Archives for Juliet Archer's Diary category
Posted on Feb 11, 2010 under Juliet Archer's Diary |
Actually, it can be an ‘Any Day of the Year’ Chocolate Quiz - just wanted something to tie into Valentine’s Day!
I came across this quiz as a fund-raising event for Demelza House Children’s Hospice in Sittingbourne, Kent. It really appealed to me because I’m crazy about chocolate! It’s basically a list of clues whose answers are brands of chocolate. For example:
Spin round
High-class thoroughfare
Dark occult
Feline equipment
Garden flowers
Mother’s local
Dairy holder
Talk quietly
Big bus
Absolutely delicious!
And a plug for the next Let’s Talk About Love event on 12th February at 7pm at Waterstone’s Windsor - Hotel Chocolat will be there with samples of their wares. Mmmm, can’t wait!
Posted on Dec 15, 2009 under Juliet Archer's Diary |
Can’t believe a whole year’s passed since my book was delivered into an unsuspecting world. Twelve months on, ‘Baby Emma’ is settling - sorry, selling - nicely and is much more widely travelled than me!
So far we’ve been to over 30 events together - mainly book signings but, increasingly, talks about why and how I’m updating Jane Austen.
Luckily for me, 2009 was the year the BBC screened a new adaptation of the original Emma. I couldn’t have had a better marketing campaign!
Posted on Nov 27, 2009 under Juliet Archer's Diary |
I’ve done over 20 book signing events this year at Borders stores, so I couldn’t let this week’s news pass without comment.
The stores are still trading, but administrators have been appointed and it all looks very uncertain. How did things get to this stage?
I’ve nothing but praise for the staff I’ve met - they’ve been enthusiastic and welcoming.
Let’s hope everything turns out well for them.
Posted on Nov 02, 2009 under Juliet Archer's Diary |
He can only be found in southern Australia.
He’s a great mover.
He’s choosy about how and where he’ll mate - and especially about who he’ll mate with.
No, it’s not the hero of my next book, Dr Rick Wentworth! But here you can see the love of his life (other than Anna Elliot) engaged in a beautiful courtship ritual under the sea.
Extract from BBC’s Life with David Attenborough, shown on 2 November 2009
Who says romance is dead?!
My modern version of Jane Austen’s Persuasion is called Persuade Me. In the original, Wentworth was a captain in the Royal Navy and I wanted to keep the association with the sea. So ‘my’ Wentworth is a marine biologist who did his PhD on sea dragons - only to be found off the coast of southern Australia. No wonder he’s been away for eight years - watching these beauties is compelling!
There are two species of sea dragon - weedy (as shown in the BBC clip) and leafy. So far, they’ve never been bred in captivity - and, as their habitat is increasingly threatened by pollution and climate change, they’re more in need of protecting than ever.
So it’s a great shame that Rick Wentworth seems to have lost some of his passion for conservation that Anna Elliot remembers so well. Couldn’t be anything to do with her refusing to go to Australia with him, could it?
Well, you’ll have to read Persuade Me to find out!
Thank you to Sarah for sending me this clip.
Posted on Sep 17, 2009 under Juliet Archer's Diary |
Yesterday, with over 50 other RNA members, I heard Freya North - winner of the 2008 Romantic Novel of the Year Award - talk about writing, getting published, her books and her characters.
Taking the titles of her last four books in vain, there were some Secrets revealed, and a few Home Truths, plenty of Love Rules (we were, after all, a gaggle of romantic novelists) but no Pillow Talk that I’m aware of.
We heard how Freya wrote fictitious reviews by famous people to get her submission noticed by Jonathan Lloyd at Curtis Brown - and it worked! How heroines are queuing up in her head to have their stories written - so plenty more books to come. How seriously she takes her research, whether it’s following all those firm male butts on the Tour de France or, most recently, savouring the delights of Middlesbrough. How her book covers have been ‘lost in translation’ when published in other languages. And how she organises her time for writing, editing and book promotion.
