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

Tag: comedy

Opening Lines with Charlie Laidlaw

This week’s Opening Lines blog shares the first 500 words of Charlie Laidlaw’s dark comedy, The Space Between Time.

Why not sit back for five minutes, and enjoy the very start of the story?

Blurb

There are more stars in the universe than there are grains of sand on Earth…

Emma Maria Rossini appears to be the luckiest girl in the world. She’s the daughter of a beautiful and loving mother, and her father is one of the most famous film actors of his generation. She’s also the granddaughter of a rather eccentric and obscure Italian astrophysicist.

But as her seemingly charmed life begins to unravel, and Emma experiences love and tragedy, she ultimately finds solace in her once-derided grandfather’s Theorem on the universe.

The Space Between Time is humorous and poignant and offers the metaphor that we are all connected, even to those we have loved and not quite lost.

First 500 words…

Density parameter of the universe

I have decided, somewhat reluctantly, but after careful consideration and under the influence of strong medication, to begin here:

Yippee! Mummy is taking me to the cinema and has told me that it’s a surprise. This doesn’t really make sense, because if taking me to the cinema is a surprise, why has she told me?

But this is typical Mum; opening her mouth and saying something, then realising that she shouldn’t have said it and wishing that she could un-say it. Even in my short life, I know she’s confused a lot of people – and offended many others. Nothing nasty, but if someone at the shops says what a nice day it is, Mum will often disagree, and I’m old enough to know that you’re not supposed to disagree about the weather.

Even if it’s been pouring with rain for hours, you’re supposed to agree that it’s just a passing shower. It’s not intentional, she simply doesn’t think, then realises she may have been rude, and sometimes goes back into the shop to apologise, or doesn’t go back and then frets that she should have done. Mum spends a lot of time worrying, usually about things that aren’t worth worrying about.

My Mum’s called Caitlin, by the way, although most grown-ups call her Cat. It’s a better name than Dog or Mouse, I suppose, and Mum does look a bit feline with her big eyes and unblinking gaze.

But it is a surprise to be going to the cinema because we almost never go to the cinema, and then only to see cartoons about dogs and cats – and big cats like lions. I keep telling her that I don’t like cartoons but – another Mum habit – she’s rarely listening or, if she is, then the information just wafts around her brain like smoke and quickly gets blown out her ears.

She told me recently that her brain is a bit of a butterfly, as if that neatly explained things, which it didn’t. I’d been telling her something really interesting about frogspawn and she’d been nodding and smiling in – mostly – the right places when the phone rang. It was Dad, who Mum spends most of the time worrying about, and who’s rarely here, but does try to phone from London or New York, or wherever he says he is.

When Dad phones, one of Mum’s feet taps on the floor, faster and faster. We have wooden floors, so it’s like living with a large woodpecker. For some reason, Mum rarely believes that he’s where he says he is.

Mum put down the phone and stared at it with narrowed eyes, as if it had done something naughty, then said bastard very loudly. ‘It’s a term of endearment,’ she told me, ignoring my sceptical expression. ‘Now, what were you telling me about toads?’

That’s also when she told me about the butterfly inside her head, which I also didn’t believe, because butterflies are only colourful insects and…

***

You can find out what happens next by buying The Space Between Time from all good retailers, including…

https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=the+space+between+time&ref=nb_sb_noss_2 

***

Bio

I’m the author of three novels, The Things We Learn When We’re Dead and The Space Between Time and Love Potions and Other Calamities.

I was born in Paisley, central Scotland, which wasn’t my fault. That week, Eddie Calvert with Norrie Paramor and his Orchestra were Top of the Pops, with Oh, Mein Papa, as sung by a young German woman remembering her once-famous clown father. That gives a clue to my age, not my musical taste.
I was brought up in the west of Scotland (quite near Paisley, but thankfully not too close) and graduated from the University of Edinburgh. I still have the scroll, but it’s in Latin, so it could say anything.
I then worked briefly as a street actor, baby photographer, puppeteer and restaurant dogsbody before becoming a journalist. I started in Glasgow and ended up in London, covering news, features and politics. I interviewed motorbike ace Barry Sheene, Noel Edmonds threatened me with legal action and, because of a bureaucratic muddle, I was ordered out of Greece.
I then took a year to travel round the world, visiting 19 countries. Highlights included being threatened by a man with a gun in Dubai, being given an armed bodyguard by the PLO in Beirut (not the same person with a gun), and visiting Robert Louis Stevenson’s grave in Samoa. What I did for the rest of the year I can’t quite remember.
Surprisingly, I was approached by a government agency to work in intelligence, which just shows how shoddy government recruitment was back then. However, it turned out to be very boring and I don’t like vodka martini.
Craving excitement and adventure, I ended up as a PR consultant, which is the fate of all journalists who haven’t won a Pulitzer Prize, and I’ve still to listen to Oh, Mein Papa.
I am married with two grown-up children and live in East Lothian.  And that’s about it.

You can find Charlie at…

www.charlielaidlawauthor.com

F: charlielaidlawauthor

T: @claidlawauthor

***

Many thanks Charlie,

Happy reading everyone,

Jenny x

Opening Lines with Chris Chalmers: Dinner At The Happy Skeleton

This week’s opening lines features the latest novel by Chris Chalmers.

I have to say, Dinner at the Happy Skeleton, sounds a hell of a lot of fun!

Over to you Chris…

Dinner At The Happy Skeleton – The Blurb:

Dan is the kind of gay man for whom the Noughties might have been named. Warm, witty and serially promiscuous, his heart melts at the sight of a chocolate brown Labrador — but with men it’s a different matter. He’s thirty-nine and as single as ever, not counting the couple he just met online. An arrangement that looks oddly like it’s going somewhere, until Dan gets fired from his job in advertising. With time-out and a payoff in his pocket, summer presents a world of possibilities; just as the memories surface of the ex he blames for the thinly-veiled chaos of his life.

