advanced reader copy of Carol Drinkwater’s The Forgotten Summer in exchange for an honest review. The Forgotten Summer was published by Michael Joseph, an imprint of Penguin Books, on 11th February 2016 in hardback and e-book. It will be released in paperback on September 8th 2016. The Forgotten Summer is available to purchase on Amazon UK and from all good bookshops.

The Forgotten Summer

Secrets ripen and fester over a long sweltering summer in France . . .

The annual grape harvest at the Cambon family’s magnificent vineyard is always a cause for celebration. But not this year. When an accident destroys the crop, leaving the estate facing ruin, Clarisse Cambon knows exactly who to blame – her daughter-in-law Jane.

It’s just the latest incident in a decades-long feud whose origin both women have concealed from Luc, who struggles to keep his wife and mother on speaking terms. But is Luc the saint he appears to be? When tragedy strikes, Jane is thrown into doubt. What secrets has her husband been keeping?

Forced to take charge of the ailing vineyard, Jane uncovers further proof that Luc may not be the man she fell in love with twenty years ago. And, worse still, she knows that her old enemy Clarisse is the only one who knows the truth . . .

My Review of The Forgotten Summer

Jane and her mother-in-law Clarisse Cambon do not get on, so that when Clarisse finds excuse to blame Jane for a poor grape harvest on the family estate in France, Jane’s husband Luc is unable to reconcile them. However, their lives are not going to remain separate for long as fate has a nasty habit of intervening.

I feel I owe Carol Drinkwater an apology. I picked up The Forgotten Summer believing I was about to read merely a fluffy, lightweight, love story. I did indeed get a love story, but one of great depth and resonance and of more than one kind of love. The Forgotten Summer is literary, well researched and hugely satisfying to read. It explores not just love, but searing grief, hatred, deceit, joy and despair providing a richness of experience for the reader.

The characters are human, three dimensional creations who are flawed and realistic so that at times I wanted to shake them in frustration and at others I wanted to hold them and comfort them. I thought about them when I wasn’t reading the book. I’m also left wanting to know more about them in the future and would love a sequel.

The plotting is tantalising and entertaining as Carol Drinkwater uncoveres suggestions and details that kept me wanting to read on. Just occasionally I would have liked a little less of the viticultural detail but there’s no denying these elements are impeccably well researched and presented.

The Forgotten Summer is wonderfully atmospheric writing. It’s the small details that really bring the narrative alive. Carol Drinkwater plays to all the reader senses, immersing readers in the sounds of jazz, with Nina Simone singing in the background for example, or evoking the taste of oozing Brie on fresh crusty loaves. I could so easily see the blossoms, olives and grapes and smell the lavender. Anyone who knows France would recognise instantly the scenes presented so beautifully.

I thought The Forgotten Summer was a wonderful read and am ashamed of my prejudice that has kept me away from Carol Drinkwater’s writing in the past. It is mature, engaging, emotional and atmospheric. I shall be seeking out her other fiction immediately.

About Carol Drinkwater

Anglo-Irish actress Carol Drinkwater is perhaps still most familiar to audiences for her award-winning portrayal of Helen Herriot in the BBC series All Creatures Great and Small. A popular and acclaimed author and film-maker as well, Carol has published nineteen books for both the adult and young adult markets. She is currently at work on her twentieth title.

When she purchased a rundown property overlooking the Bay of Cannes in France, she discovered on the grounds sixty-eight, 400-year-old olive trees. Once the land was reclaimed and the olives pressed, Carol along with her French husband, Michel, became the producers of top-quality olive oil. Her series of memoirs, love stories, recounting her experiences on her farm (The Olive Farm, The Olive Season, The Olive Harvest and Return to the Olive Farm) have become international bestsellers. Carol’s fascination with the olive tree extended to a seventeenth-month, solo Mediterranean journey in search of the tree’s mythical secrets. The resulting travel books, The Olive Route and The Olive Tree, have inspired a five-part documentary films series entitled The Olive Route.

