Friday, October 15, 2010

Happy Birthday RNA

Yesterday the Romantic Novelists' Association celebrated its 50th birthday in style with a lunch at the RAF Club to launch FABULOUS AT FIFTY.

Here are a few photos of the event...






















Thursday, October 14, 2010

Rosy Thornton Talks About Food and Romance

Food and romance: they just go together, don’t they? Like strawberries and cream, or champagne and caviar, they are each other’s perfect complement. What could be better than curling up on the sofa with a good romantic novel and a box of Belgian chocolates?

Both of them engage our sensual side. So perhaps it is no wonder if food plays a significant part in the pages of romantic fiction. What could be more alluring than the sexy hero preparing a sumptuous meal for the heroine? Than the two of them sharing a candlelit dinner, and feeding each other across the table with their fingers?

When I decided to set a novel in rural France, it was perhaps inevitable, therefore, that the local cuisine – along with the landscape – should form a major strand in the atmosphere of the book. The Tapestry of Love tells the story of divorcee Catherine Parkstone, who sells her house in England and moves to a remote hamlet in the Cévennes mountains to set up in business as a seamstress. Her intriguing neighbour Patrick Castagnol, who lives in the house across the little valley from her own, prepares for her dishes in the local peasant tradition, using the produce of the those wooded hills: chestnuts and forest raspberries, trout from the mountain streams, wild mushrooms and wild boar. In turn, she roasts spatchcocked guinea fowl for him with rosemary from her garden, and serves him a fruit tart made with tiny Mirabelle plums which she picks from her terraced orchard.        

The meals which Patrick cooks for Catherine (and vice versa) became, for me, as real and vivid as the characters themselves. When the novel was done, I found that I wanted to recreate the meals for myself, just as Catherine and Patrick had prepared them. So I set about turning the dishes from the pages of the book into reality… and produced, in the process, a set of cévenol recipes to accompany the novel!

I have already shared the recipes with family and friends who have read the book and wanted to give them a try. If any RNA blog readers would like to have a go at conjuring your own taste of the Cévennes, I’d love to share them with you, too. Just send me a message via my website at
and I’ll be delighted to e-mail you the recipe booklet.     

Monday, October 11, 2010

Fabulous at Fifty

50 glorious years of the Romantic Novelists’ Association

On Thursday Fabulous at Fifty, a memoir of the first half century of the Romantic Novelists’ Association (RNA), will be launched at the RAF Club in London.  Fabulous at Fifty delves into the past, with first-hand recollections of people who were there, and describes the growth of the Romantic Novelists’ Association into what was described by PD James at a recent Awards ceremony as ‘one of most professional writers’ organisations of the present day’.

The history is packed with fascinating and frank detail about past and present members, the opinion of other novelists (often less than flattering) about this massively successful commercial genre, the changing attitude to sex and a public  broadside from Marje Proops in the Mirror plus the spats, the flaps, the End of Publishing as we Know It (1968), hot books and cold champagnes.

The book will be published by the RNA on 14th October at £9.99 and available from their website www.romanticnovelistsassociation.org

Friday, October 1, 2010

October Releases

Julie Cohen GETTING AWAY WITH IT
Headline Review
28th  October 
£19.99 (hardback) 
Rebellious stuntwoman Liza Haven finds out what it's like to be the good twin when her perfect identical sister disappears.







Rosy Thornton THE TAPESTRY OF LOVE
Headline Review
14th October (paperback)
£7.99
A rural idyll: that's what Catherine is seeking when she sells her house in England and moves to a tiny hamlet in the Cévennes mountains. Reality, however, proves rather different.





Valerie Holmes CHLOE’S FRIEND
F A Thorpe (Publishing)
Large Print
1st October
£ 8.99 
Forced to work as a laundry maid, her father has been transported and her mother sent away, the young and spirited Chloe must make her way alone - or so she thinks...'




Janet Woods PAPER DOLL
Severn House
28th  October
£19.99
Set in the 1920s, perfect daughter, Julia, become a perfect wife – until she falls in love with Martin Lee-Trafford.