From London to Ljubljana, a yen for closure sets Dan on the trail of the man who fed his ego into a shredder. Through an eerie encounter at the home of the Olympiad and a sleepover at the Dutch Embassy, run-ins with a fading porn star and the celestial manifestation of Margaret Thatcher, he ultimately confronts his past. Until, with his Big Four-O rapidly approaching, destiny beckons from where he least expects it.

‘In Dan, Chris Chalmers has created his most appealing protagonist yet … An eye-opening, always entertaining romp through modern sexual mores, with a sweet beating heart of true feeling at its core.’ SUZI FEAY, literary journalist

YOU MIGHT AS WELL ASK THE DONALD…

If you’re planning a late summer getaway, here’s a suggestion for a poolside page-turner with a difference.

Literary critic and Booker Prize nominee Philip Hensher called Dinner At The Happy Skeleton, ‘the perfect novel for a sunny afternoon. Full of charm and vim and sauce…’ And unless it’s the last white-chocolate Magnum in the shop, I’m not about to argue with him about anything.

Expect mid-life crises, bed-hopping, fun and adventures off the tourist trail, as Dan the out-of-work advertising man blows his latest redundancy cheque on a hedonistic summer of self discovery. What begins as the chance to take time out from his career turns into a quest to trace the ex that serial-singleton Dan blames for the smouldering ruins of his love-life.

Working on the principle that asking any author for an objective view of their novel is like asking Donald Trump to recommend a skyscraper, I’ll say no more. Try the first 500 words of Dinner At The Happy Skeleton for yourself. And if you like them, get in quick because the ebook is 99p till the end of August.

I call that sauce for your sun-lounger and a bargain to boot.

FIRST 500 WORDS…

CHAPTER ONE

I love waking up next to Jack. He is five foot five, comedy small, so not what you’d call any of my types. But his skin is naturally smooth as a baby’s; a bonus in a man of thirty-four. I nuzzle his head under my chin and try not to think of the spider-legs running amok over my own shoulders. The red lights on his ceiling say 07:18. Another seven minutes till we are officially behind schedule.

‘I need a slash,’ he growls, in a voice cracked by dawn.

‘Do Thunderbird Four,’ I say. ‘If you loved me you would …’

Jack is cute, with chipmunk eyes and cheeks you want to bite. He is a living Action Man, compact and perfectly proportioned with hair like a tennis ball. But he doesn’t love me really.

Thank God.

He tuts as his head disappears. The hummock under the duvet shifts and deflates until his feet appear at the bottom of the bed. The rest of him follows as he folds into a heap on the carpet and crawls for the door … It lacks the smooth entry and splosh of the little yellow submarine exiting the belly of Thunderbird Two. But it makes me laugh, every time.

At that moment there’s a clink of china and a swish of designer silk as the bedroom door opens, narrowly missing Jack’s head.

‘Brew,’ says Phil, stepping over him.

He puts three mugs on the bedside table. Then he slips out of his dressing gown and climbs back into the bed.

*

A threesome isn’t something you go looking for. No, scratch that – it’s exactly what you go looking for when you’ve been around the block as many times as I have. You just don’t expect it to turn into anything.

I met Jack and Phil online the previous August. We chatted, suggestively, two or three times. I enjoyed the frisson of not knowing which of the two guys in the photos I was talking to, and since for once they were both quite tasty,it didn’t matter.

As for the day we met – well, that was all quite Cynthia Payne …

So I’m sweaty and hungover, eager for fun if knackered from the night before, as I trudge up Denmark Hill with a rucksack full of sex toys. It takes me a while to find the address in a neat and tidy street that feels (no pun intended) anally suburban. Multi-hued children on tricycles clatter over paving stones, and though the net curtains don’t actually twitch like flamenco hems it feels like they should.

The taller one answers the door and shows me into the kitchen, where the shorter one is emptying the dishwasher from Sunday lunch. A tiny telly plays on the granite worktop as I tear a can of Fosters from the four-pack I picked up at Sainsbury’s.

‘I didn’t know what to bring,’ I say, my rucksack betraying otherwise as it thuds on the terracotta flags.

BIO and SOCIAL LINKS:

Chris Chalmers lives in South-West London with his partner, a quite famous concert pianist. He has been the understudy on Mastermind, visited 40 different countries, and swum with iguanas. Aside from his novels, his proudest literary achievement is making Martina Navratilova ROFLAO on Twitter.

You’ll find him on Facebook @chrischalmersnovelist, on Twitter @CCsw19, and at www.chrischalmers.net

BUY LINK, paperback and ebook:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dinner-Happy-Skeleton-Chris-Chalmers-ebook/dp/B076X98C31/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1566576917&sr=8-1 

***

Another fabulous set of opening lines!

Thanks Chris.

Happy reading everyone,

Jenny x

To continue or not to continue…Another Glass of Champagne

It was with a sense of excitement, tinged with sadness that, a couple of months ago, I celebrated the launch of Another Glass of Champagne. Obviously I was excited because the publication of any novel is a very special moment. To see the words you’ve woven together, that you’ve sweated over, sworn at, caressed, and loved, take their final form is a thrill that never fades. In a world where it is increasingly difficult to find a publisher that will risk its expenditure on printing your book, rather than leaving it as eBook only, the sense of joy is even greater.