Carol has also been invited to work with UNESCO to help fund an Olive Heritage Trail around the Mediterranean with the dual goals of creating peace in the region and honouring the ancient heritage of the olive tree.

You can follow Carol on Twitter and visit her web site.

Today it’s my great pleasure to be hosting a guest author who lives just a few miles away from my home, Hilary Spiers. Hilary’s debut novel Hester and Harriet is published by Allen and Unwin in paperback today, 3rd March 2016. Hester and Harriet is available here in the UK and in ebook here in the US.

Equally exciting, is the super guest post from Hilary who is also a playwright as well as a novelist and today she tells us just how different, yet equally tricky those skills are.

About Hester and Harriet

Hester and Harriet two widowed sisters in their 60s, are reluctantly driving to visit relatives when they come across a young woman hiding with her baby in a bus shelter. Seeing the perfect excuse for returning to their own warm hearth, the sisters insist on bringing Daria and Milo home with them.

But the arrival of a sinister stranger looking for a girl with a baby, followed quickly by their cousins’ churlish fifteen-year-old son, Ben, who also appears to be seeking sanctuary, Hester and Harriet’s carefully crafted peace and quiet quickly begins to fall apart. And, perhaps, it’s exactly what they need…

A Guest Post from Hilary Spiers

WRITER’S BLOCK: a play by Hilary Spiers

Hilary sits in front of her computer. From time to time she taps at the keys with one finger. She glances at the screen, reads what she has written, and deletes the lot in frustration. This happens several times.  A noise from upstairs. She shoves her chair back and hurries for the door

HILARY                  Is it lunchtime yet?

WRITER’S BLOCK A novel by Hilary Spiers

Hilary has never learned to type. But she can type. Not admittedly the way people are meant to type, with both hands, eight fingers and two thumbs. No, she types – as she has for more years than she is prepared to reveal – with the middle finger of her right hand, surprisingly fast and accurately.

But today, the fact she cannot type properly, nor as quickly as many others who use a keyboard for their living, is irrelevant. Because today there is nothing to type. Today, the words that sprang so readily to mind as she drifted off to sleep last night, those precise, telling, perfect words, are flat and lifeless on the page. For the fourth time in as many minutes, she presses the Delete key, on this occasion with a savagery that her keyboard does not deserve. The blank screen sneers back at her.

She glances at her coffee cup: empty. She looks at the screen again: empty. Upstairs, a floorboard creaks: her husband getting to his feet. Perhaps glancing at his watch, calculating how long it has been since breakfast. Picturing the left-over chicken breast in the fridge, the butter, the mayonnaise, the still-warm loaf peppered with seeds on the bread board … It’s not a very big piece of chicken. Will it stretch to two sandwiches? Is there more than a scraping of mayo in the jar? Surely he’ll be just as happy with cheese and pickle …

Leaping to her feet, she hurries for the study door. His shadow falls across the hall as he rounds the newel post at the top of the stairs. If she’s quick, she can make it to the fridge ahead of him. With studied casualness she calls up, as if surprised to see him, ‘Is it lunchtime yet?’

*********

I write both novels and plays, two very different disciplines that nonetheless overlap. The first – and obvious – difference between plays and novels is length. A play might only run to a quarter or even a fifth of a novel’s word count but don’t let that fool you into thinking playwriting is an easier option: as with short stories, you keep paring and paring to ensure that every spoken word counts. There can be no longeurs in a play or the audience loses interest – fast.  In line with the famous maxim ‘Show, don’t tell’, one endeavours to let information emerge organically as the plot unfolds; lengthy exposition (indeed pretty much any exposition) serves only to annoy them (‘For God’s sake, we know all this!’ or ‘Is this relevant?’ or ‘Just get on with it!’ ).

A novel on the other hand offers the luxury of space and time to expand characters, to paint them exactly as you see them, not leaving your creations to the mercies of an actor or director to place their own (sometimes inexplicable) interpretations on a line or character.  A novelist is casting director and scene-painter, dictating precisely the look, shape, age of the characters (indeed, how many characters appear, a make-or-break decision in the cash-strapped theatre) and creating the backdrop for the story, unconstrained by space or money or the practicalities of whisking characters from, say, a coffee shop to a prison cell in the blink of an eye. (That’s not to say you can’t write a play with multiple settings: you just have to be aware what you are asking of a set designer. And whether the company concerned can afford to realise your ambitions.)

