Publication Day for #SummerOnASunnyIsland @AvonBooksUK @BFLAgency

Here it is at last! Publication day has arrived for Summer on a Sunny Island!

My thanks, as ever, to the fab team at Avon Books UK and Blake Friedmann Literary, Flim and TV Agency for their fantastic support.

The idea for Summer on a Sunny Island was sparked by a service kids’ reunion in Malta, where I was brought up for several years. My brothers, my sister-in-law and I managed to convert one lunch into a ten-day holiday so I didn’t see why such a reunion shouldn’t for part of a novel too. It’s about Rosa, who’s supporting her celeb-cook mum Dory in Malta and Zach, who’s looking after his Maltese grandmother’s property. They’ve both left tricky situations behind them in England but, of course, those situations don’t just go away.

I really hope that you enjoy the opportunity to travel to Malta by book, even if you can’t travel in real life during the pandemic. Malta’s a glorious, golden nugget in the blue Mediterranean sea and a part of my heart will always be there.

Thanks to every single blogger who’s signed up to read and review the book. Here’s details of the blog tour for you to follow:

In addition, fab bloggers, including several from Team Sue Moorcroft, are kindly hosting extra posts from me.

Mark West, Strange Tales, 27th April.

Anne Williams, Being Anne, 29th April.

Samantha Smith, Written by S J Smith, 30th April.

Karen Cocking, My Reading Corner, 1st May.

Lucy Catten, Lucy Literati, 2nd May.

Sherry Gloag, Heart of Romance, 3rd May.

If you read Summer on a Sunny Island it would be fantastic if you could pop a review online. Every single one is appreciated.

On the evening of Friday 1st May I’ll be appearing on a screen near you as part of the Avon Book Fest. Bella Osborne, Phillipa Ashley and I will be live at 5.30pm BST and you can send us in your questions using the chat feature. It’s free and you can sign up here.

And no publication day blog post would be complete without buy links – so here they are!

Summer on a Sunny Island on UK Kindle

Summer on a Sunny Island on UK Kobo

Summer on a Sunny Island on UK Apple

Summer on a Sunny Island paperback

Summer on a Sunny Island audio

Summer on a Sunny Island in the US

Advertisement

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

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.

Welcome M W Arnold, The Season for Love @rararesources @mick859

I don’t often invite authors onto my blog but I’ve made an exception for M W Arnold as Mick is a stalwart member of my street team, Team Sue Moorcroft. You might also see the same interview on Rachel’s Random Reads to make the most of our respective audiences.

How does it feel to be joining the ranks of the traditionally published authors? How long have you wanted this?

For a ‘supposed’ author, I’m actually lost for words and until it’s actually released, I guess you could say that I’m still waiting for it to all fall through. I can’t tell you how many of my writing friends have told me not to be so silly when I say that. Actually, it’s really not something I thought would happen so soon. I only joined the Romantic Novelists’ Association, New Writer’s Scheme in 2013 after starting to write semi-seriously the previous year, so I’ve only thought about getting published since around that time.

Tell us something about The Season for Love

‘The Season for Love’ is actually the second book I’ve finished and, so far, the only one where the last paragraph was the first thing I’d written. That’s as far as the planning  went. I’m not a ‘Planster’, I’m afraid to say. I’ve tried it since, and for this one too, but it only goes as far as jotting notes on the bottom of the page I’m writing as they come to me, though only about say, 40% of the time do they actually make the story. I expect I could get a sequel out of the notes I have stored away for this book.

What made you choose to write romantic fiction?

I’m a huge fan of the late and very great Terry Pratchett, but my Lady Wife read ‘The Xmas Factor’ by Annie Sanders and she insisted I read it, now. So, and more to humour her I have to admit, I did…in one sitting. Then read again. The morning after that second reading, I felt the need to write. I had no idea what I was going to write, just that I had to write. I was finally pulled from my old laptop late the same evening and I’d the start of what would be my first book. That’s unpubished, and I now know why, though I would like to come back to it as the story is good, but by gum, the writing needs improvement. That was in this genre because of that book I’d read, and since then, this has been my genre of choice. It helps that I really am an old-fashioned romantic. I like to think I’ve found my calling.

Where can readers buy your book?

