Our blog celebrating Jan Brigden’s debut novel – AS WEEKENDS GO.
Source: Something for the Weekend?
New Romantics Press is thrilled to invite FABULOUS debut author Janet Brigden into to our den to learn more about her novel AS WEEKEND GO. Fabulous cover, Jan.
cover designed by Berni Stevens
Jan has been a great supporter of the NRP over the years and it’s great to have the opportunity to Pay It Forward and help her celebrate in style. Here we are at Waterstones, London last year with Jan and other members of the Romantic Novelists’ Society.
So tell us all about AS WEEKEND GO, Jan, you have the floor.
It was on Valentine’s Day 2015 that I found out As Weekends Go had been shortlisted in the Choc Lit and Whole Story Audiobooks Search for a Star Competition. One month later, I discovered I’d won! I can’t tell you how elated I felt upon signing my Choc Lit contract.
Aspiring authors will want to know how you did it, Jan. Any tips ?
The idea for the novel stemmed from a creative writing course assignment I completed a few years back via The Writers Bureau. I had to create a tense scenario involving two characters only. I chose a husband and his wife’s best friend. He’d secretly invited her to his house on the pretence of discussing his wife’s surprise 30th birthday party. Instead, he confronted her about some gossip he’d heard regarding a recent weekend trip the two women had taken together. Which afterwards begged the question in my mind: ‘Well, what did happen during that weekend?’ And so the story slowly evolved…
I didn’t have any buddies or contacts in the literary world, at the time, so made the effort to attend lots of author talks and events, subsequently connecting with writers and readers on Facebook and Twitter. I then became a member of the Romantic Novelists’ Association’s fantastic New Writers’ Scheme, receiving two fabulous critiques for the early drafts of As Weekends Go from my assigned reader, which gave me the confidence that I could actually write and that my book had much promise. Music to a budding author’s ears, for sure!
I went on to form an online writing/blogging group with seven very special ladies, who became The Romaniacs. Two of our biggest highlights to date include releasing a charity anthology last year, entitled Romaniac Shorts: Fashionably Brief’ and more recently, proudly receiving the RNA industry Media Award. RNA Industry Media Star Awards We even got a mention in The Bookseller.
And now, as the year draws to a close, I’ve had the biggest thrill of all in proudly seeing Choc Lit publish As Weekends Go. I hope you enjoy it, here’s the blurb.
What if your entire life changed in the space of a weekend?
When Rebecca’s friend Abi convinces her to get away from it all at the fabulous Hawksley Manor hotel in York, it seems too good to be true. Pampering and relaxation is just what Rebecca needs to distract herself from the creeping suspicion that her husband, Greg, is hiding something from her. She never imagined that by the end of the weekend she would have dined with celebrities or danced the night away in exclusive clubs. Nor could she have predicted she would meet famous footballer, Alex Heath, or that he would be the one to show her that she deserved so much more …
But no matter how amazing a weekend is, it’s always back to reality come Monday morning – isn’t it?
As Weekends Go – available on Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com
You’ll find Jan at these places – Facebook, Twitter and @theromaniacs
I hope you enjoy it. Love Jan.
We know we will Jan, thanks for appearing on the NRP blog – happy sales and happy Christmas. Now get on and write the next one, that’s what we do. LOL.
Best wishes today to our dear friend and fellow author Jan Brigden as she publishes her debut novel AS WEEKENDS GO. Can wait to open our kindles and get stuck into reading it.
This is a very special Something For The Weekend.
As Weekends Go won the Choc Lit and Whole Story Audiobooks Search For A Star competition 2014/2015, and we are immensely proud of and thrilled for Jan. It is a fabulous novel, with a stunning cover. Jan’s warmth oozes from the pages.
Under normal circumstances, Jan is custodian of the Romaniac Honkometer, but we liberated it from HQ so we could do this:
And now for a few words from the Romaniacs …
Laura: Jan, many congratulations on the release of your debut. It’s a huge achievement and I am absolutely delighted for you. Not only are you a wonderful writer, but a genuine, supportive and warm-hearted person, who I am very lucky to be able to call my friend. Have an incredible day – take it all in, enjoy…
View original post 438 more words
St Andrew is the patron saint of Scotland and today, 30th November, is St Andrew’s Day – and I have the perfect guest and the perfect recipe to celebrate!