What’s lovely about the theatre is that – once a play finally makes it on to the stage – feedback is immediate. You hear and see what works and what doesn’t in the moment. That line you and the cast found so funny in rehearsal? Deathly silence. That moment of intense pathos in Act 2? How can anyone be laughing?! And audiences will differ from night to night (and even pre and post-interval, which admittedly may have something to do with a glass of wine or two). In contrast, a novel demands patience. Your baby is launched into the choppy, unpredictable seas of publication and you have to sit and wait, stomach churning, for readers to react. For reviewers to review. For ratings to be given. Some readers are kind enough to take the time to contact you directly to give feedback, to say what they liked (or disliked) about your characters, your plot, your style.  And even to ask when the next book is appearing …

And then there’s the loneliness issue. It’s a truism that writing is a solitary business. When a play is in development or rehearsal, you’re working alongside other people: the director, the actors, the rest of the company. Characters are unpicked, suggestions made to tighten or shorten or lengthen a scene and your script becomes a living entity, evolving and hopefully improving as it develops and changes. I love that part of the process. That’s not say I don’t love novel writing. I’ve enjoyed every minute I’ve spent (and am still spending) with Hester and Harriet. They make me laugh, they often surprise me. They make me re-consider my prejudices. But all this is done in isolation. Of course, I have my writing buddies, my stalwart friends reading and re-reading drafts, and then in time my editors, but every revision means only one thing: the brewing of yet more coffee, the return to my study, the shutting of the door and the application of my hard-working middle finger to the keyboard. The wonderful thing is, I have both these opportunities and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

About the author

Hilary Spiers has had a varied career – including law, speech therapy, teaching, youth work and the NHS. She has also been involved with the theatre as an actor, director and playwright, and her dramatic work has been performed in a number of theatres including Hampstead Theatre and Riverside Studios. Hilary has won several national short story competitions and had work broadcast on the radio.  She lives in Stamford, Lincolnshire and is available for interview.

You can find out more about Hilary Spiers on her web site. Hilary will be signing copies of Hester and Harriet at Walkers Bookshop in Stamford Lincolnshire on Saturday 5th March between 11AM and 1PM.

 

As every time I look up from my desk I can see a photograph of my Grandfather alongside his First World War medals, I’m delighted to be celebrating Fall of Poppies, a collection of short stories all about love and the Great War. Fall of Poppies was published by William Morrow on 1st March 2016.

Fall of Poppies: Stories of Love and the Great War

Contributions in Fall of Poppies are by  Hazel Gaynor, Beatriz Williams, Jennifer Robson, Jessica Brockmole, Kate Kerrigan, Evangeline Holland, Lauren Willig and Marci Jefferson. Fall of Poppies is edited by Heather Webb

Top voices in historical fiction deliver an intensely moving collection of short stories about loss, longing, and hope in the aftermath of World War I – featuring bestselling authors such as Hazel Gaynor, Jennifer Robson, Beatriz Williams, and Lauren Willig and edited by Heather Webb.

 A squadron commander searches for meaning in the tattered photo of a girl he’s never met…

A Belgian rebel hides from the world, only to find herself nursing the enemy…

A young airman marries a stranger to save her honor—and prays to survive long enough to love her…The peace treaty signed on November 11, 1918, may herald the end of the Great War but for its survivors, the smoke is only beginning to clear. Picking up the pieces of shattered lives will take courage, resilience, and trust.

Within crumbled city walls and scarred souls, war’s echoes linger. But when the fighting ceases, renewal begins…and hope takes root in a fall of poppies.

An Extract from Fall of Poppies

From “Something Worth Landing For” by Jessica Brockmole

I first met her, crying, outside of the medical department at Romorantin.

