Carol Townend Brings Us a Glimpse of Christmas at Cotehele

Cotehele is a Tudor house in Cornwall, it was home of the Edgecumbe family. We have been there a number of times as there is plenty for the medievalist to linger over...

There’s a traditional great hall; a dovecote; a stew pond in the garden where the fish were kept; and a marvellous hillside garden which slopes down to the River Tamar and the lime kilns by Cotehele Quay. Last week we went specifically to see the Cotehele Christmas Garland in the medieval hall.

It’s a fantastic creation which must have taken hours to make. The flowers used this year include: honesty, statice, straw flower, ornamental grasses, asters, ivy, various herbs, pink poker and marigolds. Christmas trees were a much later invention (Victorian, I think), but the hall at Cotehele was full of decorations. The arms on the walls were framed with beech stems, with the darkness of the arms and the beech stems making a stark contrast against the rough whitewashed walls:
And here, one of the doorways is draped with cypress branches and holly. Others were festooned with ivy.
If you would like to take a walk round Cotehele yourself, this BBC link will take you there.

Carol’s latest medieval romance Runaway Lady, Conquering Lord is published this month with Mills & Boon
TAMING HIS RUNAWAY LADY
Raised a lady, Emma of Fulford is a fallen woman with a young son as proof. He is all she has in the world, and now the boy’s brutal father has returned.Desperate and afraid, she needs to escape, and fast,so she approaches Sir Richard of Asculf. She begs this honourable Norman knight for help—and offers the only thing she has left...herself.Honourable he may be, but Sir Richard is only human and Lady Emma tempts his resolve. Can this conquering knight tame his runaway lady and stop her running for good?
Wessex Weddings Normans and Saxons, conflict and desire

Publicity Seeking by Bernardine Kennedy

Journalist and author of seven best selling books Bernardine Kennedy shares her experience of dealing publicity.




Recently I’ve been tearing my hair out trying to write a couple of personal press releases that can be sent out to the media to prove that I’m really very interesting and worthy of a few column inches that will help promote my next book. You know the press releases I mean, they delve into the personal rather than the professional and are written to catch the jaded eye of the journo assigned that day to sifting through them all.

Once the crack-high of acceptance for publication has died down, there comes a stark realisation that the next step for one’s lovingly crafted book, and the next one, is for it to actually sell in enough numbers to keep the publisher happy.

The loyal purchase of the first book by family, friends and curious colleagues (after the debut they sadly lose interest) just won’t do it; the book has to be lobbed forcefully out into the big wide world and the general public have to hear about both it and the author and then they have to be persuaded that they really, really have to go out and buy it. Complex stuff.

This is where publicity and self promotion comes in. Publishers and agents will do some of the touting around but on the whole it’s down to the author to try and fire up some interest. Any interest. From anywhere.

Self-promotion is a necessary evil that even the most shy and retiring has to get to grips with but it can be a dangerous balancing act trying to find the happy medium between being ordinary and uninteresting and giving out ‘too much information’, some of which is possibly (accidentally?) exaggerated and which will one day return to bite the author on the bum. Trust me, there’s always someone somewhere feeling mean and ready to rain on your parade.
So just how much personal information should you give out about yourself and your nearest and dearest in the quest for that ever elusive publicity? Where does a Joe Bloggs author, not normally in the public eye, draw the line between doing everything possible to get mentions and quotes, and going too far?

It seems to vary greatly from person to person; I cringe sometimes when I read an in-depth confession of something so deeply personal, tragic, humiliating or devastating it brings a lump to my throat and then see the little note at the bottom of the piece about the authors latest book that is out that very week. Aha. Publicity.Cringe I might but at the same time I can understand it. Authors want their books to sell and so do their publishers but in these days of gossip magazines and tabloid newspapers publishing increasingly salacious details about celebrities, being normal, ordinary and hard-working simply doesn’t cut it.‘Happily married mother of two point four children who lives in a semi and works part-time in a bank writes a novel’ isn’t going to grab any headlines unless she was, for example, moonlighting as a high class call girl at the same time. (N.B.High class call-girl is good, heroin raddled street walker is bad).Same as ‘Disabled dad whose wife ran off to Turkey with a toy-boy leaving him with five children managed to find the time to write a heart-rending account of his struggle when kids were in bed’, will have them all gagging for the details. Especially if the wife now wants her share of the royalties. Bring on the tabloids!