I’ve been lucky and ‘The Season for Love’ is being released on both sides of the Atlantic on the same day, December 16th. It’s available on Amazon, Kobo, Nook, Smashwords, Bookstrand and the Passion in Print (the publishing house I’m signed with for this book) website. And seeing as you were so kind to ask, here are the links:

Amazon US

Amazon UK

Barnes & Noble

Bookstrand

Smashwords

Kobo US

Kobo UK

http://passioninprint.com/future.php

What jobs have you had apart from ‘author’?

For the first fifteen years of my working life, I worked for Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II. That sounds very impressive, doesn’t it? It’s not quite so much when I elaborate. I was actually in the Royal Air Force, so it counts. Nothing so fancy as a pilot, I was office staff, but I did serve on flying squadrons and saw quite a lot of the world, which was kind of the point as I wanted to travel.

Do you have a day job now?

After leaving the RAF, I started working with computers and that’s what I do now. It pays the bills, so far, though I’d be fibbing if I didn’t say I’d love to be able to earn my living writing.

Have you told your day job colleagues about The Season for Love?

Yep. They all know and after getting their heads around the genre I’ve chosen to write it, have all been very supportive. One of them was actually a beta reader for this book and says it’s encouraged them to write (not that they have yet), so that’s good.

Do you have much time for reading? What do you read?

I don’t have as much time for reading now as I did before I started writing, though I do try to read at least during my lunch break, it helps to clear the mind for an afternoons work. When I do read, it’s very much in the Romance genre. It won’t come as a surprise to those of you reading this that I’m a big fan of Sue Moorcroft books and consider her very much a benchmark I’d like to aspire to attaining. Whenever I feel the need for a break from romance though, I always go back to Mr Pratchett, with a sideways trip into the Harry Potters too.

Thank you for the shout out! Is there another M. W. Arnold book coming along any time soon?

Currently, I’m finishing off ‘Knicker Shopper Glory’, which I expect to start sending out in the hope of getting a publishing deal for that in the New Year. So, yes, if anyone’s out there, read’s ‘The Season for Love’ you know where to find me. Whatever happens, I am determined to get that second deal as soon as possible.

Love the new title. I hope both books do really well for you, Mick.

 

The Season for Love – blurb

Believing she was responsible for the death of her husband, Chrissie Stewart retreats from all those who love her. A chance meeting with a mysterious stranger, single-parent Josh Morgan and his bewitching young daughter Lizzy, breathes new life into her and gradually, she feels able to start to let go of the memory of her lost love. Unexpected links are revealed between the two families that strengthen the growing bonds she feels to this man and with the encouragement of her best friend Annie, herself hiding a hidden conflict from Chrissie, she battles with her demons to believe in her ability to trust and love again. Everything comes to a head on Christmas Day; which all goes to show that this is truly The Season for Love.

Bio – Mick is a hopeless romantic who was born in England, and spent fifteen years roaming around the world in the pay of HM Queen Elizabeth II in the Royal Air Force, before putting down roots, and realising how much he missed the travel. This, he’s replaced somewhat with his writing, including reviewing books and writing a regular post at the www.NovelKicks.co.uk blog site.

He’s the proud keeper of a cat bent on world domination, is mad on the music of the Beach Boys and enjoys the theatre and humouring his Manchester United supporting wife. Finally, and most importantly, Mick’s a member of the Romantic Novelists Association, with the forthcoming publication of his debut novel The Season for Love.

Twitter – https://twitter.com/mick859

Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/MWArnoldAuthor/

Sunday morning, going up

I thought I was excited enough when the lovely folk at Avon told me to expect The Little Village Christmas to reach #7 in the Sunday Times Fiction Paperbacks chart today. Then I bought the paper this morning – and found it at #6!

I officially became a Sunday Times bestselling author last week when The Little Village Christmas popped up at #17 but to reach the top ten makes me feel more relaxed about claiming the title ‘Sunday Times bestselling author’. It’s something I’ve coveted for so long without ever really expecting it to apply to me.

After all, it’s been a while coming. Over more than 21 years 150+ of my short stories have been published, along with 250+ columns or articles, three courses, six serials, a writing guide, and a novella. I’ve judged 120+ writing competitions, appraised dozens of manuscripts and led a host of writing courses and workshops. And The Little Village Christmas is my twelfth novel.