She’d been there, hunched on the bench in the hall, when I arrived for my appointment and was still there when I stepped from the doctor’s office. She wore the same bland coveralls and white armband as the other women who worked in the Assembly Building and I might have walked straight past. I always managed to make a fool of myself in front of women— on one memorable evening with an untied shoe and a bowl of chowder—  and was sure today would be no different. After all, I’d just been standing stark naked in front of another man and was still a little red in the face.

But she chose that exact moment to blow her nose, with such an unladylike trumpet that I couldn’t help but turn and stare.

I’d never heard such an unabashed sound from a woman. She didn’t even seem to care that she sounded like an elephant. She just kept her head down and her face buried in an excessively crumpled handkerchief.

She looked as healthy as a horse to be sitting outside the medical department. Not as scrawny as the other French girls around here. She had dark hair parted on the side and pinned up in waves, but her neck was flushed pink. I wondered what kind of bug she’d caught to leave her so stuffy.

“Hello. Are you waiting for the doc?” I asked. The army doc wasn’t much— despite the file in his hand, he’d insisted on calling me “Weaselly” instead of the “Wesley” on my paperwork—  but he could probably give her some silver salts or, at the very least, a replacement handkerchief.

She lifted her head and blinked red, wet eyes. I could have smacked myself. I was a dope. She wasn’t sick. She was miserable and sobbing and I had no idea what to do.

If I’d had a sister or a girlfriend or a mother with a heart made out of something softer than granite, I might have known how to handle a teary woman. I’d never gotten as far as breaking a girl’s heart.

Regardless, a clean handkerchief would be a start, and I dug in my pockets until I found a slightly wrinkled one. I held it out, but between two fingers, like feeding a squirrel.

She looked surprised at my offer, though I wasn’t sure why. A nice- looking girl like that, surely she was used to kindness. She stared at me, then the square of cotton, then me again, considering.

I thought to add a few words of eloquence to my offer. “Go on,” I said instead. “I have dozens.” It wasn’t Shakespeare, but it must have been enough.

She swallowed and took it with a watery “Merci.”

That probably wasn’t enough. Chaplains and grandmothers always had a reassuring word or two. I wondered if I should take a cue from the padre and go with a pious Trust in Godor an old-fashioned There, there. I realized, belatedly, that I knew how to say neither in French.

She saved me from having to make a decision. “I am fine, really,” she said in quite excellent English. Tears welled up fresh in her blue eyes, but she nodded, almost too vigorously.

“Yes, never better.” She crushed the handkerchief to her eyes.

I didn’t believe her.  People who were fine didn’t cry uncontrollably in the hallway. “Bad diagnosis?” She looked healthy enough, with those pink cheeks and bright eyes, but I was no expert. Maybe she had just found out she had a week to live.

She blew her nose again, thunderously. “Bad, good, maybe both.”

This was mystifying, but I suppose that was the way of women.

Reprinted Courtesy of HarperCollins Publishers

Follow more about Fall of Poppies here and on Goodreads.

Buy Links:  Amazon | B & N | Google Play | iTunes | Kobo

UK Pre-order: Amazon UK

 

About the Fall of Poppies Authors

Jessica Brockmole is the author of the internationally bestselling Letters from Skye, an epistolary love story spanning an ocean and two wars. Named one of Publisher’s Weekly’s Best Books of 2013, Letters From Skye has been published in seventeen countries.

Website  | Facebook | Twitter | GoodReads

Hazel Gaynor is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of The Girl Who Came Home and A Memory of Violets. She writes regularly for the national press, magazines and websites in Ireland and the UK.

Website | Facebook | Twitter | GoodReads

Evangeline Holland is the founder and editor of Edwardian Promenade, the number one blog for lovers of World War I, the Gilded Age, and Belle Époque France with nearly forty thousand unique viewers a month. In addition, she blogs at Modern Belles of History. Her fiction includes An Ideal Duchess and its sequel, crafted in the tradition of Edith Warton.

Website | Twitter | GoodReads

Marci Jefferson is the author of Girl on the Golden Coin: A Novel of Frances Stuart, which Publisher’s Weekly called “intoxicating.” Her second novel, The Enchantress of Paris, will release in Spring 2015 from Thomas Dunne Books.

