Love stories are never my first line of narrative in a novel (with the exception of perhaps The Chocolate Promise) but play a secondary, supporting storyline. I knew that my main character of The Cake Maker’s Wish, Olivia Kent, would have a love interest but that was as much as I knew when I began … Continue reading Author Talks: Josephine Moon – A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Love
Book Promotions
Author Talks: Nicholas J. Johnson – You can’t make this stuff up
I tell people that I write fiction because I can’t be trusted with the truth. After all, I’ve worked as a professional magician for almost thirty years. My entire life has been dedicated to fabrication. I’m not just a regular magician either. I play an ‘honest con man’ swindling audiences with card cheating demonstrations and … Continue reading Author Talks: Nicholas J. Johnson – You can’t make this stuff up
Author Talks: Sandie Docker on The Power of Feel-good Fiction
Feel-good fiction sometimes gets a raw deal as being ‘light-weight’ or an ‘easy’ read, but an easy read simply means it is a page turner. And while feel-good fiction may leave us, as the name suggests, feeling good at the end, it doesn’t mean it can’t deal with some fairly heavy issues. And for me … Continue reading Author Talks: Sandie Docker on The Power of Feel-good Fiction
Author Talks: Leah Swann on Inventive explorations of motherhood in fiction
The eagle-featured mother in Angela Carter’s Bluebeard story “The Bloody Chamber” was an electrifying discovery as a student and lives on in me to this day. Back then, I’d read about oppressive mothers, unreliable mothers, fearsome mothers and loving mothers but never a fierce, swashbuckling mother like this one. Early in the story we learn … Continue reading Author Talks: Leah Swann on Inventive explorations of motherhood in fiction
Author Talks: Kirsty Manning on Discovering hidden jewels through research
A little over three years ago I was in the final stages of researching and writing my last novel set in Shanghai in World War Two—The Jade Lily—when I stumbled across an extraordinary newspaper article that completely knocked me off track. It was a review of an exhibition of 500 priceless pieces of Elizabethan and … Continue reading Author Talks: Kirsty Manning on Discovering hidden jewels through research
Behind the Pen with Tanya Heaslip
Today I warmly welcome Tanya Heaslip to Behind the Pen, sharing insight with us on her latest memoir, An Alice Girl. How are you feeling about releasing a book in this current climate? I’m feeling excited about the opportunities now available to promote “An Alice Girl” in a different way and grateful that we have … Continue reading Behind the Pen with Tanya Heaslip
Author Talks: Lisa Ireland on The Women Who Paved My Way
For all the women who paved the way, most especially my mother, Lorraine. This is the dedication I wrote for my new novel, The Secret Life of Shirley Sullivan. The book centres on a strong and determined older protagonist and, in a way, I created her to pay homage to the many wonderful women who … Continue reading Author Talks: Lisa Ireland on The Women Who Paved My Way
Author Talks: Karly Lane on the Importance of Women in Agriculture
One of my very first attempts at writing was a book titled the Cattleman’s Runaway Bride. When I began writing, I only had Mills and Boon in mind to submit to because they were the only ones I had writing guidelines for… This was in the very early days of the internet! It was eventually … Continue reading Author Talks: Karly Lane on the Importance of Women in Agriculture
Author Talks: B. M. Carroll on Who were you at school? The shy one? The silly one? The social butterfly?
1980s, Cork, Ireland: I was definitely the quiet one at school. I lived in Blarney, a village located five miles outside Cork city, and my parents decided to send me to the ‘city’ for secondary school. A distance of five miles means nothing in Australia, but in Ireland it was quite significant at the time. … Continue reading Author Talks: B. M. Carroll on Who were you at school? The shy one? The silly one? The social butterfly?
Author Talks: Sonya Bates on the transition from Children’s Fiction to Crime Thriller
On first glance, children’s fiction doesn’t seem to have much in common with crime thrillers – in this case, a murder mystery with a dual timeline. And yet, that is the leap in genre that I made when I set out to write Inheritance of Secrets. I’d been writing children’s fiction for a few years … Continue reading Author Talks: Sonya Bates on the transition from Children’s Fiction to Crime Thriller