My favourite ’secret’: for Freya, writing is definitely an art rather than a science. She puts down whatever comes into her head and doesn’t worry about plot plans or card indexes. As she describes it, when her characters walk towards her and come into focus, they carry a suitcase containing everything she needs to know about them.
My favourite ‘home truth’: there is no right or wrong way to write! Freya hops from one tense to another and from one character’s head to another. It certainly works for her.
My favourite ‘love rules’: her characters choose their own romantic ending. If it makes them happy, like a benevolent parent she lets them get on with it - even if their partner isn’t the one she would have chosen for them.
And there was even a reference to chocolate! When Freya told us about her involvement in Girls’ Night In, a series of anthologies to raise money for War Child, she described them as a ’true box of chocolates’: some soft centres, some simply nutty, others hard or chewy. Yum!
All in all, a fascinating insight from a writer who took a slightly unorthodox route to publication and has achieved enormous success.
Posted on Sep 13, 2009 under Juliet Archer's Diary |
If you enjoy short stories, look out for Loves Me, Loves Me Not. It’s an anthology by members of the Romantic Novelists’ Association, specially compiled to celebrate its fiftieth anniversary.
This is a beautifully produced book - I stroked a copy yesterday and went straight off to get my own! There are over forty stories in a variety of time periods and genres - something for everyone. The Chair of the RNA, Katie Fforde, has written the introduction and contributed one of the stories. Other contributors include Joanna Trollope, Adele Parks, Judy Astley, Rosie Harris, Anna Jacobs, Katie Flynn, Maureen Lee, Janet Gover, Victoria Connelly, Nicola Cornick and Sue Moorcroft, who also co-edited it. Janet and Victoria are two of my Let’s Talk About Love partners and Sue is about to become a fellow Choc Lit author when her superb new novel Starting Over is published next month.
Loves Me, Loves Me Not is currently available in paperback from Amazon and the hardback is due in major bookshops from September 18. Great value for money and a book you can dip into over and over again!
Posted on Sep 03, 2009 under Juliet Archer's Diary |
Just had my longest book tour to date - 7 signings in 9 days! I had 5 in the North West and 2 in the North East and it was all great fun. However, this pales into insignificance beside Paul Henke (www.henke.co.uk), who does a 2-month marathon tour of all Borders stores every year!
I met Paul at Borders Gateshead where we did signings on the same day. He writes political thrillers and action sagas, so we weren’t competing directly. It was good to chat to someone who’s done so many book signing events and had 10 novels published. He’s also a former bomb disposal expert - you never know when that may come in handy!
As usual I met lots of lovely people, including a fellow C19-er and writer I’d previously only ‘met’ by email and - by sheer chance - a family friend I hadn’t seen for twenty odd years. And I now know that The Importance of Being Emma is being enjoyed by a dog, Megs, and three cats, Mebs, Poi and Toots, in Liverpool - at least that’s who I was asked to include when signing in Waterstone’s!
Finally, a special mention to Heather and her team at Boots, next to Borders Cheshire Oaks, who came to my rescue when I found my trademark pink balloons somewhat deflated. They provided some from their No.7 display and these lasted me through all 7 signings.
Posted on Jul 10, 2009 under Juliet Archer's Diary |
That’s how my talk this week was advertised in the 2009 Hitchin Festival. Thank you to Alison of Waterstone’s for hosting the event and thank you to all who were sufficiently intrigued by the advert to come along!
First challenge: would it be a summer’s evening? I can confirm that the skies were blue, the Pimm’s flowed and it was 7pm on 6th July. By most definitions, then, a summer’s evening!
Second challenge: would I live up to the audience expectations of romantic writing? Well, modernising Jane Austen means that I can bask in a little of her reflected glory as the inspiration behind most romantic fiction. So most of my talk was about why and how I’m bringing her six completed novels into the 21st century, with extracts from The Importance of Being Emma and Persuade Me. After that, I answered questions and signed books.
I had a lovely relaxed evening - thanks to a delightful audience, Alison’s organisational skills and a teeny bit of Pimm’s. And it all went very well - judging by the number of questions asked, number of books signed and favourable comments as people left. Last but not least, I’m being invited to talk at other local festivals - so watch this space, or rather the Events Calendar!
