My Liebster Award

Thank you Alison Morton for awarding me the Liebster Award.
 

The rules of the Liebster Award are:

• Thank your Liebster Blog Award nominator on your blog and link back to the blogger who presented this award to you;
• Answer the eleven questions from the nominator;
• List eleven random facts about yourself:
• Present the Liebster Blog Award to up to eleven other blogs that you feel deserve to be noticed and leave a comment on their blog letting them know they have been chosen;
• Pass on the eleven questions to your nominees, or create new ones;
• Copy and paste the blog award on your blog.

1. What’s your favourite novel and what do you love about it? I loved Birdsong and have read it a couple of times, but then I enjoy reading novels about the Great War. To Kill A Mockingbird is one of my favourites, but my all-time favourite has to be Pride and Prejudice, I love drifting off into that other world so different from our own now and depicted beautifully by Jane Austen.

 

2. Do you have any pet peeves in fiction? Head-hopping in the same scene.

3. What are you most proud of? Apart from my children, it has to be when I signed with LBA Associates Ltd and not only the excitement of being represented by an agent, but by one as incredible as Luigi Bonomi. I still can’t quite believe it!

4. Your most and least favourite people in history? Likes:

• Sir Harold Gillies (17 June 1882 – 10 September 1960) New Zealand-born, otolaryngologist who is widely considered the father of plastic surgery and whose skills made so much difference to the injured soldiers of WWI.
• His cousin, Sir Archibald McIndoe (4 May 1900 – 11 April 1960) a pioneering New Zealand plastic surgeon who worked for the RAF during WWII and vastly improved the treatment and rehabilitation of badly burned aircrew.
• Bill Gates III, the chairman of Microsoft, whose software made all the difference to my working day and my writing, by making computers easy enough for the technophobes of this world - like me - to use them.

Dislikes: Any of vile people who’ve spent their lives causing misery and pain to others, including Adolf Hitler, Vlad the Impaler, Idi Amin and the like. *shivers*

5. The country, city or other place you’d most like to visit? New Zealand, because it sounds/looks magnificent and I’ve never been there.

6. Which five people would you like to meet (dead, alive, or fictional)?

• My grandfather who died when I was 21 months old because he achieved so much in his life and was such a fascinating character,
• Sir Harold Gillies - see below - because I'd be fascinated to chat with him about his achievements,
• My great-grandfather, Charles Wood, so that I could ask him for a photo for my dad.
• Richard Armitage, well, why not?
• Ernest Hemingway, when he lived in Paris, so that I could spend time with his friends and get to know them all a little bit.

7. What makes you laugh the most? Silly adverts on tv, probably. My children are always amazed when I laugh hysterically as the same thing a number of times.

 

8. If you could know the future, what would you wish for? I think the most exciting thing about the future is not knowing what is going to happen, but if I could have anything (apart from the usual health etc for my family) it would be to earn my living by writing books - incredibly successful ones, of course ;) – from my shed. Bliss.

9. If you won the lottery and could donate money to charity, which charity would you choose – and why?

• Holidays for Heroes - who provide free holidays in Jersey for past or present members of H.M.Armed Forces injured whilst on or as a result of active service. I don’t know anyone in the armed forces, but think this is a wonderful charity that has now provided over 900 holidays since their launch in 2008.
• Autism Jersey – because my god-son, one of the loveliest and most interesting people I know has Asperger syndrome.
• RNLI – because I admire their bravery. My uncle was in the RNLI for years, still is, and my father was rescued from the sea (although not by the RNLI) when his plane crashed thirty years ago off the coast of France.
 

10. Do you suffer from any little phobias or superstitions? I’m terrified of spiders and screamed so loudly the first time Grumps played with a spider that he is now scared of them too. Or at least he was for the first ten years of his life, I spotted him playing with one yesterday. Yes, I screamed!