Lizzie Lamb is a Scottish author and her fiction is set in lovely Scotland. Lizzie’s joined me here today with a recipe for the fabulous sounding Scottish “clootie dumpling”. Welcome, Lizzie – I can’t wait to find out just what this is!
* * *
I only have to unscrew a jar of cinnamon and I’m seven years old again, making my way home from school through the deep snow of a Scottish winter. But I don’t mind the cold because I know that there’s Clootie Dumpling waiting for me. Not Lord Snooty’s Christmas pudding, as dark and round as Guy Fawkes’s bomb – I mean Clootie Dumpling, its bigger, more substantial Scottish cousin, a cross between a Quatermass Experiment…
View original post 1,175 more words
Three years ago this month New Romantics Press was born, huddled together in the backroom of a village pub in the wilds of rural Leicestershire. Trembling with fear and trepidation, four fledgling authors launched themselves on the world …
Dozens of book launches, blogs, reviews, newspaper reports, radio interviews and videos later, we’ve embraced each and every element of what being an author in today’s multi-media environment entails; standing shoulder to shoulder, through drafts, edits, rewrites and great big gaping holes of self-confidence…
Yet at the very essence our passion, our need to tell our stories our way, remains. The highlight of our journey so far? Holding a book launch in Waterstones, Kensington. That’s Kensington, London -in case you’re wondering. We were hoping that Dustin Hoffman (who regularly shops there) was going to turn up, but alas he was otherwise engaged.
Ten acclaimed novels later … the dream is a reality and the greatest reward? Every single time a reader says: “I loved your book, when is the next one coming out?”
Happy birthday sisters, fairy Godmothers one and all. Cue music: ‘Sisters Doing it For Themselves’, and exit stage left.
So what are we up to ATM?
Here’s our news, hot off the press . . .
Adrienne? “I’m currently working on my fourth novel, Scandal of the Seahorse Hotel, a contemporary Irish American romantic suspense, steeped in mystery from World War II.”
Lizzie? “I’ve started novel number four – working title: THIS HIGHLAND MAGIC. I hope to publish it on our fourth anniversary November 2016. No pressure, then. I have a heroine with a secret and gorgeous new hero who has his own demons to confront. I’m keeping him all to myself until then, ladies.”
Mags? “I’m currently working on novel number three (as yet, untitled). Here’s the blurb so far – After her mother’s fatal car accident, Lexie Neave receives four threatening anonymous letters. Private investigator Forbes’s brief is to identify the writer and discover what it is Lexie has that’s “valuable, very valuable; which by rights is mine”. Lexie hasn’t a clue. Forbes’s preliminary investigations convince him Lexie is in danger.”
June? “Until October this year, I’d been playing out scenes, progressing the story in my historical romance set in 1960’s London and San Francisco, (all going pretty well, I thought!) Then, I went back to SF, imagination took over and the story just went whizzing off in directions I hadn’t expected! So now, here I am – hanging on, getting it all down!”
So, it’s happy birthday to us and a big thank you to everyone who’s helped us on our way. Christmas is just around the corner and what could be better than to find a copy of one of our books in your Christmas stocking? Diamonds, you say? OK – we’re on the case.
Happy Birthday to us !
“Romance novels are birthday cake and life is often peanut butter and jelly. I think everyone should have lots of delicious romance novels lying around for those times when the peanut butter of life gets stuck to the roof of your mouth.”
– Janet Evanovitch
Life had too much peanut butter in it. I needed a birthday cake of a romance novel and, thankfully, Scotch on the Rocks was on the menu.
Why a birthday cake of a romance novel?
Well… because like birthday cake, you aren’t expecting nutrition from your romance novel. You don’t expect your latest romance or slice of birthday cake to make you a better person. And you don’t actually want much of a surprise. “Surprise – your birthday cake has nuts!” Is not something anyone wants to hear.
The comfort of predictability, reliable sweetness, a touch of decadence, and a great big pile of happy……
View original post 257 more words
Source: 
New Romantics Press 