#AnItalianIslandSummer #CoverReveal @AvonBooksUK @BlakeFriedmann

Here’s the beautiful cover of An Italian Island Summer.

I hope it tempts you to join Ursula on her physical journey to Sicily to study ceramics and work in a hotel, along with her journey of the heart about her parents’ marriage and confronting her own past (along with confronting her ex-husband).

Sicily is a beautiful island, and Ortigia, the old city of Siracusa, is particularly so. That’s where Residenza dei Tringali stands, looking out over the marina, surrounded by beautiful buildings, church bells and the sea. It’s owned by the Tringali family: Nanda, whose baby Marilù is a cutie; Agata, wise and warm and hiding a big secret; and handsome prodigal son Alfio. Ursula feels happy and content in her new life . . . until that secret of Agata’s hurts Ursula. And so begins Ursula’s journey of the heart.

An Italian Island Summer will be published in the UK in paperback, ebook and audio on 25th May 2023. Make certain to get a copy by preordering it here.

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Publication day in Canada and the US

 

Today sees The Christmas Promise published in Canada and the US. This is a huge thrill for me, especially to see The Christmas Promise with its gorgeous new cover for a new market. I hope that North America likes this story of Ava trying to keep a very special promise to Sam and Wendy. The Christmas Promise was my breakthrough book in the UK, flying up to the #1 spot in the Amazon Kindle UK chart and sticking there for five days.

What else can I tell you about this book? Oh, yes: handmade hats and revenge porn. For how I combined these elements just read the book. Enjoy!

Buy link: The Christmas Promise in Canada 

Buy link: The Christmas Promise in the US

On a snowy December evening, Sam Jermyn steps into the life of bespoke hat maker Ava. Sparks fly, and not necessarily the good ones.

Times are tough for Ava – she’s struggling to make ends meet, her ex-boyfriend is a bully, and worst of all, it’s nearly Christmas.

So when Sam commissions Ava to make a hat for someone special, she makes a promise that will change her life. She just doesn’t know it yet…

Readers LOVE The Christmas Promise – and soon you will too!

“Simply gorgeous Christmas story with a difference” Reader review

“Superb novel!” Reader review

“Perfect pre-Christmas read. I promise.” Reader review

“When a book keeps you reading until five o’clock in the morning, it’s a sure sign of a fantastic read!” Reader review

“Original, poignant, relevant and romantic.” Reader review

“A wonderful cosy Christmas read.” Reader review

Let it Snow – ebook publication day @AvonBooksUK @BLFAgency

 

Let it Snow is available as an ebook from today!

(Paperback and audio will follow on 14th November 2019)

Publication day’s always exciting. It’s the culmination of a lot of work and I love the idea of readers waking up to find one of my books has been delivered to their e-reader. When I sold my first short story to The People’s Friend in 1996 I had no idea such magic would one day become routine.

As the story in Let it Snow ranges from the frosty cottages of Middledip village to the snow-bedecked mountains of Switzerland I’m taking this opportunity to share a few of the pix I took on my fab research trip  to Switzerland with my author friend Rosemary J Kind. (You can find out more about Rosemary and her books here.)

 

Let it Snow is about Lily Cortez who comes from a non-conventional family with two mums and a sister Zinnia with whom she has no blood tie. Once she discovers she’s not the product of a one-night stand as she’d always thought but that her mum had an affair with a married man she feels compelled to find her biological family. Her search for her half-brothers takes her not just geographical distances but vast emotional ones too. Lily finds herself working for Isaac O’Brien, who’s what I think of as a reluctant hero. He wants to get out of the hospitality business and the village but finds his exit hampered by Lily, his ex Hayley and Doggo, his crazy Dalmatian. The book was a joy to write and I hope you enjoy it.

A lot of people have been involved in bringing Let it Snow to you. My thanks to the teams at Avon Books UK,  Blake Friedmann Literary, TV & Film Agency cover artist Carrie May and all the wonderful people on Team Sue Moorcroft.

Buy Let it Snow on Amazon UK

Buy Let it Snow on Kobo

Buy Let it Snow on Apple Books

Publication day in Germany

Today Wunderkerzenzauber is published in Germany by Fischer Verlag.

It’s such a gorgeous cover I had to share it with you. (Wunderkerzenzauber was A Christmas Gift in the UK.)

The paperback is beautiful and when I received it I also found in the parcel these pocket-sized versions of Winterzauberküsse (in the UK The Christmas Promise). Aren’t they cute?

For German readers, I’m very happy to say that a summer book will be coming your way in 2020 from HarperCollins Germany:

Sommernachts Glück is A Summer to Remember in the UK.

I was born in Germany, though I lived there only six weeks, so I feel a special link with my German editions.

 

North America here I come! #News

 

Super-thrilled and privileged to announce that The Christmas Promise will soon be published in paperback in Canada and the US, scheduled for release 29 October 2019.

Preorder in Canada here

Preorder for the US edition will soon appear here

I love the cover – it’s so pretty and eye-catching! If you’re a reader in North America, keep a lookout for it. And if you can send me a #shelfie, that’s even better. I’d love to see that. Thank you in advance if you can help me out.