And the touch of sadness? Well, that is because Another Glass of Champagne is the final instalment in the Pickwicks Coffee House adventures, and I’m going to miss Amy, Kit, Jack, Megan, Peggy and the crew. They have lived with me, in my head for five years now, and – at the risk of sounding a little unhinged- they have become my friends. (Obviously I don’t actually talk to them- really…OK, I do, but only a little bit.)

AGOC

Another Glass of Champagne follows on from my (bestselling!), novel, Another Cup of Coffee, and the seasonal Christmas novella’s Another Cup of Christmas, Christmas in the Cotswolds, and Christmas at the Castle. (You don’t need to have any of these earlier tales to enjoy Another Glass of Champagne)

Blurb

A warm-hearted, contemporary tale about a group of friends living in a small corner of busy London, by bestselling author Jenny Kane.

Fortysomething Amy is shocked and delighted to discover she s expecting a baby not to mention terrified! Amy wants best friend Jack to be godfather, but he hasn’t been heard from in months. When Jack finally reappears, he s full of good intentions but his new business plan could spell disaster for the beloved Pickwicks Coffee Shop, and ruin a number of old friendships…

Meanwhile his love life is as complicated as ever and yet when he swears off men for good, Jack meets someone who makes him rethink his priorities…but is it too late for a fresh start?

 Author Kit has problems of her own: just when her career has started to take off, she finds herself unable to write and there is a deadline looming, plus two headstrong kids to see through their difficult teenage years…will she be able to cope?

A follow-up to the runaway success Another Cup of Coffee.

 Another Cup of Coffee - New cover 2015

My affection for Amy, Kit and Jack comes, not just from the fact I have lived with their unique voices in my head for so long, but because each of them is based on a real person. When I wrote Another Cup of Coffee, it was with a sense of trepidation. If those whose essence I’d used to create the three lead characters in the book hadn’t liked the story, I would never have sent it to a publisher to be considered for publication in the first place.

Luckily for me, they were- and still are- incredibly supportive of me and my words. I am blessed to have friends who are willing to have their lives expanded into fiction on the page. In fact, it has been immense fun chatting with the ‘real’ Jack and seeing which direction he’d like his ‘on page’ persona to travel.

Ever since Another Glass of Champagne came out I’ve been privileged to be the recipient of many requests for more future episodes in the coffee shop saga.

Just one more story to see what happens next…. I can’t tell you how flattering that is- and I’m touched and very grateful that my readers care enough to want to know what happens after Another Glass of Champagne ended.

I can’t pretend I haven’t thought about it. It would be so easy to write another Pickwicks tale about the characters I love. To take Jack, Amy and Kit on “just one more” turn around the coffee shop block. It would also however, be the height of laziness on my part- and very probably a mistake.

We’ve all watched television shows that have done one series too many, and read book series that should never have tried to squeeze out one more novel. I don’t want that to happen to my Another Cup of…series.

I’d hate to hear anyone say, ‘those first Jenny Kane coffee shop books were good- but that last one wasn’t up to it really was it…’– I’d be mortified!

The little voice at the back of my head told me to call it quits after Champagne, and so I’ve done just that.

Will I live to regret the decision? Possibly. I’ve loved writing these books very much indeed.

Would I change my mind if a nice film or television producer came along with some screen ideas? Of course I would! Sometimes it’s fine to be a hypocrite!!

In the meantime, I shall continue to enjoy sharing the story of Amy, Kit and Jack’s interconnecting lives with you for as long as you’ll put up with me doing so- while also getting down to writing something new.

***

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Mini Extract

Sticking her head out of the bedroom window, Amy took a huge lungful of fresh air. Even though her morning sickness had passed with merciful speed, the aroma of the paint she and Paul were decorating their spare room with was making her decidedly queasy.

‘I thought this was supposed to be odourless paint?’

‘It is.’ Paul smiled at his wife as he put down the yellow paint-covered roller. ‘Why don’t you take a break? There’s not much left to do now.’

Amy leaned against the windowsill. ‘I’m fine – and anyway, it’s my own fault. I should never have got on my hands and knees to paint the skirting board. Thank you for not saying “I told you so,” by the way.’

Sinking onto the chair Paul had placed in the middle of the decorating chaos, Amy rubbed a palm over her bump in wonder. It seemed to be getting bigger by the hour, never mind by the day.

‘Have Phil and Rob managed to make any contact with Jack yet?’

‘Not a word.’ Paul scraped the remains of the paint from the roller tray onto his brush and dabbed at a patchy place on the wall. ‘Rob hasn’t had any replies to his texts and emails. He reckons Jack is probably somewhere really remote with no Wi-Fi.’

‘Hmmm. Well, I hope he resurfaces soon, or I’ll have had this baby before he even knows I’m expecting one.’

Paul stretched his arms above his head to loosen the muscles cramped from painting. ‘He’ll turn up sooner or later. Jack always does…’

***

If you’d like to discover how what Jack is up to, then you can find Another Glass of Champagne in all good bookshops and via online retailers (in paperback and e-format).

Buy Links

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Another+Glass+of+Champagne+Jenny+Kane

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss/188-7813436-7626710?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Another+Glass+of+Champagne+Jenny+Kane

Happy reading,

Jenny xx

PS – You can pre-order the Jenny Kane Christmas Collection – which contains 3 seasonal Pickwick’s stories!

jennykanes-christmas-collection-pre

Release Blitz: Melody Bittersweet and the Girl’s Ghostbusting Agency by Kitty French

MELODY BITTERSWEET AND THE GIRLS’ GHOSTBUSTING AGENCY by Kitty French

OUT NOW

UK: http://amzn.to/1TCU5Q7

US: http://amzn.to/1Z2CQpB

An absolutely hilarious, totally entertaining, spookily sexy read that you won’t be able to put down!