So would I tell tales on my kids to get a two line book mention at the bottom of a page? Would I rip into the ex-husbands who are also the fathers of said kids? Reveal personal details about my childhood, adolescence and marriages that will embarrass not only me but also everyone close to me? No I’m sure I wouldn’t. Well I haven’t done so far. But would I drag up something from my past that makes a good tale, doesn’t impact on anyone else and won’t come back to haunt me? Oh Yes.All I have to do now is think of something catchy that will have Tesco getting out the cheque book and readers queuing around the block for a signed copy.
Back to the drawing board of my ratchety old past!


http://www.bernardinekennedy.com/
http://www.bernardinekennedy.blogspot.com/

What Is The Date of Publication? by Sue Moorcroft

Sue Moorcroft, the editor of the RNA's Anthology LOVES ME, LOVES ME NOT, tells us about publication dates.

The publication date for STARTING OVER is 30th November 2009. So how could it be in the charts at W H Smith on St Pancras station on the 18th November?

Certain retailers ask for stock at times to suit their own plans and it seems that Starting Over fitted into W H Smith Travel’s plans earlier in November. Excellent! They got me off to a flying start.

Stock was in at Amazon and then out again – then in again – then out. Now it’s in. In the electronic age, stock tends to show on websites as it arrives but if the publication date hasn’t arrived yet the status flickers between ‘in stock’ and ‘pre-order’. Other estores show it firmly in stock. All that seems to matter is that if you click on ‘buy’ the book will shoot through your letterbox quite soon afterwards.

For the author, publication day is long awaited. But a box of brand new books has been on the study floor for weeks, the excitement of seeing a jpeg of the cover came months ago and publishing day is more likely to be marked by a flurry of promotion than be heralded in by a choir of publishing angels or a marching band. It’s just one day in the life of my book.

And even though it’s probably not what anyone expects – it’s the most important day.

http://www.suemoorcroft.com/

Jan Jones Talks About Writing Close to Home

Jan Jones talks about using a location close to home as the setting for her Regency novels.

When I started writing Regencies I was faced with a problem. How to make mine stand out from the very good ones written by everybody else? The answer I came up with was: location, location, location!

I live just outside Newmarket. It occurred to me that while other Regency novels use the town as a convenient plot device for divesting young hopefuls of their ready cash or for ensuring that the hero is out of the heroine’s reach for a week, none of the ones I’d read had actually set the action there.

And yet Newmarket was the horse-acing venue for the elite seven times a year. And it is only sixty miles of good road away from London. And full of historical buildings and great stories. There are even the remains of cock pits to be seen if you sidle down the right paths and peer over the right walls.

So I plunged happily into local research and wrote my first Newmarket Regency, FAIR DECEPTION as an introduction to the town itself. For my second, FORTUNATE WAGER - coincidentally out this month - I leapt into the world of horseracing.

Caroline Fortune simply wants to train horses in an era when women were not allowed to have anything to do with the racing on Newmarket Heath. Like any right-minded heroine, she doesn’t let this stop her. However it does become a teensy bit awkward when Lord Alexander Rothwell - who is investigating shady dealing at the racecourse - is coshed and left for dead on her doorstep.

My goodness, I learnt so much about the history of horse racing in general and Newmarket Heath in particular. For example, there used to be seventeen courses at Newmarket. Seventeen! All criss-crossed around the same basic routes, but subtly different as regards start-points, lengths and end-points. No wonder the adjective most used about the race meetings in accounts of the time was “confusing”.
I could get very boring on the subject, but I won’t. Instead I hope that if you read the books you will benefit from some of the fruits of my research without getting mental indigestion. If you’d like to, you can read more about the background to my Newmarket Regencies on my website at www.jan-jones.co.uk I also blog at http://janjones.blogspot.com and I twitter about the minutiae of life as @janjonesauthor.

Veronica Henry Reports on the Colman Getty Pen Quiz

There were sore heads for more than one reason, when the RNA team entered the Colman Getty Pen Quiz. Veronica Henry tells all.


We had all been swotting for weeks, glued to Mastermind/University Challenge/Brain of Britain in a vain attempt to improve our general knowledge. But nothing could prepare us for the ferociously hard questions at the 2009 Colman Getty Pen Quiz, hosted by the eloquent and efficient David Mitchell of Peep Show and Mitchell and Webb fame.

We had been lulled into a false sense of security beforehand, quaffing champagne in the splendour of the Royal Institute of British Architects and spotting literary luminaries such as Joan Bakewell, Sarah Waters, Deborah Moggach, Daisy Goodwin, Isobel Wolff and Kathy Lette, mixed in with a good sprinkling of publishing movers and shakers.