Website | Facebook | Twitter | GoodReads

Kate Kerrigan is the New York Times bestselling author of The Ellis Island trilogy. In addition she has written for the Irish Tatler, a Dublin-based newspaper, as well as The Irish Mail and a RTE radio show, Sunday Miscellany.

Website | Facebook | Twitter | GoodReads

Jennifer Robson is the USA Today and international bestselling author of Somewhere in France and After the War is Over. She holds a doctorate in Modern History from the University of Oxford, where she was a Commonwealth Scholar and SSHRC Doctoral Fellow. Jennifer lives in Toronto with her husband and young children.

Website | Facebook | Twitter | GoodReads

Heather Webb is an author, freelance editor, and blogger at award-winning writing sites WriterUnboxed.com and RomanceUniversity.org. Heather is a member of the Historical Novel Society and the Women’s Fiction Writers Association, and she may also be found teaching craft-based courses at a local college

Website | Facebook | Twitter | GoodReads

Beatriz Williams is the New York Times, USA Today, and international bestselling author of The Secret Life of Violet Grant and A Hundred Summers. A graduate of Stanford University with an MBA from Columbia, Beatriz spent several years in New York and London hiding her early attempts at fiction, first on company laptops as a corporate and communications strategy consultant, and then as an at-home producer of small persons. She now lives with her husband and four children near the Connecticut shore, where she divides her time between writing and laundry. William Morrow will publish her forthcoming hardcover, A Certain Age, in the summer of 2016.

Website | Facebook | Twitter | GoodReads

Lauren Willig is the New York Times bestselling author of eleven works of historical fiction. Her books have been translated into over a dozen languages, awarded the RITA, Booksellers Best and Golden Leaf awards, and chosen for the American Library Association’s annual list of the best genre fiction. She lives in New York City, where she now writes full time.

Website | Facebook | Twitter | GoodReads

US readers can enter to win one of three print copies of Fall of Poppies by clicking here.

I am absolutely thrilled to bring you a Linda’s Book Bag exclusive today – the brand new cover for Laurie Ellingham’s latest novel How to Throw Your Life Away. How to Throw Your Life Away will be out on 14th April – just in time for a wonderful summer read. There will be a smashing celebratory series of events with other lovely bloggers and you must pop back here on April 16th to be in with a chance of winning a copy of How to Throw Your Life Away.

How to Throw Your Life Away

Katy Davenport was the master of rising above it – until the day she snapped!

For thirty-two year old Katy Davenport it was the littlest thing… All her boyfriend had to do was answer her question about dinner. Not ignore her. Not continue to watch football like she didn’t exist.

In that moment Katy snaps. One moment of insanity and Katy throws her life away…

I was lucky enough to meet Laurie in person last year when she had just released her novel The Reluctant Celebrity. We got on so well that it is my absolute pleasure to be featuring her again on the blog.

The Reluctant Celebrity

Some people crave fame, others can’t escape it.

When property developer and loner, Jules Stewart, comes face-to-face with her former self grinning back from the front page of Britain’s most popular tabloid, escape is not an option.

With a new house determined to remain derelict, a nosy village determined to befriend her, and a gorgeous pub owner determined to undress her, life for Jules is difficult enough. But add a famous ex-boyfriend set to ruin her life (for the second time), a newspaper eager to expose her, and everyone she has ever known desperate for their own fifteen minutes of fame…

———

Laurie was kind enough to write a guest post for Linda’s Book Bag when I was just starting out as a blogger and you can read it here.

I loved The Reluctant Celebrity and you can read my review here.

You can buy The Reluctant Celebrity from Austin Macauley, Amazon UK, Amazon US, Waterstones and from all good bookshops.

About Laurie Ellingham

When Laurie is not running around after her two young children, her husband, their cockerpoo Rodney, or just plain running, she loves nothing more than disappearing into the fictional world of her characters, preferably with a large coffee and a slab of chocolate cake to hand.