Melody-Bittersweet-and-The-Girls-Ghostbusting-Agency-


Life’s tricky for Melody Bittersweet. She’s single, she’s addicted to sugar and super heroes, her family are officially bonkers and … she sees dead people. Is it any wonder no-one’s swiping right on Tinder?
Waking up lonely on her twenty-seventh birthday, Melody finally snaps. She can’t carry on basing all of her life decisions on the advice of her magic 8 ball; things havegot to change.

Fast forward two months, and she’s now the proud proprietor of her very own ghostbusting agency – kind of like in the movies but without the dodgy white jumpsuits. She’s also flirting with her ex Leo Dark, fraternising with her sexy enemy in alleyways, and she’s somehow ended up with a pug called Lestat.

Life just went from dull to dynamite and it’s showing no sign of slowing up anytime soon. Melody’s been hired to clear Scarborough House of its incumbent ghosts, there’s the small matter of a murder to solve, and then there are the two very handsome, totally inappropriate men hoping to distract her from the job…

Welcome to Chapelwick, home of the brand new and hilarious Girls Ghostbusting Agency series, where things really do go bump in the night.

***

Chapter One

‘So, what do you do with your spare time, Melody?’

I look my date square in his pretty brown eyes and lie to him. ‘Oh, you know. The usual.’ I shrug to convey how incredibly normal I am. ‘I read a lot . . . Go to the movies. That kind of thing.’

I watch Lenny digest my words, and breathe a sigh of relief when his eyes brighten.

‘Which genre?’

‘Movies or books?’ I ask, stalling for time because, in truth, I don’t get much in the way of spare time to do either.

‘Movies. Action or romance? No, let me guess.’ He narrows his eyes and studies me intently. ‘You look like a sucker for a rom-com.’

‘Do I?’ I’m genuinely surprised. I’m five foot three and look more like Wednesday Addams than a Disney princess. Maybe Wednesday Addams is over-egging it, but you get the idea; I’m brunette and my dress sense errs on the side of edgy. I don’t think anyone has ever looked at me and thought whimsy. Maybe Lenny sees something everyone else has missed, me included. I quite like that idea, mainly because everyone who knows my family has a head full of preconceptions about me, based on the fact that my family are all crackers.

Four Weddings?’ He shrugs hopefully.

I nod, not mentioning that the only part of that particular movie I enjoyed was the funeral.

The Holiday?’

Again, I try to look interested and hold my tongue, because I’m sure he doesn’t want to hear that I’d rather stick needles in my eyes than ever watch an over-optimistic Kate Winslet drag some old guy around a swimming pool again.

I’m relieved when the bill arrives and we can get out of there, because so far Lenny has turned out to be a pretty stellar guy and somehow I’ve managed to convince him that I walk on the right side of the tracks. Maybe this time, things will be different.

Lenny pulls his dull, salesman’s saloon into the cobbled cartway beside my building and kills the engine. I don’t mind dull. In fact, my life could really use a bit of dull right now, so I shoot him my most seductive smile, cross my fingers that my mother will be in bed, and invite him in for coffee.

Oh, just when it had all been going so well. Why couldn’t I have just given him a goodnight kiss, with maybe the smallest hint of tongue as a promise, then sent him on his way? He’d have called for a second date, I’m sure of it.

But no. I got greedy, pulled him by the hand through the dark back door, placing my finger against my lips to signal he should be quiet as we tip-toed past my mother’s apartment and up the old wooden staircase to my place.

He rests his hand on my waist as I turn the key, and a small thrill shoots down my back. Look at me, winning at this being-an-adult thing today! Dinner with an attractive man, sparkling conversation, and now back to mine for coffee . . . and maybe even a little fooling around. It’s not that I’m a virgin or anything, but it would be fair to call my love life patchy of late. By ‘of late’ I mean the last two years, ever since Leo Dark and I called things off. Well, by Leo and I, I mean Leo called things off, citing conflict of interests. Ha. Given that he was referring to the fact that my mad-as-a-bag-of-cats family are the only other psychics in town besides him, he was, at least in part, right.

But enough of Leo and my lamentable love life. Right now, all I want is for Lenny not to know anything at all about my peculiar family, to keep seeing me as a cool, regular, completely normal girl, and then to kiss me.

‘You remind me of Clara Oswald,’ Lenny whispers behind me at the top of the stairs. ‘All big brown eyes and clever one-liners. It’s very sexy.’

Lord, I think he’s just brushed a kiss against the back of my neck! My door sticks sometimes so I shoulder it open, aiming for firm and graceful but, I fear, ending up looking more like a burly police SWAT guy ramming it down. Thankfully, Lenny seems to take it in his stride and follows me into my apartment. Then I flick on the table lamp only to discover that my mother is standing on my coffee table in a too-short, too-sheer, baby-blue negligee with her arms raised towards the ceiling and her head thrown back.

‘Shit!’ Lenny swears down my ear, clearly startled. He isn’t to blame. My mother’s a striking woman, ballerina-tall and slender with silver hair that falls in waves well beyond her shoulder blades. It isn’t grey. It’s been pure silver since the day she was born, and right now she looks as if she’s just been freshly crucified on my coffee table.

I sigh as I drop my bag down by the lamp. So much for me being normal.

‘Err, mother?’

Slowly, she takes several heaving breaths and opens her eyes, changing from crazy lady to almost normal human lady. She stares at us.

‘For God’s sake, Melody,’ she grumbles, taking her hands from above her head and planting them on her hips. ‘I almost had the connection then. He’s hiding out in the loft, I’m sure of it.’