Posted on Jun 12, 2009 under Juliet Archer's Diary |
Now that the effects of the champagne have worn off, I’ll do my best to remember the highlights of this week’s Melissa Nathan Award ceremony.
The company: my favourite publisher - Lyn of Choc Lit.
The venue: Café de Paris, off Leicester Square. Actually, once we got inside, it could have been anywhere - it was pretty dark! But what we could see was very fetching (as far as I can remember).
The goodie bag, complete with lovely MNA logo: a copy of one of the shortlisted books (fortunately not mine), Love Heart sweets (my favourite in the absence of chocolate) and a few flyers, including the latest Honeypot newsletter (Honeypot received this year’s charity cheque from the Melissa Nathan Foundation) and the Story of Choc Lit (wonder where that came from?).
The judges and shortlisted authors: Lyn and I spoke to them all briefly. Next to some of them - no names, no pack drill - I felt about 150 years old and a size 48! I particularly remember chatting to Joanna Trollope and Gaynor Allen about Newcastle.
The entertainment: Jo Brand - compère - and Paul Hamilton - performance poet - had us in stitches. Then we were treated to a spot of ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ as Sophie Kinsella played piano and her husband Henry sang. A Gershwin song, with lyrics adapted to reflect current political reality, was followed by a rendition of ‘These Foolish Things’. Two lines stood out for me - ‘Miss Emma Woodhouse thinks she’s high and mighty, When all she really wants is Mr Knightley’!
The award: all of us - not just the winner - were presented with a glass trophy inscribed with our name and book title. A very tasteful memento. And congratulations to the winner - Farahad Zama with The Marriage Bureau for Rich People! This has prompted headlines such as ‘Man beats all-female competition’ (guardian.co.uk, 11th June) - when he was actually a very polite, peaceable sort of man!
The catering: the place was awash with champagne and, as Harriet Smith would say in The Importance of Being Emma, ‘canopies’. Of course, it was so dark I didn’t know what I was eating (well, that’s my story), but I remember sampling the teeniest weeniest little burgers in buns. Sign of the credit crunch or this year’s posh nosh?
The irresistible hero: dressed in a white suit, setting female hearts a flutter with his cheeky grin, displaying the poise of someone 20 years older - it had to be 6-year-old Sam Nathan Saffron!
The last to leave (almost): yours truly and most of the Ed Victor Agency - Maggie, Sophie, Rebecca, Edina and (cue voiceover) Amy from Rhode Island!
Posted on Jun 03, 2009 under Juliet Archer's Diary |
Unlike the hero of my next novel, Persuade Me, I actually look forward to book signings! I always meet lots of lovely people, often with their own story to tell.
In the last month, after my North-West tour, I’ve had just one signing event - at Borders, Watford. Another successful day - and unusual in that I met two people with Melissa Nathan connections and two authors! One was Conn Iggulden, who’s just launched The Dangerous Book of Heroes with his brother David, and the other was Mrs Ian Stewart, who helped to produce a book about her husband, cofounder and road manager of The Rolling Stones, known as ‘Stu’.
So, a very quiet month on the book signing front - mainly due to other events in my diary. These included a wonderful Jane Austen weekend with other C19 members (thank you, Mad Maggie and team!), where we visited Winchester and Chawton. We saw Chawton on a beautiful sunny day and I could see how The Great JA got so much writing done - all very inspiring.
Another event was the Romantic Novelists’ Association Summer Party. I didn’t win the Joan Hessayon Award - congratulations to Allie Spencer, whose book Tug of Love is out in October - but I had a great time. A particular highlight was having my photo taken with my publisher and Katie Fforde - deliberately, that is, rather than being accidentally included in the background! Unfortunately Dr David Hessayon was too unwell to attend - hope he’s feeling better.
I also met Trisha Ashley and Kate Harrison, who I’ll be seeing at the Café de Paris next week for the 2009 Melissa Nathan Award for Comedy Romance. Don’t worry, there’ll be even more name dropping when I post about that - just look at the list of judges!