Then we moved into the banqueting room for dinner and … agonising torture as the questions came thick and fast. We conferred, debated, scratched our heads, reached for the wine bottle and actually put up a pretty good fight in the end, our best rounds being history [where we played our joker, earning double points] and the picture round.

In the end it was a tie between The Times, The Guardian and Harper Collins [the competition was pretty tough!], so the final winner was decided by a quick fire round, with The Times emerging as victors after correctly answering the question ‘In 1519, the French King Francis 1 bought which painting to put in his bathroom?’ [The Mona Lisa].

Coming last was softened by Liz Harris winning four bottles of fine malt whisky in the raffle, and the knowledge that we had contributed to an excellent cause – the evening raised approximately £20,000 to support PEN’s work defending freedom of expression, campaigning on behalf of persecuted writers worldwide and promoting literature and literacy.

Fenella Miller Talks About the Pleasure of Research

Researching is part of the pleasure of writing historical fiction. I am much more familiar with the Regency era than I am of the Second World War. My current work in progress is a romantic suspense set in 1941 near Debden, which was an RAF base at the time. a female protagonists is a land girl, the hero an RAF pilot and the other male protagonist a German fighter pilot shot down over Debden.

Saffron Walden, so called because it was the focus of the saffron trade in mediaeval times, is the nearest town, about 3 miles away. It's a pretty, unspoilt town, with most of the buildings listed. The photo is of the Victorian building that was the hospital during the war, it is now the council offices.You can see from the aerial view taken 10 years ago that the airfield is exactly as it was, apart from the fact that hangars have been demolished, the air traffic control tower gone and an army barracks now with the main buildings used to be. The buildings on either side of the main gate were built in 1934, originally they had flat roofs but they are pitched.

I was privileged to be taken on a conducted tour by a very friendly local farmer. He had arranged to drive me around the airfield. It was awesome to look down the 1 mile long runway and think that the bombers ( Blenheims and Beaufighters) had trundled down this very concrete.

I was astonished to discover that Debden Village had no electricity until 1954, and my guide pointed out the place where one of the standpipes was positioned. They must have lived like Victorians even though 3 miles down the road they had everything in the way plumbing and so on. I've yet to discover where the nearest telephone was, the farmer told me his family had had one but he didn't know if anyone else had.

Debden airfield is over 400 acres, until I drove around the perimeter where the fighters and bombers used a taxi to get in position to take off, I had no idea it was so big.

The best story I discovered was that a German fighter landed on Debden airfield in error, he even got out of his plane and went to speak to someone in the control tower. He managed to taxi round and take off before he could be shot down or captured. Further investigation has led to the discovery that this pilot had also landed in two other places - he was either a shockingly bad navigator or the very brazen spy.

I'm going back to spend the day at Saffron Walden next week, I didn't have time to do more than go to the library to collect some books I'd ordered. I must visit the art gallery and museum and go on the historic walk before the weather becomes too unpleasant.

Fenella Miller

Two Gentlemen From London

Robert Hale

http://www.fenellajanemiller.co.uk/

Gill Stewart on The Evolution of a Story

Gill Stewart, writing as Gillian Villars, tells us about ‘Tomorrow’s Promise’ – The Evolution of a Story


In her recent post , Kate Harrison discussed the task of re-writing a story once the novel had actually been published. That really is quite a challenge and it was fascinating to read about it. The evolution of my story has been slightly different and probably easier as it has not taken place ‘in public'.

The story I’m referring to is ‘Tomorrow’s Promise’, my second People’s Friend Pocket Novel which is out now. The title was new to me and made me think about all the evolutions this story has been through to reach eventual publication.

Firstly the title – it started off in my head as ‘Lara’ and stayed with that title for years. Then when PF accepted it, it was as ‘Lara of Ladybank Row’. And now it is published under the completely different title of ‘Tomorrow’s Promise’.

But it’s not only the title that has been evolving. The story itself has changed many times, although as always been essentially the same – the story of Lara, a teacher, who takes on the challenge of a new job and run down house, who is quite happy thank you and certainly isn’t looking for love or reconciliation with her parents, but through the novel finds both…

In its original incarnation the story was intended to be the first of a trilogy, each centring on the love story of one of three friends. The second incarnation was as a novel in its own right, with some of the friends’ stories woven in. The third and final version was altered to suit the format of the People’s Friend Pocket Novel and had to be considerably shortened (it helped having to take out all the swear words and sex!).

This is a story I am very fond of and I’m delighted I didn’t give up on it and that it has eventually found a home. For me it shows that the saying ‘if at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try again’ is very true, especially when it comes to writing.