I risk a glance over my shoulder at Lenny, who sure isn’t kissing my neck anymore.

He lifts his eyebrows at me, a silent ‘what the hell?’ and then looks away when my mother beckons to him like a siren luring a fisherman onto the rocks.

‘Your hand, please, young man.’

‘No!’ I almost yell, but Lenny is already across the room with his hand out to help her down. My mother eyes me slyly as she steps from the table, keeping a firm hold of Lenny’s hand.

‘Long lifeline,’ she murmurs, tracing her red talon across Lenny’s palm.

‘Mother,’ I warn, but my somber, cautionary tone falls on her selectively deaf ears. I expected nothing else, because she’s pulled this trick before. Admittedly, the standing-on-the-table thing is a new twist, but she’s got form in scoping out my prospective boyfriends to make sure they’ll fit in with our screwball family from the outset. Not that her romantic gauge is something to put any stock in; Leo passed her tests with flying colours and look how that ended up. I got my heart broken and he got a spot on morning TV as the resident psychic. Where’s the justice in that?

Look, we may as well get the clanky old skeleton out of the family closet early on here, people. It’s going to come out sooner or later, and despite my attempts to pull the wool over Lenny’s eyes, there’s never any running away from this thing for long.

My name’s Melody Bittersweet, and I see dead people.

It’s not only me. I’m just the latest in a long line of Bittersweets to have the gift, or the curse, depending on how you look at it. My family has long since celebrated our weirdness; hence the well-established presence of our family business, Blithe Spirits, on Chapelwick High Street. We’ve likely been here longer than the actual chapel at the far end of the street. That’s probably why, by and large, we’re accepted by the residents of the town, in a ‘they’re a bunch of eccentrics, but they’re our bunch of eccentrics,’ kind of way. What began as a tiny, mullion-windowed, one-room shop has spread out along the entire row over the last two hundred years; we now own a run of three terraced properties haphazardly knocked into one, big, rambling place that is both business and home to not only me, but also to my mother, Silvana, and her mother, Dicey. Gran’s name isn’t actually Dicey, it’s Paradise, officially, but she’s gone by Dicey ever since she met my Grandpa Duke on her fifteenth birthday and he wrote Dicey and Duke inside a chalk heart on the back wall of the building. He may as well have written it on her own racing heart.

‘Silvana!’

Speak of the devil. Does no one go to bed around here?

I open my door to find Gran on the threshold with her hand raised, poised to knock. I guess I should be glad she’s slightly more respectably dressed, if a floor-length, purple shot-silk kimono, bearing huge technicolor dragons could be considered as such. Her usually pin-curled gold hair is piled elegantly on her head and she wears a slash of fire-engine-scarlet lipstick for good measure. Most people couldn’t carry the look off, but thanks to her poise, confidence and couldn’t-care-less attitude, Grandma Dicey wears it with artful success. She glides past me without invitation and gazes at my mother and Lenny, who are still hand-in-hand on the rug.

God.

First thing tomorrow morning, I swear, I’m going to look for a new place to live, somewhere, anywhere, that is not in the same building as my mother and my gran. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a charming old place and I love my family dearly. It’s not even as if I don’t have my own space here, because, theoretically at least, I do. Mum and Gran have the ground floor apartment behind Blithe Spirits, and I have the smaller flat upstairs, at the back. In lots of ways this makes me fortunate; I get to have a nice little home of my own and stay close to my family. It would all be fine and dandy, were it not for the fact that my family are officially bonkers and liable to come up and let themselves into my flat – using the spare key I gave them for dire emergencies only – and embarrass the shit out if me.

‘Why is Silvana entertaining a man half her age in your flat?’ Gran looks from me to my mother. ‘You should have said you were expecting company, darling. I’d have gone out.’ She touches her hand lightly against her hair. ‘Put a towel on the doorknob or something, isn’t that the modern way to signal these things? Don’t come a knockin’ if the caravan’s rockin’?’

She looks spectacularly pleased with herself, and one glance at Lenny tells me that he knows he’s way out of his depth with these two and is in the process of writing me off as the worst date he’s ever had. His eyes slide from me to the door, and I can almost hear him begging me to let him go unharmed.

‘He’s not mum’s date, he’s mine. Or else, he was,’ I mutter, and then I’m distracted as a beer-bellied pensioner in a soup-stained shirt slowly materialises through the ceiling, his flannel trousers not quite meeting his bony ankles. Stay with me; I see dead people, remember? As do my mother and my grandmother, who also watch him descend with matching expressions of distaste.

‘Finally,’ my mother spits, dropping Lenny’s hand so she can round on the new arrival. ‘Two hours I’ve been chasing you around this bloody building. Your wife wants to know what you’ve done with the housekeeping she’d hidden in the green teapot. She says you better not have lost it on the horses or she’s had it with you.’

Grandma Dicey rolls her eyes. ‘I rather think she’s had it with him anyway. He’s been dead for six weeks.’

‘You’re a fine one to talk, given that you still sleep with your husband twenty years after he died.’ Mother flicks her silver hair sharply. Touché.

Lenny whimpers and bolts for my front door, turning back to me just long enough to splutter ‘something’s come up, gotta go,’ before he hoofs it out and down the stairs two at a time.

I listen to the outside door bang on its hinges and wonder what came up. Probably his dinner.

Release Blitz: Shopping for a CEO by Julia Kent

Release Blitz!

Shopping for a CEO

(Shopping for a Billionaire series Book 7)

by Julia Kent is out now!

 

shoppingforaceo

Blurb

I’m thrilled to be the maid of honor in my friend’s wedding, but the best man, Andrew McCormick, is a chauvinistic pig with a God complex.

And I can’t stop kissing him in closets.