So, when I treated myself to these frivolous but beautiful boots yesterday I was celebrating every one of those steps along the road to seeing my name and the title of my book in the Sunday Times today.

My thanks go to every editor who has chosen my work over the years, the whole wonderful Avon team, my amazing agent Juliet Pickering, the writer of every good review and each member of my fantastic street team.

Most of all, thanks to my lovely readers, who made this joyous celebration possible by buying my books. Thank you.

Things I didn’t know would happen to a novelist

It’s 21 years since I sold my first short story and 13 since I sold (or my then-agent sold) my first novel but I’m still surprised – even shocked – by certain aspects of being an author. I thought I’d share some with you.

• Fresh ideas can be hard to come by, not because too many people have written about them before – but because I have!
• Likewise, character names. (If anyone ever wants to gather all my character names together in one document, please do let me know. I can help you achieve that ambition.)
• People asking for my help. I’m afraid I have to disappoint a lot of people over this one. Please see ‘Time Pressure’ below.
• People asking for charitable donations. I’m so sorry I can’t fulfil all of these requests. I try to give time as a speaker when I can but I’ve stopped donating signed books because over one-third of the donation goes straight to the Royal Mail in postage.
• Time pressure. Writing to an agreed schedule is different to writing if and when I feel like it.
• People telling me what I meant when I wrote something. It’s always interesting to hear these interpretations and compare them with my own thoughts on the subject. Sometimes I wish I had meant whatever it’s thought I meant because it makes me look brainier or more insightful than I am.
• Lovely messages on social media. These are such a privilege. Seriously. They make my heart dance and sing.
• People waiting for my next book. (Cue dancing, singing heart again.)
• Being in magazines – just me, not even my books.
• Needing patience when it comes to contracts and similar transactions. (Patience never has been my best thing.)
• My characters getting fan mail of their own. (Isn’t that awesome?)
• Occasionally needing a skin like a rhinoceros and a back like a duck. (You’re trying to draw this in your mind now, aren’t you?)
• It being perfectly legitimate to spend working hours perusing magazines or watching TV for ideas or research. Ditto travel to other countries.
• People actively wanting to help with research.
• Team Sue Moorcroft, my street team, even existing. (You can read about – and even join – the street team here.)
• Being taken out to lunch or sent gifts.
• Being asked to talk about myself. Really. And even getting paid for it.
• Being asked to read other authors’ books and supply a quote. I can’t do all of these either, for a wide variety of reasons, but it’s lovely all the same and it makes me feel better about giving to my publisher the names of other authors who might quote for my books.
• People wanting to receive my newsletter or share my posts.
• Being able to go to parties, lunches, talks and conferences in the names of education and networking.
• Being able to set my travel to/from events and cost of tickets and other relevant costs against tax.
• Thinking of a lot of ideas for blog posts around the publication of a book.
• The rush of excitement that accompanies publication.
• The heady disbelief when a book surpasses my wildest dreams (like The Christmas Promise getting to #1. The Little Village Christmas and A Christmas Gift becoming Sunday Times bestsellers. Just for the Holidays being nominated for a Romantic Novel of the Year Award. Sorry. I try and introduce these facts to conversations whenever remotely possible.)
• And receiving copies of my books, seeing the cover art and marketing plans.
• People thinking they see themselves in my characters. I try never to let this happen but maybe it’s unconscious?
• People saying they know where Middledip is. It’s on a big piece of paper in my study and that’s it, I’m afraid.
• Doing exciting research. (Helicopters, travel abroad, meeting interesting people.)
• Emails often being exciting.
• People reading my blog.

If I’ve missed out anything you have on your list, please add it in the comments!

 

What happened to me this Christmas

Christmas is supposed to be a time of magic and, this year, for me, it was.

The Christmas Promise hit the UK Kindle #1 spot!

A friend messaged to ask if I’d seen my Amazon ranking. I had, and I’d been at #2, so I chatted on that basis.  Then I saw my new ranking and a Tweet from my lovely editor, Helen, and the storm of joy broke all over my social media accounts. Eventually, I went back to my friend and said ‘And now it’s at #1!!!’ and she said ‘That’s what I was trying to tell you!’

