Romancing September #RomancingSeptember – Day 4

Romance: Bah Humbug?

A new blog to follow, methinks.

Joanne Guidoccio's avatarJoanne Guidoccio

Welcome to my Second Acts Series!

Today, we have June Kearns entertaining us with her take on romance and romance writing.

Here’s June!

junekearnspixFirst Act

One of my earliest memories is being under the kitchen table, hidden by fringes of the chenille cloth and listening to the chink of teacups, laughter and whispered secrets between my mum and her sisters.

They all read romances – the quest to find the one person you were destined to spend your life with, that impulse buried deep in the natural world. Apparently, when you least expected it – zing would go the strings of your heart (or something like that!)

Without fail, the heroines in these stories were head-turning, heart-stopping beauties. One look, and the hero would be smitten.

At 13, I’d already decided that no-one would ever fall in love with me. Small, sturdy and self-conscious, I had hair that frizzed in…

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NR4 Summer Celebration

September already! How the summer has flown by.  To celebrate the start of the new “school year”, we’ve made a short video about us and our writing – we hope you enjoy it.  And if you have a look below the “Loose Women,” you’ll find a few words from each of us about where we are with our projects.

 

~Lizzie Lamb

Two years ago I uploaded Tall, Dark and Kilted on Create Space and tentatively pressed the ‘GO’ button. That kick-started my adventure as an indie author and it’s been a whirlwind ride. I now have two books available on amazon, a raft of reviews, thriving social networking presence and a growing number of readers. It’s been hard work but I’ve done it and I’m proud to have travelled the road with my fellow New Romantics: June, Adrienne and Mags. What does the future hold for me? Hopefully a new novel published early 2015 and one a year after that. As I have said on my blog – Life is not a rehearsal, if you have a dream go for it. That’s what I’ve done.

~Mags Cullingford

Without Adrienne, June and Lizzie, my debut novel, Last Bite of the Cherry, was unlikely to have been published in 2012, nor would I be about to bring out my second (eBook and paperback), Twins of a Gazelle. Both have a similar theme – clever woman, emotionally naïve, initially makes disastrous choice of man (men) before meeting ‘The One’. Not the conventional Girl-Meets-Boy love stories, so not instantly appealing to agents or publishers, yet my select band of readers seem to have enjoyed Last Bite. Some say they look forward to my next novel. To quote Russell Grandinetti of Amazon, “The only really necessary people in the publishing process now are the writer and the reader” [see The Observer, 17.08.2014]. With 30,000 words of as-yet-untitled novel number three in the bag, I hope he’s right.

~June Kearns

Firstly, a huge thank-you to the lovely readers who’ve bought, reviewed and supported mine, Lizzie, Adrienne and Mag’s books this year. You’ve been wonderful.

So … where am I now, with my current WIP?

Um, not quite where I was supposed to be.

My 1930s novel hadn’t been going well – piles of clean white paper glaring accusingly whenever I sidled past my desk.

Then a plea came, via Twitter, for 60’s memorabilia, and as I rummaged through bits and bobs – match-book covers from jazz clubs, Biba receipts, photos – BINGO! I had one of those bombshell moments, (the sort that usually strike in the middle of the night, only to be forgotten the next morning!)

This, I thought, is what I should be writing about. The Sixties!

So, in the next 6 months, I hope to be well on the way to completing a first draft of said novel – 60s London setting, photographer hero – while still keeping abreast of all strands of social networking (gulp) – because failure to do these things will result in being beaten with a big stick by Lizzie.

~Adrienne Vaughan

I recently rediscovered my ‘long lost novel’ aka first attempt, and was horrified to find I first typed ‘The End’ nearly 30 years ago!

It wasn’t until I hooked up with Lizzie, June and Mags, that this long ago dream finally came true. With two books published, The Hollow Heart and A Change of Heart, and the final in the trilogy, Secrets of the Heart, well underway, I am, at last, a novelist with readers who love my books! #followyourdream

 

Romancing September #RomancingSeptember Just days away from the start.

Adrienne, LIzzie and June will be taking part in this tour.

Rosie’s Book Review Challenge – Manda reviewed The 20’s Girl, The Ghost and All That Jazz by June Kearns

Nice review for June’s book from Manda Ward via Rosie Amber. Thank you.

Rosie’s Book review Challenge – Alison reviews The 20’s Girl, The Ghost and All That Jazz by June Kearns

Thanks to Rosie for another great blog

Rosie’s Book Review Challenge – Stephanie reviews Tall Dark and Kilted by Lizzie Lamb

Many thanks to Stephanie (via Rosie Amber) for this lovely review of Tall, Dark and Kilted.

SUMMER READING – take me with you to the beach . . .

This started off as a post on Twitter and look how I got sucked in !!

Lizzie Lamb's avatarLizzie Lamb - author

Lifes a beach poster FINAL

It doesn’t seem possible that two years have passed since I, and the other members of the New Romantics 4, decided to stop tweaking and editing our novels and publish them on amazon. Its been a whirlwind but worth it. So, here we are, published authors and working hard on our third novels and with a poster to prove it. We have a social media presence on FacebookTwitter and WordPress. launched our books in Waterstones and produced a video which will appear on YouTube and our blog in September. Added to that we have the satisfaction of knowing that we’ve done it ourselves – with a little help from our many, talented writer friends and supportive readers.

Thank you for buying our novels and for writing us a review on amazon or Goodreads

Other fledgling (and not so fledgling!) authors have asked me what my path to publication…

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‘The 20’s Girl, the Ghost and All That Jazz’

My Writing Day – with Carol Hedges

Our mate, Carol Hedges

Lizzie Lamb's avatarLizzie Lamb - author

Author Carol HedgesLizzy, thank you so much for inviting me onto your blog. I hope there will be cake and coffee shortly. And an appearance by Jasper the parrot!

You asked me to describe a typical writing day. I’d answer that it depends on where I am in the writing process. If I’m actually writing a novel, I try to put in a good four hours of solid work – afternoons are my best time. But there are other times, like now, when a book is being planned, when I might just read, download articles form the internet, and do some preliminary sketching. And I frequently take the plot for a long walk, just to straighten out bits when I’m not sure where it’s going to go.

Most writers when planning a book start at the beginning of the story and work their way through a sequential narrative until they reach the…

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