(Don’t ask.)

He’s the brother of the groom and the CEO of my biggest mystery shopping account, but suddenly he’s refusing to be in the wedding. He won’t talk about it. Won’t see reason.

He’s such a man.

And he still won’t stop kissing me in random closets.

(Thank goodness.)

I’m a fixer. That’s what I do. I can fix anything if given the chance. But when the game is fixed there’s only so much I can do.

The ball’s in his court now.

Game on.

* * *

Shopping for a CEO is the 7th book in the New York Times and USA Today bestselling Shopping series. When CEO Andrew McCormick and mystery shopper Amanda Warrick find themselves in the unlikely position as maid of honor and best man in the Boston society wedding of the year, an undeniable attraction and dual stubborn streaks add fuel to the fire in this romantic comedy from Julia Kent.

Extract-

Why did you kiss me the first time? That day when I barged into your office?”

He nods, eyes looking at everything and nothing, finally settling on my face. “Because you were so passionate about protecting Shannon. Because you were adorable and irate and you had this energy I wanted to taste.”

I’m holding my breath. I thought we would spend this first date doing the awkward getting-to-know you dance. Andrew’s gone right to the point. Laser focus.

Just like a CEO.

“Taste?”

“Yes. I know what I want. I don’t equivocate. I decide and act. I compartmentalize. I issue orders and execute strategy. You came in that day and started ordering me around and it was cute and exciting and inspiring. Oddly sensual. And when you kissed me — ”

“_You_ kissed _me_!”

“And when _we_ kissed,” he says, eyebrows raised, as if settling this point once and for all, “I got something far more forbidden than I realized I was getting when I went for that simple taste of you.”

Forbidden?

“What’s that?”

He studies me, as if sizing me up, trying to determine whether he should tell me what’s next. Or not. Finally, his face changes through a series of three or four emotions, most of them involving some variation of deliberation.

And then:

“You didn’t fit in a box.”

“I fit in a closet.”

He doesn’t laugh.

“You intrigued me.”

“Not enough to call me after that kiss, though.”

He shakes his head. My heart plummets.

“No, Amanda. The opposite. You intrigued me too much.”

I get the sense that the word ‘intrigued’ means something else.

“You mean I scared you.”

His eyes flash with emotion I can’t read.

“Yes.”

Men like Andrew McCormick don’t do this. They don’t lay their emotions out on the table like this. Why is he doing this?

“Then why did you kiss me again? And again. And again again — ”

“I don’t know.”

“C’mon.” The driver takes us onto the Mass Pike, lights flying by like spaceships. Like little orbs shooting past us, filled with people oblivious to the quantum shift taking place inside this tiny space. “You always know. You’re a CEO. You compartmentalize. You execute. You decide. You act. You can’t tell me that the great wunderkind Andrew Mc –”

He’s on me before I can take an inbreath to continue speaking, his body so big and bold, so impulsive and unrelenting. The limo becomes its own dimension, his hands seeking to hold all of me as we tumble into some new plane of awareness that doesn’t factor into any life we’ve known until this moment. His mouth finds mine, hands under my suit jacket, palm cupping the lines of my breasts, my waist, my hips, and he’s tasting me again, this time with an urgent need that comes from an honesty I don’t think he’s felt permission to express in a very long time.

If ever.

***

Buy links

Amazon US: http://amzn.to/1MyMNVv Amazon UK: http://amzn.to/1HDYXsO iBooks: http://apple.co/1BTcs5l Amazon Canada: http://amzn.to/1IaHf5I Print: http://amzn.to/1M1Zc3W BN: http://bit.ly/1fR0CV9 Kobo: http://bit.ly/1OkyPaX Google Play: http://bit.ly/1J5zEV6

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Author bio and web/social media links

New York Times and USA Today Bestselling Author Julia Kent writes romantic comedy with an edge, and new adult books that push contemporary boundaries. From billionaires to BBWs to rock stars, Julia finds a sensual, goofy joy in every book she writes, but unlike Trevor from Random Acts of Crazy, she has never kissed a chicken.

She loves to hear from her readers by email at jkentauthor@gmail.com, on Twitter @jkentauthor, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/jkentauthor . Visit her website at JKentAuthor.com.

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Guest Post by Sharon Black: Going Against Type

Today, I’d like to welcome debut novelist, Sharon Black, to my site, to tell us all about writing her first work of fiction, and what inspired its creation.

Over to you Sharon…

HI JENNY, thank you so much for having me here on your blog today. I’d like to tell you and your readers a little about myself and my inspiration for my debut novel.

My background is in journalism. After I left college, I worked as a features writer for a national newspaper here in Dublin. I married and took a substantial break from paid work, when my children were small, before returning to write for another national paper for a while.

By the time I was ready to write a novel, it seemed natural for me to write about what I knew.

Going Against Type by Sharon Black - 200

Going Against Type is a romantic comedy, it’s set in the world of Dublin-based national newspapers. Because the setting was familiar, I wanted to push myself out of my comfort zone in other ways.

Going Against Type tells the story of rival newspaper columnists, who write under pen names, and unknowingly fall in love with their arch enemy: each other! They each have good reason to protect their alter egos. So their relationship develops, each blissfully unaware of whom the other is. Until they are forced to reveal themselves….

My inspiration for the book was the 1940s Hollywood film, Woman of the Year, starring Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracey. I loved all their films! Hepburn plays a high brow pundit, who rubbishes sport in one of her columns. Tracey is a sports columnist who leaps to defend his beloved sport and in turn, attacks Hepburn’s views, and the fun begins. In the film, however, they meet quite quickly and despite knowing who the other person is, they fall in love.