In the past five years Laurie has moved from East London to Chelmsford and she’s finally settled in a small village in the heart of the beautiful Dedham Vales on the Suffolk/Essex border.

When she’s in the thick of a character crisis she can often be seen walking around the village with her jumper on inside out and back to front, chatting (and occasionally laughing) away to herself.

Laurie has a First Class honors degree in Psychology and a background in Public relations, both of which help her in everything she does.

You can follow Laurie on Twitter and find out all about her on her website. You’ll also find Laurie on Facebook.

It is my very great pleasure to be part of the launch celebrations for Kate McQuaile’s novel What She Never Told Me which is published by Quercus on 3rd March 2016. What She Never Told Me is available for purchase in e-book and paperback from Amazon UK, Amazon US and from Quercus as well as from all good book stores.

I have a super guest post from Kate describing how fact and fiction can be uneasy bedfellows too.

What She Never Told Me

I talked to my mother the night she died, losing myself in memories of when we were happiest together. But I held one memory back, and it surfaces now, unbidden. I see a green postbox and a small hand stretching up to its oblong mouth. I am never sure whether that small hand is mine. But if not mine, whose?

Louise Redmond left Ireland for London before she was twenty. Now, more than two decades later, her heart already breaking from a failing marriage, she is summoned home. Her mother is on her deathbed, and it is Louise’s last chance to learn the whereabouts of a father she never knew.

Stubborn to the end, Marjorie refuses to fill in the pieces of her daughter’s fragmented past. Then Louise unexpectedly finds a lead. A man called David Prescott . . . but is he really the father she’s been trying to find? And who is the mysterious little girl who appears so often in her dreams? As each new piece of the puzzle leads to another question, Louise begins to suspect that the memories she most treasures could be a delicate web of lies.

Making Things Up

A Guest Post by Kate McQuaile

I’ve spent my whole journalistic life working with facts. I check and double-check everything. As I was told many years ago when I was learning how to be a journalist, you don’t write Oxford Circus W1 until you’ve checked the A-Z. And, as one of my American colleagues says, ‘if your mother tells you she loves you, check it out.’

Now, after years of being bound to facts, I’m allowed to make things up. If I want to, I can rewrite history. If I decide that I’m going to make life easier or harder for a character in my novel, I can do that, too.

But it’s not as simple as that, as I’ve found during the writing of What She Never Told Me. Characters have their own reality, their own way of thinking and doing things and it’s not easy to steer them in a different direction once they start to come to life. So maybe I’m not really getting to make things up at all once the book starts to develop.

And, despite the freedom from rigid dependence on facts that writing a novel can give, I’m finding it hard to alter the habits of a lifetime. I find myself spending hours checking everything that I might refer to, from the colours of regional buses in Ireland in the 1960s and 1970s to the daily tide tables and the weather. Is anyone really going to care whether there really was a major storm on a particular date? Maybe not. But I’m still going to check.

I can’t help feel slightly guilty about having taken a little bit of licence with some of the buildings that get a mention in my first novel, which is set in a real town. I have my protagonist, Louise, looking directly from one side of the river towards some apartments on the other side. In reality, the apartments I mention don’t exist on the other side of the river, but I wanted them to exist and so I put them there.

For the second book, I’ve gone down the route of inventing a place where the main part of the story takes place, so everything about it will come from my imagination.

But I have taken a bit of licence with the weather — I’ve frozen the Regent’s Canal in London during a winter that was, as far as I remember, on the mild side.

And, in the meantime, the characters are doing their own thing. I started the second book with a pretty clear idea of how it would begin and how it would end. And that idea hasn’t changed. But the characters are developing lives of their own and telling their own stories. They’ve already given me a few surprises.

Follow Kate on Twitter

Find out more about Kate McQuaile and What She Never Told Me with these bloggers:

It gives me great pleasure to be part of the launch celebrations for Coffee, Tea, the Caribbean and Me by Caroline James in association with Brook Cottage Books. Coffee, Tea, the Caribbean and Me was published by Ramjam Publishing Company on February 12^th 2016. It can be bought here in the UK and here in the US.

