The Somme - 100 Years Ago Today

100 years ago today at 7.30am it was zero hour.

Tens of thousands of men lost their lives, were permanently maimed and if they survived they not only lost many of their friends who'd fought bravely by their sides but they'd witnessed a carnage that we can only imagine today. The sights, sounds and smells of that day and those that followed is something we're lucky enough never to experience.

Whenever the Great War is commemorated in any way, or when I research that terrible time, I can't help being moved by the thought of those young men and what they went through. 

We will never forget these men.

My research has mainly been with the cavalry as my great-grandfather, Charles Wood, was in the Lancers during the Great War. He survived only to die in 1922 just before Christmas. He'd been in the forces since the turn of the century, so was used to a battle fought on horseback. He fought in the Boer War and India, where my grandmother was born. I don't have a picture of him because when he died my great-grandmother burned them all because he'd left her.

Broken Faces - New Cover

I'm quietly sharing the new cover for Broken Faces. It isn't up on Amazon yet, but will be later today.

Although the original cover for Broken Faces (below) was historically accurate it looked too bleak, there was no colour and it didn’t indicate the romance within the novel.

It’s difficult to create a cover that shows the love, hope and heartbreak within a book based in WW1. This book is ultimately a love story but within that romance there’s a life-changing injury that four friends have to learn to deal with.

WW1 was a dark, difficult time. It changed, as well as ended, many, many lives. I haven’t held back from depicting the horror that some people experienced nor the endurance they needed to survive.

I hope it encapsulates the book better than the previous one did.

Please let me know what you think.

My Shed in the Writers' Forum Mag

Apart from my fabulous day on Saturday attending Rachel Abbott's workshop, last week had been a bit of a draining one. On Friday the assessor confirmed that my car was a write-off - it wasn't new, but I'd only had it three months. On Saturday the dishwasher died and the cooker followed suit on Sunday.

So! It was hugely cheering to discover that my interview about my shed on Phil Barrington's, Where I Write feature in the Writers' Forum magazine had been published in July's edition.

I'm chatting about my book, Broken Faces - soon to be given a new cover, my research and my writing shed.

Needless to say several copies of the magazine have been brought and I've been showing off about this exciting occurrence to all and sundry and probably driving everyone completely barmy with my shares.

It might be Monday, but it's a very happy one for me!

Rachel Abbott's Workshop

On Saturday I was lucky enough to be able to attend a Self-Publishing workshop given by the massively successful author, Rachel Abbott. I've been to a talk with Rachel before and I also love her books, so was very excited to be able to spend 7.5 hours listening to her wisdom about publishing and marketing and have not only written pages and pages of notes that I'll hopefully decipher and type up soon, but have been inspired by everything that she said.

Attending the workshop, arranged by fellow author and past Chair of the Jersey Writers Association, Gwyn Garfield-Bennett, were a range of people. Some had written books and were self-published, or, like me, hybrid authors, others were in the process of writing books, but we all had a great time and learnt a lot.

So, if you ever get a chance to attend one of Rachel's brilliantly informative talks do go along, you'll be glad you did. I know I was. I'm not off to read her new book, Kill Me Again!

When Only Cupcakes Will Do - Cover Reveal

When life gives you lemons, make lemon drizzle cupcakes...

Lucie thought that proposing to her boyfriend in Tiffany’s would be the best day of her life. Until he said no. In just a few seconds, her whole world is turned upside-down! And when she accidentally switches cocoa powder for chilli powder at work, she finds herself out of a job, too…

Baking has always made life better in the past, but can Lucie really bake her way to happiness? Starting her own company, selling cupcakes out of an old ice cream van might just be the second chance that Lucie needs!

Of course, she never expected to find love along the way…

Publication Date: 4 August 2016

To pre-order: amazon.co.uk

Liberation Day & Writing the Sequel

This weekend the Channel Islands celebrate 71 years of freedom from Nazi rule, with Jersey's celebrations being on Monday, 9 May. 

It's a perfect atmosphere for me work on the sequel to Broken Faces, Splintered Lives. This is a story set in Jersey, Shropshire and Paris during the Occupation (Jersey), Battle of Britain (England) and discovering what happened to the protagonists after the war (Paris).

This story is a standalone (as my Jersey Series books are) and is about Freddie, Charles, Lexi and Meri from Broken Faces and how their lives have developed since the Great War and the terrible experiences they had to endure during and after that time. 

It'll also be a year since the Jersey Writers launched their anthology, Once Upon An Island - my story is 'V for Victory'. 

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend. Over the weekend and especially on Monday we'll be raising the flags, celebrating at fairs and contemplating what those trapped in Jersey suffered during the Occupation from 30 June 1940 - 9 May 1945.

Right, enough waffling, now I'd better get out to that shed and get editing this WIP. 

Updating the Website

Happy May Day and here's to a sunny *crosses fingers* and fun month of May!

I've been updating my website and adding a little bit about my news - being in Writing Magazine - and adding my writing tips. 

I'm going to be adding more about my research - mainly in Paris - for Broken Faces, which will soon be receiving a new cover, but more about that soon and talking about the discoveries I made in my research, some of which were so surreal I can still hardly believe they happened.

Having a blog and a website and Facebook and Twitter, oh, and Pinterest and Instagram, it's a little difficult to know what to put where and what to repeat, but it's all good fun, most of the time.

Here's the link to my website to one of the pages in case you wish to have a quick visit:  https://deborahcarrblog.wordpress.com/inspiration-behind-the-characters/

Hope you have a wonderful Bank Holiday weekend!