In Going Against Type, I turned the stereotypes around. So Charlotte ‘Charlie’ Regan is the sports buff. At the beginning of the story, she is given a chance to write the new, anonymous sports column, Side Swipe.

My hero, Derry Cullinane is a fashion writer and gossip columnist, The Squire for the rival paper. He’s sophisticated, man-about-town and a bit of a playboy. They fall in love, and that’s where the fun begins.

While that whole build up was really fun to do, it was also extremely challenging. The main reason was that I to ensure that Charlotte and Derry’s columns were quite acerbic. That way, you could see a huge contrast between their views in the papers – their weekly banter – and how they were with each other. It also meant there was more at stake.

The hardest columns to get right were Charlotte’s. Paradoxically, she turned out to be a wonderful character to write. I know very little about sport, having never been sporty myself. But I admire people who are, and I wanted Charlotte to be very different from me. Because Charlotte’s a journalist, I didn’t want anyone to think I was writing bits of me into my heroine.

So I did a lot of research. I read a lot of sports columnists, I checked all my facts, and then I tried to put myself into the head of a feisty, twenty-something woman, working in an area that’s largely dominated by men.

Her columns took a lot of writing and re-writing. I wanted them to be sharp, funny and very controversial. And as her columns got better, the character of Charlotte became more defined and easier to write. In the end, she felt like a real person; somebody I had known a long time.

A lot of people are surprised when they see that my hero is a gossip columnist and fashion writer. Yes, there are exceptions to the rule, but mainly these are areas in journalism that tend to be dominated by women.

Quite apart from wanting to just shake things up, I wanted to write a strong male character, who is completely comfortable in his own skin, and his fabulous tailor made suits! He is manly, yet completely relaxed with having a female boss and working in a features department, surrounded by women. Actually, he likes that a lot!

It sounds like a terrible cliché, but writing this book was a huge learning experience. I had written short stories down the years, and had some of them published. And I’d started so many books – but had never finished them.

This time, I armed myself with the tools: the nuts and bolts of novel structuring. And I knew I had a good story. I was determined to see it through. I’m so glad I did. I became an author and I’m so grateful for that. And I’m very proud of my debut.

***

EXCERPT

Note: Charlotte is sent to cover Ladies’ Day at The Galway Races. It’s here that she meets Derry for the first time.

‘So, did you get lucky?’ a deep voice drawled.

Charlotte spun to find Mr Panama Hat grinning down at her. Bloody hell, she thought, smiling back despite herself. Any other man she knew would look utterly ridiculous in what seemed to be a tailor made, striped linen jacket and trousers, combined with that damned hat. But he carried it off with a self-confidence that bordered on swagger.

‘Yes actually, I did,’ she admitted, still smiling. ‘What about you?’

He grimaced.

‘I lost. My own fault. I took a flier on somebody else’s tip.’

Charlotte grinned sympathetically.

‘Oh?’

Mr Panama Hat shook his head, scowling briefly.

‘I read some bloody sports columnist from Ireland Today. Had a few winners earlier this week. As I said, it’s my own fault. I never normally bother with racing tips. Whoever it is, he obviously doesn’t know a horse from a three-legged stool.’

Charlotte swallowed hard.

‘So how much did you lose?’ she managed, trying to sound casual.

‘A thousand.’ He caught Charlotte’s horrified expression and laughed. ‘Hey, don’t look so worried! I’m a big boy.’

Charlotte stared at him in amazement. Who did that? Maybe he was a rich eccentric, the kind of guy who hung around the race courses, betting big. Not caring whether or not he won – or lost everything on the day. That said, she was damned if she’d come clean!

‘So do you normally gamble this recklessly Mr…?’ Charlotte trailed away meaningfully, biro poised over her notebook. He stuck out his hand, a warm smile forming.

‘Sorry I should have introduced myself. I’m…

‘Derry! Where have you been? They’re just about to start the judging. Come on darling, I have to go line up. I want you to be able to see!’

A tall blonde, wearing a rose pink knee-length dress with tiny matching jacket, pink stiletto sling-back shoes and a dizzy spiral of cream and pink headwear, teetered over and clung to Derry’s arm. She looked, Charlotte thought, vaguely familiar. The blonde smiled tightly at Charlotte and then noticed her press badge.

‘Oooh, you’re from the papers! Maybe I could talk to you when the judging’s over. Do you have a photographer with you?’ She didn’t wait for Charlotte to answer, but rushed on. ‘You’ll have to excuse us right now, okay?’

‘Of course, don’t let me delay you,’ Charlotte said, stepping back.

‘Wait,’ Derry began, shooting her a sudden intrigued look. ‘You’re not with Ireland Today, are you?’

‘Shit. Charlotte managed a surprised laugh.

‘Um, yes,’ she squeaked. ‘I’m er, writing a piece on Ladies Day.’

‘Oh right.’ He frowned. ‘What about their Side Swipe columnist? Do you know him?’

Lie Charlotte. And do it well.

‘No. It’s being written anonymously. I think the writer works from home…’ She smiled brightly at him. Behind Derry, the blonde shot Charlotte a steely glare. Charlotte glanced one last time at Derry.

‘You should go. And I have to work. Nice to meet you.’ She turned and walked away…

***

Sharon 254 ac smaller file

BIOGRAPHY

SHARON Black grew up in Dublin. She studied history and politics at University College Dublin and then did post-graduate in journalism at Dublin City University.

She has worked for national newspapers, including The Evening Herald and The Irish Examiner.

She had short stories published in U Magazine and won the 2010 Dromineer Literary Festival short story competition.

When she is not writing, she reads, walks and sees friends. She co-founded a local book club 14 years ago. She loves theatre, old Hollywood films, science fiction and good stand-up comedy.