11. What’s your favourite guilty pleasure? Taking the ferry to St Malo for lunch.

 

Eleven random facts about me…

• I stroked a rhino’s horn – and no, it’s not a euphemism and it was still on a live rhino!
• I can ride side-saddle.
• The headmistress of my first school told my father that I was charming, but that if I didn’t want to do something nothing could make me do it, so, in my father’s words, I was, ‘asked to leave’. He wasn’t impressed!
• I’ve never lived more than two miles away from the sea, apart from when I stayed at my mother’s house in South Africa for a few months.
• My favourite- food is either crab salad or hummus on seeded toast!
• My grandmother won a place in the final of the world's international beauty competition at the Albert-hall in the late twenties. The first prize was £1,000 and a five years' film contract, but instead of letting her go to the finals her mother took her on holiday to Jersey where she met and married my grandfather (the one mentioned above).
• The most incredible place I’ve ever visited was Pompeii, which felt like I was peeking into someone’s life who’d just popped out for a few minutes.
• Jersey is small and it’s good to get away every so often, but I love living here and never seem to find the time to see all the historical attractions it offers.
• I write letters by hand to my mum, although my handwriting isn’t too tidy.
• I’ve spent years searching online for a photo of my great-grandfather, Charles Wood, who was in the 21^st Lancers, without success.
• The fastest horse I was ever lucky enough to ride was a racehorse owned by a diamond merchant years ago in South Africa.

Hmm, I’m not sure how interesting those eleven facts were…

My nominees are: (please feel free not to take this up):

Rosemary Gemmell - Reading and Writing Blog

Teresa Ashby - A Likely Story

Sue - Flowerpot Days

These blogs are fun, interesting and I never tire of visiting them.

Thank you again to Alison for nominating me for the Liebster Award.

Happy Liberation Day

It's 9th May, it's sunny, we have a day off work and there are flags everywhere, so it must be Liberation Day.

We are constantly surrounded by reminders left behind by the occupying forces from the years they took over Jersey. We have the cement walls along some of the beaches, many bunkers (some opened up for visitors, which is always a sobering experience), The War Tunnels (cold, atmospheric and always makes me feel sad), as well as stories about evacuation from parents (my dad), and retold experiences of those who were stranded here throughout the Occupation, so we never really forget that it happened.

Today, though the island celebrates the end of the Occupation. We all stop work, put out the flags and pay thanks albeit through church services, parties, or simply in our thoughts that the island was liberated by the British troops on 9th May 1945. The alternative is something I doubt many of us wish to dwell upon.

In the Newspaper

It's been an odd week filled with fun (meeting up with girlfriends over dinner and drinking, laughing, gossiping and drinking far too much champagne), sadness (saying goodbye to colleagues and other disappointments), hope (applying for job interviews, the sunshine reappearing) and meeting new people (giving out my Red Dust Road copies for World Book Night). I was also included in the Jersey Evening Post (the Jersey newspaper for the 95,000 locals) about my involvement in World Book Night.

So, a mixed week, but every experience, however uncomfortable at the time, is surely either a learning curve, or fodder for future writing... Yes?

World Book Night - Red Dust Road

I've collected my books for World Book Night from our library and am looking forward to handing them out. I'm hoping to meet up with three other givers to swap ideas, but I work near Liberation Square in St Helier and so, if you happen to be here on, or around 23rd, and see a confused blond woman carrying a bundle of books and walking up to strangers to ask them about their reading habits, don't be alarmed, it'll probably be me!

In the meantime, I'd better get on with my writing.

Hope you have a lovely weekend!

Birthday, Writing & World Book Night

I had a wonderful birthday this week waking up to a beautiful sunny day, with lots of thoughtful gifts ranging from a Kindle Fire HD, a bracelet, bouquets of flowers, a gorgeous lavender plant for my garden, a bottle of champagne, a cover with keyboard for my Kindle Fire (see pic), many beautiful birthday cards and a fun meal out with Rob and Sas. There was good news from my agent, who liked a book idea of mine, so I've now got my head down and am writing the first draft of my next book - very exciting.

 

It hasn't been an easy start to 2013 - being made redundant from a job I love, etc - but I now feel that there are only good things to come and together with the warmer, (hopefully) sunnier weather that's on it's way, life is looking a lot brighter now.

 

My books for World Book Night have arrived in the island and I'm going to collect these tomorrow and meet with a few other Givers to discuss their ideas for distributing the books.