Caroline James shares her Top 10 Writing Tips too and I think there might be hope for me yet as an aspiring novelist after reading them!

There’s also a super competition, open internationally, to enter to win a copy of Coffee, Tea, the Caribbean and Me at the bottom of this blog post.

 

Coffee, Tea, the Caribbean and Me is a romantic comedy – the sequel to Coffee, Tea, The Gypsy & Me, which shot to number 3 on Amazon and was E-book of the Week in the Sun.

Continuing the Coffee, Tea… series, join Jo and Hattie as they romp into their middle years and prove that anything is possible!

Coffee Tea The Caribbean & Me was a top ten finalist at The Write Stuff – London Book Fair 2015. The judge’s comments included, “Caroline is a natural story-teller with a gift for humour in her writing.”

Coffee Tea The Caribbean & Me, is a a story about friendship and that there is hope in middle years, romance can happen and life really does begin again.

Set in Cumbria, London and beautiful Barbados.

‘The time to be happy is now…’

Jo remembers her late husband’s words but is struggling to face the lonely future that lies ahead. A heartbroken widow, the love of her life, husband Romany John, has died suddenly and Jo finds herself alone with ghostly memories at Kirkton House – a Cumbrian Manor that until recently, she ran as a thriving hotel. Her two sons have moved away; Jimmy to run a bar in Barbados and Zach, to London to pursue a career as a celebrity chef. Middle-age and widowhood loom frighteningly and Jo determines to sell up and start again, despite protestations from colourful friend, Hattie and erstwhile admirer Pete Parks. Hattie convinces Jo to postpone any life-changing decisions by enjoying a Caribbean holiday in Barbados and their holiday sets off a course of events that brings mayhem and madness to Jo and her family.

Confused and anxious for her future, can life really begin again for Jo? Is there hope in middle years and can romance happen?

Caroline James Shares Her Top 10 Writing Tips

It’s never too late to write. Frank McCourt was 66 when Angela’s Ashes was published. James A Michener wrote 40 books after the age of 40.

Make your own space for writing – a place where you feel totally comfortable.

Stop procrastinating – just turn up at the page and write

Use note pad and voice recording apps when you are out and about – or the traditional note pad

Develop your own style and don’t try to emulate others

Allow yourself to write badly – the main thing is to keep writing

Start a blog – a great way to get your writing flowing

Start or join a writer’s group and get support from fellow writers

Don’t proof or edit until the end – let your writing flow

Believe in yourself – don’t die wondering

ABOUT CAROLINE JAMES

Caroline James was born in Cheshire and wanted to be a writer from an early age. She trained, however, in the catering trade and worked and travelled both at home and abroad. Caroline’s debut novel, Coffee Tea The Gypsy & Me shot to #3 on Amazon and was E-book of the Week in The Sun newspaper. Her second novel, So, You Think You’re A Celebrity… Chef? has been described as wickedly funny: ‘AbFab meets MasterChef in a Soap…’ The manuscript for Coffee Tea The Caribbean & Me was a Top Ten Finalist at The Write Stuff, London Book Fair 2015 and the judge’s comments included: “Caroline is a natural story-teller with a gift for humour in her writing.” Her next novel, Coffee Tea The Boomers & Me will be published autumn 2016.

Caroline has owned and run many catering related businesses and cookery is a passion alongside her writing, combining the two with her love of the hospitality industry and romantic fiction. As a media agent, Caroline represented many well-known celebrity chefs and is currently writing a TV script and accompanying book about the life of a well-known chef. She has published short stories and is a member of the RNA and The Society of Authors. Caroline writes articles on food and celebrity based interviews and is Feature Editor for an online lifestyle magazine. When she’s not running her hospitality business and writing, Caroline can generally be found with her nose in a book and her hand in a box of chocolates, she also likes to climb mountains and contemplate life.

Find out more about Caroline on her website, follow her on Twitter and email here via caroline@carolinejamesauthor.co.uk

 

GIVEAWAY 

1st Prize – A copy of the book – UK winner (paperback) / Outside UK (ecopy)

Click here for a chance to enter and win!