She lives in a Dublin coastal village, with her husband and their three children.

BLOG: http://sharonblackauthor.blogspot.ie/

WEBSITE: http://coldcoffeecafe.com/profile/SharonBlackhttp://coldcoffeecafe.com/profile/SharonBlack http://coldcoffeecafe.com/profile/SharonBlack

FACEBOOK AUTHOR PG: http://on.fb.me/1AG4C3J

TWITTER: https://twitter.com/Authorsharonb https://twitter.com/Authorsharonb

ALL BUY LINKS: tirpub.com/gatype tirpub.com/gatype

***

Many thanks for visiting today Sharon, I wish you much luck with your new book.

Happy Reading,

Jenny x

 

 

 

 

 

Guest Blog by Eric McFarlane: A Clear Solution

I would like to welcome the wonderful Eric McFarlane to my blog today. I cannot wait to read his new release, A Clear Solution– being married to a scientist, who once lost his job in similar circumstances, I am sure I am going to be chuckling my way through the whole thing!!

Over to you Eric…

First of all thanks, Jenny, for allowing me to post on your blog.

I couldn’t quite believe it when I heard that my comic crime novel A Clear Solution had been accepted by Accent Press. The novel is a zany light-hearted comedy with a protagonist who always seems to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Rather than blether on about the novel I thought I would say something about how it came into being as its gestation period was protracted.

A Clear Solution

A Clear Solution was born may years ago when I and my colleagues in the pharmaceutical company I worked in were given notice of redundancy. Devastating of course but the upside, although I didn’t recognise it at the time, was that, unusually, we were given five months notice during which the factory and my section would continue to tick over. I found that my own job, development and supervision, evaporated overnight. No more factory equated to no more development and I was left supervising a bunch of ‘old hands’ who needed little supervision. What to do?

Well, job hunting obviously and that I certainly did but that still left many hours to fill so… writing. I’d always written to some extent: notebooks filled with scribbles, short stories, travel, observation. So why not write a novel? After all novelists made lots of money, didn’t they? Write a novel and sell it. How difficult could it be? I cringe but, yes, I really was that naive.

So I started writing. It would be based in a laboratory – write what you know, and it was going to be a comedy. I’m not sure why but there it was. There was no planning, none at all. It just proceeded in a linear fashion with one situation leading to another. If stuck I asked myself what is the daftest thing that could happen at that point in the action?

Several jobs followed over the next few years and writing time dropped but I continued with the novel and wrote a flurry of short stories. Then I read a comment somewhere to the effect that there was no market for comedy. So why am I writing comedy? I dropped A Clear Solution (yes, I was that easily influenced) and started writing a thriller. This in turn was dropped when I had an idea for a novelisation of an SF short story I had written. Then, unbelievably to me now, I launched into yet another novel length project. At this point I stopped and gave myself a shake. You’ve got to finish something. So A Clear Solution it was, being the project nearest completion..

I completed it, typed the end and felt pleased with myself, then looked at what I had – a mess. So of course more months of fleshing up, cutting out and joining loose ends before I felt it was ready.

Over the previous few years I’d learned a lot about writing and the publishing industry and was no longer quite so naive, so when I sent the novel out to a couple of targeted agents I did not expect it to be instantly accepted and my expectations were met in full. During the next months and years more than fifty agents and publishers turned it down. It could have been dispiriting (OK, it was dispiriting) but there had been three handwritten notes during that time with positive comments. I’d also posted 7000 words on youwriteon.com review site and received some excellent feedback, in fact reaching the top 20 on that site in one month. If any writers are looking for feedback I’d recommend it – if you have thick skin. The comments can be brutally honest.

While this was going on I completed the thriller and the SF novel and began to look for interest in those.

I had consigned A Clear Solution to the back burner and decided that it was my candidate for self publication should I decide to take that road, when I heard about Accent Press looking for submissions in an article in Writing Magazine. They were looking for crime rather than humour, well the novel has crooked policemen and a number of suspicious deaths so why not? I sent it away and forgot about it.

I remembered about it during a holiday in Australia when checking my e-mails. There was a note from an Accent Press editor who was reading my submission and liked it. Could I send the rest? Could I? Well no, I couldn’t, not until I returned to the UK three weeks later but that didn’t seem to be a problem. The surreal element was that this editor, working for the Welsh Accent Press, was currently living not 50 miles from where I was staying in Melbourne.

So six months later here it is on the shelves. Difficult to believe. Now I have to persuade them to take the follow-on.

***

Blurb

Corpses, cats, and chemical catastrophes…it’s all just another day in the lab!

All that lab technician Daniel Dreghorn wants is a better job, more money, a new flat – oh, and perhaps to meet a few more girls. It’s not much to ask of life, is it? All his dreams are answered with one visit to a faulty cash machine, but is it too good to be true? Yes, Daniel, it is…

Daniel’s life goes from bad to mad as a series of deaths are attributed to him and some very shady characters start to believe he is more than he seems. As Daniel’s colleagues at the university become suspicious of his actions, madcap Professor Farquharson sees him as a way of achieving a long-held desire… Can Daniel avoid being drawn into his boss’s crazy schemes? Can he avoid the attentions of a bent copper? Are Dr Bernini’s doughnuts all they seem to be?

A Clear Solution is a hilarious look at what happens when you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time – complete with homicidal bank managers.

***

Buy link http://myBook.to/AClearSolution

Web www.ericmcfarlane.co.uk

Eric McFarlane

 

****

Many thanks for coming along today Eric,

I wish you much success with this novel, and the sequel!

Happy reading,

Jenny x

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