It was a euphoric experience, which, if you were around on social media that morning, you may have noticed! Joy, shock and disbelief turned me into a jelly. I was in the lovely situation of having exceeded even my most optimistic expectations and floating somewhere above Cloud Nine. There were actual tears of joy, I promise you. And, later, champagne!

I’d also like to share with you my gift from my brother, presented on behalf of our mum, who died in March. He had an ‘Oscar’ made. Inscribed on the plinth is:

Best selling No. 1 author

Sue Moorcroft

We all got choked up so I couldn’t make an ‘Oscar-winner’s speech’ but we hugged very hard.

I’m not choked up now so here goes:

Thank you to everyone who bought The Christmas Promise, either for yourself or to give as a gift. Thank you for every one of the many wonderful reviews, whether online or in print, review site or national media. Thank you to everyone who supported the promo campaign, including the wonderful members of Team Sue Moorcroft. Thank you to all the retailers who supported the paperback with wonderful chart and shelf positions. Thank you to my agent, Juliet Pickering, for knowing Avon HarperCollins would be a good publisher for me and thank you to Helen, and everybody at Avon, who worked so hard and successfully to make the book a success.

Thank you, family, for sharing my joy.

And now I’d better get on with the copy edits of the next book, Just for the Holidays. May’s not that far away.

Champagne? Or black gunge on the washing machine?

Somebody once told me that being an author meant drinking champagne with your publishers one day and cleaning black gunge out of your washing machine next.

I had my own taste of that this week with my launch party on Thursday and housework today!

Let’s focus on the fun stuff. Thursday’s launch party for The Christmas Promise was amazing. I’m going to use this post mainly to share photos with you.

I was amazed and thrilled how many people turned up to support me, buying ALL the books in stock and leaving orders with the store for more. Members of Team Sue Moorcroft,  bloggers, readers, family, and friends from as far back as my primary school. Authors, mainly from the RNA, came out in force.

Ava from The Christmas Promise is a milliner and Abigail Crampton, who had made the millinery research very easy for me, made my beautiful cocktail hat especially for the evening. Here we go with the pics!

And for those who are interested in how I cleaned the black gunge from the washing machine, I chose a steam cleaner and and an old toothbrush.

Why did we celebrate Christmas … in May?

Yesterday, I had the absolute pleasure and privilege of meeting up with several members of Team Sue Moorcroft for the first celebration of The Christmas Promise. Obviously, as it was Christmas (in May), gifts were called for! So I stowed them carefully (ie squashed them in a bag) and set off by train for Leicester.

I’d had surgery on my shoulder eleven days earlier so I travelled in my shoulder brace, in a pre-booked seat and wearing an alarmed expression. A guy opposite asked what I’d done and as I’m tired of the boringly real explanation of bone spurs cutting into a tendon, I told him I’d done it cage fighting. He assumed an alarmed expression, too.

It’s a constant source of wonder and pride that I have readers who like my work so much that they want to be in my street team, that anyone (Louise Styles! It was you!) ever suggested I should have one, and that the members happily spread the word about my books whenever they can. (If you’d like to know more about the street team and how to get involved you can read this page on my website.)

We met at the Belmont Hotel in Leicester for a lovely lunch (the kind that lasts all afternoon). It’s been pointed out to me that maybe we ought to have talked a leetle bit more about The Christmas Promise (which is available for preorder already). What we did talk about was books in general, mine in particular, writing, the mating habits of dogs, whether cats would rule the world if they had opposable thumbs, Team Sue Moorcroft, how far each person had travelled, whether Kay would catch her bus home (JUST, thanks to Louise who drove her to the bus station), gout, alcohol (hardly any of us were drinking owing to various issues – in my case painkillers), children, events on the literary calendar, the Beautiful South and the lyrics of their songs, the amazingness of food (particularly chocolate fondant), angels, religion, the pre-publication launch of The Christmas Promise at Waterstones Nottingham (20th October, hopefully), blogging, books as gifts and probably a lot I don’t now remember.

I would like to thank Manda, Ann, Louise P, Kay, Judy and Anne for their company and their support, for making me laugh and their input on future events. Sorry to other members of the team who wanted to come but couldn’t make the date because of birthdays, anniversaries, illness or interviews, and I hope you can come to the next one.

Anne has written a super post about the lunch and Team Sue Moorcroft on her fab book blog, Being Anne.