Lesley Cookman MURDER IMPERFECT
Accent Press Ltd
£6.99
The seventh of the Libby Sarjeant adventures.








Mary Nichols LORD PORTMAN’S TROUBLESOME WIFE
Mills & Boon
£3.99
Homeless and penniless, Rosamund is forced to marry Harry, Lord
Portman. In return for a comfortable life, she must produce an heir. 
But far from sweeping her into his bed, Harry seems determined to keep
her at arm's length.





Lily Baxter POPPY'S WAR
Arrow
28th  October 2010
Cost £5.99
Evacuated from London's East End, thirteen-year-old Poppy
Brown enters another world when she is billeted at a grand country house in Dorset.

Gwen Kirkwood HEART OF THE HOME
Severn House
30th October
£19.99 (US $28.95)
Avril Gray has a promising career until fate intervenes. Dean Scott has ambitions but as a labourer he feels unable to propose marriage. His mother learns Avril's secret and is determined to keep them apart
Helen Scott Taylor A MIDWINTER FANTASY
Dorchester

1st October
£5.99
Fantasy anthology including stories by Leanna Renee Hieber, L.J. McDonald and Helen Scott Taylor.





Carol Townend HER BANISHED LORD
Mills & Boon
Large Print
October
£14.50 
Disgraced, stripped of his title and lands, all Hugh Duclair has left is his pride.   Will the beautiful Lady Aude, once a childhood playmate, win his heart as she risks everything to help clear his name?




Nicola Cornick WHISPER OF SCANDAL
HQN Books
28th September
£5.72
Love in a cold climate - Regency historical romance and adventure in London and the Arctic!






Cat Marsters DREAMING OF YOU
Changeling Press (ebook)
29th Oct
Approx £3
Two thousand years ago, Tamenorix of the Segovantes was cursed to live forever as a slave, providing pleasure to whoever wears his torc. A torc bought centuries later by a lovelorn academic for his best friend's birthday.

Annie Burrows THE VISCOUNT AND THE VIRGIN
Mills & Boon
1st October
£6.99
Continuing the Regency Silk and Scandal Series...Imogen Hebden has the shadow of scandal hanging over her.  Just when it looks as though her last-chance season is going to be a disaster, she gets a proposal from no less a personage than a viscount...in an almost indecent hurry to produce an heir...


Lynne Connolly TEXAS HEAT
Loose-Id
5th October
$5.50
After days of steamy passion locked in her hotel room with the devastatingly sexy Vin, Annie discovers he owns the company trying to take over her own. Can she overcome his distrust and teach him to share his worries, or is sex all they can share?




Jo Beverley EMILY AND THE DARK ANGEL (Reissue)
NAL, NY
October
$8.70
Everyone in the area is warning Emily Grantwich about her
scandalous new neighbor, but as she's running her crippled father's estate,
what's she to do?





Kate Walker KATE WALKER’S 12 POINT GUIDE TO WRITING ROMANCE (3rd edition)
Aber Publishing
30th  October
£10.99
Award winning guide to writing romance, revised and reprinted

 




Kate Jackson GO FLY A KITE
People's Friend Special Collectors Edition 2010
16th  September
£4.99
What can Marianne do with a three year old, a kite and no wind?


Kate Jackson A FRIEND IN NEED
People's Friend magazine
2nd  October
85p
What's the secret behind Charlie Harmer?

Margaret Blake A FATAL FLAW
Whiskey Creek Press
October
$16.95 print –e-book $6.99
Can Kerensa really trust a copy with the mystery of why her mother shot her father?


Chrissie Loveday ROUGH CLAY
Chivers Large Print
4th October
£16.50
In the early 20th century Potteries, Archie Barnett follows his dream to become a creator of beautiful things, namely fine bone china but dealing with life is the usual roller coaster.


Chrissie Loveday A LOVE SHARED
DC Thompson
People's Friend Pocket Novels
7th October
£1.75
Their shared passion for horses brings Sarah and Alex together but working together in their law firm brings conflict that may prove impossible to overcome.

Kate Jackson DATES FOR MY DIARY
People's Friend Annual 2011
16th  August
£6.99
An unexpected present helps Amanda start afresh.