Jenny Kane: Coffee, cupcakes, chocolate and contemporary fiction / Jennifer Ash: Medieval crime with hints of Ellis Peters and Robin Hood

Tag: cake

Ready, steady, write….

With Abi’s Neighbour now out in the world, and my next Jennifer Ash medieval mystery, The Winter Outlaw, awaiting the careful eye of my editor, it is time to crack on with a brand new novel.

Before you ask- no, I’m not going to tell you what it will be called – and no, I’m not going to tell you what it’s going to be about.

I can tell you that it will be a novel – it will be contemporary with a romantic thread running through it – and it’s set in the beautiful City of Bath. In and around the Roman Baths in fact.

Starting a new book is always rather daunting. Novels are so- well- long! Getting together a 2000 word synopsis or story plan can be hard enough. Turning that synopsis into a 90,000 word novel is another matter all together. A feat which always makes me think of think of climbing a mountain. By about halfway I definitely feel the need for a hard hat, crampons- and very definitely Kendell’s Mint Cake!

Talking of cake- the novel is going to be rather heavy on the cake…lemon cake to be specific.

Right…I’d better go and get on with it…

Happy reading,

Jenny x

 

 

 

 

 

Writing with a coffee cup to hand

I’ve been blogging a lot about my forthcoming novel, Abi’s Neighbour lately. This weekend however, I’m turning my thoughts away from my Abi Carter collection, to my coffee drinker obsessed – the Another Cup of…series.

And that got me thinking about my coffee shop habit.

Okay- I admit it, I am addicted- not just to the caffeine- but also to the coffee and teashops where I can drink it.

I just love cafes- all of them! I love to watch the people around me, to smile at strangers to see how they respond, to wrap my hands around a coffee mug and inhale the aroma of the drink within. For me, there is something very soothing about these places. Whether they are jammed packed and noisy, or as quiet as the proverbial grave, with myself as the only coffee swiller in residence, I simply feel at home in cafes.

Coffee - The Courtyard- Wiv

It won’t surprise you to learn then, that every novel I have ever written has taken shape in various coffee shops up and down the UK. I can’t write at home, with the distractions of ironing and dusting, so I pen all my words at cafe tables. There is even a plaque on the wall of my cafe, denoting where I write! It seemed totally natural to me therefore, that when it came to creating my first non-erotic stories, that I wrote the coffee shop based, Another Cup of… series, which begins with Another Cup of Coffee– goes seasonal with  Another Cup of Christmas, Christmas in the Cotswolds, and Christmas at the Castle, before heading back to Richmond in London for Another Glass of Champagne.

 

Another Cup of Coffee Blurb-

Thirteen years ago Amy Crane ran away from everyone and everything she knew, ending up in an unfamiliar city with no obvious past and no idea of her future. Now, though, that past has just arrived on her doorstep, in the shape of an old music cassette that Amy hasn’t seen since she was at university.

Digging out her long-neglected Walkman, Amy listens to the lyrics that soundtracked her student days. As long-buried memories are wrenched from the places in her mind where she’s kept them safely locked away for over a decade, Amy is suddenly tired of hiding.

It’s time to confront everything about her life. Time to find all the friends she left behind in England, when her heart got broken and the life she was building for herself was shattered. Time to make sense of all the feelings she’s been bottling up for all this time. And most of all, it’s time to discover why Jack has sent her tape back to her now, after all these years…

With her mantra, ‘New life, New job, New home’, playing on a continuous loop in her head, Amy gears herself up with yet another bucket-sized cup of coffee, as she goes forth to lay the ghost of first love to rest…

 

The coffee shop that features most within Another Cup of Coffee is called Pickwicks, a café tucked away in a corner of Richmond, run by the ever bubbly Peggy, and her husband Scott. It is there that, newly arrived in London from Scotland, Amy Crane finds a refuge from her troubles, a temporary job, a possible future, and a potential friend in Kit.

Based on the best bits of all my favourite cafes, Pickwicks is a place I really wish existed outside of the realms of my imagination!! I’d love to have a cuppa there.

***

If you’d like to read Another Cup of Coffee, you can buy it from all good bookshops, as well as from…

http://www.amazon.com/Another-Cup-Of-Coffee-contemporary-ebook/dp/B00EVYZC7M/ref=pd_sim_kstore_1?ie=UTF8&refRID=15EFJ85882KQYAJ71KED

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Another-Cup-Of-Coffee-contemporary-ebook/dp/B00EVYZC7M/ref=pd_sim_kinc_4?ie=UTF8&refRID=12DHKX85NFP0DNJJCKDS 

Happy reading,

Jenny x

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