On a snowy December evening, Sam Jermyn steps into the life of bespoke hat maker Ava. Sparks fly, and not necessarily the good ones.

Times are tough for Ava – she’s struggling to make ends meet, her ex-boyfriend is a bully, and worst of all, it’s nearly Christmas.

So when Sam commissions Ava to make a hat for someone special, she makes a promise that will change her life. She just doesn’t know it yet…

Readers LOVE The Christmas Promise – and soon you will too!

“Simply gorgeous Christmas story with a difference” Reader review

“Superb novel!” Reader review

“Perfect pre-Christmas read. I promise.” Reader review

“When a book keeps you reading until five o’clock in the morning, it’s a sure sign of a fantastic read!” Reader review

“Original, poignant, relevant and romantic.” Reader review

“A wonderful cosy Christmas read.” Reader review

WHY do I keep putting animals in my books?

Why do I have animals in my books? I often ask myself.

I don’t consciously think, ‘I know, I’ll put a cute animal in the book for the animal lovers amongst my readers.’ It’s just that animals are part of many lives and communities, families and friends so they earn their places in my stories now and then … and I like cute ones.

A fictitious animal sometimes seems to take every bit as much effort to look after as would a real one. The creates of my imagination can’t be abandoned while the owner does something elsewhere in the book, not unless I make arrangements for their care.

In A Summer to Remember there’s a big rescue dog called Nelson. (What else could I call a one-eyed dog who lives in a village called Nelson’s Bar?) He’s a happy, friendly dog who greets hero Aaron – and pretty much everyone else – with joy whenever they meet.

Aaron found poor injured Nelson at the side of the road and adopted him. From the way Aaron cares for Nelson and panics when he thinks he’s going to be hurt we understand his capacity to love and be loved. Dogs are good judges of people.

Nelson’s big and playful enough to be described as a cross between a dog and a bear cub. He drinks coffee and stands up on his hind legs to give hugs – though this last attribute isn’t universally appreciated. Imagine if you’re closing in on someone for a first kiss and a whiff of doggy breath accompanies the appearance of a grinning canine face next to yours …? Nelson wants to join in any activity, even if that’s cliff jumping – when disaster is narrowly averted. He brings Aaron and Clancy closer as she offers to walk him though relations between her and Aaron are under strain. Everyone loves Nelson and he loves anyone, even missing Genevieve when she and Aaron split up. (She used to give him a lot of coffee.) He’s really a well brought up dog unless you shout at one of his humans.

If you’d like to meet Nelson and his humans, here are some buy links:

Apple iBook: buy

Amazon UK: buy

Kobo: buy

Cover reveal! A Summer to Remember #ASummertoRemember @AvonBooksUK

It’s my absolute pleasure to share with you the beautifully summery cover of my next book –

 A Summer to Remember.

Isn’t it gorgeous?

A Summer to Remember will be published in paperback, ebook and audio on May 2nd 2019.

And here’s the blurb:

A Summer to Remember is available for preorder now!

The joys of research

What’s not to love about research?

My next book, A Summer to Remember (2 May 2019), is set in north Norfolk. When I decided to make Clancy, the heroine, run away from A Situation in London, where better to run to than a remote village with rubbish mobile and broadband signals?

Writers vary in the way they choose their settings. Some choose real places; others create entire countries or even worlds. I’m comfortable with a technique halfway between these two as I create fictitious towns or villages set in proximity to real places, and my characters move between the two. The real places provide authenticity and the created places give me freedom. I don’t have to worry about whether you can really get from A to B in twenty minutes or whether a business I depict as a grotty pick up joint will be recognised.

I began with iMaps, searching the coast until I found a place where I felt I could realistically bisect the salt marshes and shove a headland in on which to build my village. I asked my street team, Team Sue Moorcroft, for suggested names for the village and took one from Manda Ward: Nelson’s Bar. Then I booked a couple of nights at a lovely pub in a village called Thornham, very close to my Nelson’s Bar spot, and set off on my research trip. Spending time on the coast in gorgeous sunny weather, taking photos and making notes – well, it doesn’t sound like hard work, does it?

Over the course of several days, I built up a collection of leaflets and maps from Hunstanton Tourist Information, books on local history at the pub where I stayed and, like most writers, I used the Internet to research businesses and study aerial views. It was essential to my plot to know where I could and couldn’t get a mobile signal so I did a lot of sending experimental texts too. North Norfolk has several of its own free newspapers and they were invaluable in getting a feel for the area. I read them in the pub garden with a glass of wine on a sunny evening.

And I spent hours and hours walking in the area. The salt marshes and the beaches, the villages and the resorts. I took hundreds of photos with my digital camera and my phone so, once home, I could check out the undulating stripy cliffs, the beach, the breakwaters … Pretty much anything I could think of was recorded whilst I was on the spot.

I don’t yet have the final cover of A Summer to Remember to share with you but it’s nearly ready! Meantime, if you’d like your appetite whetted, here’s the back-of-book blurb:

COME AND SPEND SUMMER BY THE SEA!