 

Hope you have a sunny, happy weekend.

Happy Easter

I'm hoping that now Easter is almost here maybe the warmer weather will be on it's way to us all, too.

Here's Grumps looking out for the Easter Bunny.

Grumps is oblivious that there won't be any chocolate eggs for him, but I'll make sure he has a treat in the way of a dental chew or something. Okay, so that's not exactly unusual, seeing that he has one each day, so maybe I'll let him have one of his slightly bigger chews while we're chomping through our hoard of chocolate eggs.

Unfortunately, once the eggs have been eaten, I'll have to dust the sideboard that's being hidden by the boxed eggs. Or I could buy more...

Guest Post - Inceptio by Alison Morton

Thank you very much for welcoming me to your blog, Debs.

Today, my debut novel, INCEPTIO, is published. Hooray! Three years of slog – researching, writing, and polishing – have led to this exciting moment. You know how much work it’s been when we’ve discussed writing at the conferences and meetings we’ve both attended.

It all started when as an eleven year old fascinated by the mosaics at Ampurias in Spain I asked my father, “What would it be like if Roman women were in charge, instead of the men?” Maybe it was the fierce sun boiling my brain that day, maybe it was just a precocious kid asking a smartarse question. But clever man and senior ‘Roman nut’, my father replied, “What do you think it would be like?” Real life intervened (school, uni, career, military, marriage, motherhood, business ownership, move to France), but the idea bubbled away in my mind and INCEPTIO slowly took shape.

Of course, I made the classic mistake of submitting too soon, but had some encouraging replies. Several rewrites later and I’d made some full submissions, even to a US agent! I had replies like ‘If it was a straight thriller, I’d take it on’ and ‘Your writing is excellent, but it wouldn’t fit our list.’ I was (am!) passionate about my stories so I decided to self publish with bought-in publishing services.

You describe your novel as an “alternate history thriller” – how is that different from a normal thriller?

Alternate history is based on the idea of “what if”? What if King Harold had won the Battle of Hastings in 1066? Or if Julius Caesar had taken notice of the warning that assassins wanted to murder him on the Ides of March? Sometimes, it could be little things such as in the film Sliding Doors, when the train door shuts and Gwyneth Paltrow’s character splits into two; one rides away on the train, the other is left standing on the platform.

The rest of the story, or history of a country, from that point on develops differently from the one we know. In my book, Roma Nova battled its way from a small colony in the late fourth century somewhere north of Italy into a high tech, financial mini-state which kept and developed Roman Republican values, but with a twist. It’s really been fun working this out! The thriller story then takes place against this background. The nearest comparison would be J D Robb’s Eve Dallas Death series.

Stories with Romans are usually about famous emperors, epic battles, depravity, intrigue, wicked empresses and a lot of sandals, tunics and swords. But imagine the Roman theme projected sixteen hundred years further forward into the 21st century. How different would that world be?

So what’s INCEPTIO about?

New York – present day, alternate reality. Karen Brown, angry and frightened after surviving a kidnap attempt, has a harsh choice – being eliminated by government enforcer Jeffery Renschman or fleeing to the mysterious Roma Nova, her dead mother’s homeland in Europe. Founded sixteen centuries ago by Roman exiles and ruled by women, Roma Nova gives Karen safety, a ready-made family and a new career. But a shocking discovery about her new lover, the fascinating but arrogant special forces officer Conrad Tellus who rescued her in America, isolates her.

Renschman reaches into her new home and nearly kills her. Recovering, she is desperate to find out why he is hunting her so viciously. Unable to rely on anybody else, she undergoes intensive training, develops fighting skills and becomes an undercover cop. But crazy with bitterness at his past failures, Renschman sets a trap for her, knowing she has no choice but to spring it...

And next? I’m working on PERFIDITAS, the second book in the Roma Nova series.

You can find INCEPTIO on Amazon UK and Amazon US

You can read more about Alison, Romans, alternate history and writing on her blog: http://alison-morton.com/, on Facebook www.facebook.com/AlisonMortonAuthor and follow her on Twitter @alison_morton

Congratulations, Alison.  I can't wait to read INCEPTIO.