WANTED! A caretaker for Roundhouse Row holiday cottages.

WHERE? Nelson’s Bar is the perfect little village. Nestled away on the Norfolk coast we can offer you no signal, no Wi-Fi and – most importantly – no problems!

WHO? The ideal candidate will be looking for an escape from their cheating scumbag ex-fiancé, a diversion from their entitled cousin, and a break from their traitorous friends.

WHAT YOU’LL GET! Accommodation in a chocolate-box cottage, plus a summer filled with blue skies and beachside walks. Oh, and a reunion with the man of your dreams.

PLEASE NOTE: We take no responsibility for any of the above scumbags, passengers and/or traitors walking back into your life…

GET IN TOUCH NOW TO MAKE THIS A SUMMER TO REMEMBER!

A Summer to Remember is available to preorder now and will be released in paperback, ebook and audio by Avon Books (HarperCollins) on 2 May 2019.

One Summer in Italy or how I write a book #OneSummerinItaly #NewBook

Today’s one of the happiest days of the year – a publication day. One Summer in Italy is sent out into the world … well, it’s sent out to shelves and portable devices, anyway. I hope you like my latest book baby.

The jokey term for a novel ‘book baby’ came into being for a reason, I think. Though a fantastic, joyful event, there’s a lot of hard work involved in giving it life.

Here’s the bullet-point version from my perspective:

• Get an idea for the premise of the book. For One Summer in Italy this came when I was in Italy at Arte Umbria, where I have taught courses and led retreats for several years. The chef and I happened to be taking a break at the same time, sitting in the sun with our feet in the pool, and she told me about being a seasonal worker. I thought, ‘What a great thing for one of my heroines to do’.
• Work on characters and planning.
• Research. Yes, this did involve being in Italy again and taking a host of pictures. ♥ But also a lot of finding and absorbing information on seasonal workers (employees and employers), ex-pat families, the hospitality trade, laws and regulations, web development, homelessness, motorbikes, blood groups, watercolour painting and even Italian cemeteries.
• Write the first draft. This takes months and is punctuated with constant distractions and interruptions. I was thankful for last year’s writing retreat where I wrote nearly a quarter of the first draft and had the joyful experience of being in the place I was writing about … more or less. My imagination added a town and a hotel.
• Write another draft or two
• Send book in
• Receive structural edit. The structural edit covers all the large changes my editor feels will make help me produce the best book I can. Discuss with editor; make decisions on how many suggestions I’ll take up; perform structural edit.
• Send structural edit back
• Receive line edits. Line edits deal with smaller matters, continuity and timeline. I’m timeline-blind so this stage often involves a lot of head scratching whilst wearing a grumpy expression – on my part, anyway. Probably it’s the same for the line editor.
• Send line edits back.
• Receive copy edits. Copy edits deal with punctuation, grammar and anything that hasn’t yet been picked up in another edit.
• Send copy edits back.
• Receive proofs. To proof a book I have to read the whole thing again and indicate any errors I see.
• Send proofs back.
• Write acknowledgments and any dedication.
• Write any backmatter (bonus material) requested.
• Breathe a great sigh of relief.
• Start another book. This usually takes place betwixt and between the above tasks.

I can’t tell you in the same detail what the other side of the process is, carried out by the fab Avon team, but it will include the all-important cover (I LOVE the cover of One Summer in Italy), editing, scheduling, typesetting, promo, marketing and blurb writing. I’m involved in some of those areas too, mainly the promo.

Underpinning the process on both sides is respect, co-operation, negotiation, discussion, and a whole heck of a lot of emails!

But it’s worth it when this is what we end up with:

Cover reveal!

Here it is! I’ve been dying to show you this for ages – the cover of Just for the Holidays.

 

 

ebook cover of Just for the Holidays to be released on 18 May 2017 (Avon, HarperCollins)

I’m thrilled with such a stunning cover.

The paperback, which will be released on the same day as the ebook, will have lots of lovely purple foil and I can’t wait to have a copy in my hands! (For those of you who like audiobooks, it, too, will be released on 18 May 2017.)

 

Here’s the blurb:

The #1 bestselling author returns for summer! Grab your sun hat, a cool glass of wine, and the only book you need on holiday…

In theory, nothing could be better than a summer spent basking in the French sun. That is, until you add in three teenagers, two love interests, one divorcing couple, and a very unexpected pregnancy.

Admittedly, this isn’t exactly the relaxing holiday Leah Beaumont was hoping for – but it’s the one she’s got. With her sister Michele’s family falling apart at the seams, it’s up to Leah to pick up the pieces and try to hold them all together.

But with a handsome helicopter pilot staying next door, Leah can’t help but think she might have a few distractions of her own to deal with…

A glorious summer read, for you to devour in one sitting – perfect for fans of Katie Fforde, Carole Matthews and Trisha Ashley.

Whether your holidays plans this year will involve somewhere exotic or a ‘staycation’ at home, I think that Leah’s holiday will make your summer look better. You can already pre-order Just for the Holidays. Grab your sunscreen!

And for those of you who followed my adventures in a helicopter, it’s this book I was researching!