School Ties - a new novella set in a school

Downthorpe Hall is a posh boarding school in the wilds of the Oxfordshire countryside.

Fresh from working in an inner-city comprehensive, Will Hughes has just been appointed as the new head. He knows there will be a host of challenges ahead. Tricky parents, rebellious teenagers and teachers who will fight his attempts to reform the school.

He doesn't expect a battle for his heart.

But when he meets two women - the fiercely ambitious deputy head and a brilliantly smart science teacher - Will realises that the ties at Downthorpe are not just the kind you wear around your neck.

What follows is a tangle of competing ambitions and desires that leave Will bemused - and could force him to choose between the job he has always wanted and the woman of his dreams.

That’s the blurb for my new novella School Ties, a romantic e-book set in a school.

From Enid Blyton’s Malory Towers to Jilly Cooper’s Wicked!, I’ve always thought boarding schools provide brilliant settings for novels. So when Endeavour Press asked me to write one, I jumped at the chance. It’s out this month and I’d love to know what you think…

School Ties by Emma Lee-Potter (Endeavour Press, £1.99)

Interview with Eowyn Ivey - author of The Snow Child

“…a touching and truly exceptional portrayal of heartbreak and hope.” Those were my words in March, after I'd read Eowyn Ivey’s The Snow Child for the first time. Six months on, Eowyn’s debut novel is still one of the most memorable books I’ve read all year. It’s out in paperback in the UK today - and I was lucky enough to get the chance to interview her about it.

I understand you were named after a character in The Lord of the Rings. Did you read JRR Tolkein’s books as a child and what did you think of them?

Eowyn: I have to confess, I’ve never read The Lord of the Rings in its entirety. I tried several times when I was younger. After a chapter or two, I would lose interest, skip ahead until I found my name in the text and then put it down. Somehow I could never get past all the complexities of the world and battles. However, I did read The Hobbit when I was a child, and have read it several times since. It’s one of my favourite stories. I love the characters and the simplicity of the quest. It’s very endearing.

Did you enjoy writing as a child? And if so, what did you write?

Eowyn: I read a lot when I was a little girl. And occasionally I would get in a certain mood, often on a rainy, boring day, or when I was feeling thoughtful and melancholy, and I would write stories. I once wrote a story about a planet inhabited by talking cats, and another about a little boy who disappears into the reflection in a puddle. In high school, English literature and writing classes were my favourites and I realised I wanted to find a way to earn a living with words. But never did I imagine I would someday have a career as a novelist.

You have worked as a journalist and a bookseller. What impact did these jobs have on you as a writer?

Eowyn: I would like to think they helped shape me both as a reader and a writer. As a newspaper journalist, I often wrote 10 or 12 articles in a week. I strove for clarity and conciseness and making each word do as much work as possible. I worked with editors and did a lot of editing myself, which is tremendously useful in learning the basics of the English language. But the downside is that the job was demanding, and I had no energy or time for writing fiction. My work at Fireside Books has been the opposite – it’s a source of inspiration and creative rejuvenation. I’m surrounded by books and ideas and people who love both. As a bookseller, I’m constantly discovering new books and authors and seeing how people have broken the very rules I spent years learning as a journalist.

Could you tell me about how and where you found the inspiration for The Snow Child. Was the book straightforward to write and how long did it take you?

This is a perfect example of how Fireside Books has been quite literally a source for my inspiration. Several years ago I was working an evening shift when I discovered a little paperback children’s book that retold the Snegurochka fairy tale. I had never come across the story before, and I quickly read it standing there among the shelves. It was an incredible experience – I just knew this was the storyline I had been seeking. For nearly five years I had been working on a different novel, and I abandoned it to begin The Snow Child. In less than a year, I had a first draft. I felt inspired in a way I had never been before as a writer. As quickly as it came, though, I never knew exactly where the story was going until I wrote it.

The Alaskan landscape is beautifully portrayed in The Snow Child. What are the main characteristics of Alaska that you wanted to convey in the book?

Eowyn: I think like a lot of extreme locations, Alaska has become somewhat mythologised and romanticised. But what I love about this place is its complexity and contradictions, and that’s what I hoped to bring to the page. The northern wilderness is both awesome and delicate, beautiful and frightening.

The winter is so hard for Jack and Mabel, the two main characters. When you were growing up did you experience a similar sense of isolation during the winter months?

Eowyn: That was one aspect of writing The Snow Child that I really enjoyed as a writer – the challenge of seeing Alaska through eyes so different than my own. I have always loved the extremes here, the wind and snow and dark of winter, the lush green and midnight sun of the summer. And there is a sense of loneliness and isolation, but for me that has always made the camaraderie of neighbours and friends somehow all the sweeter. As a child, I found it exciting, and I still do. But I have always wondered what it would be like to come here for the first time as an adult and to not immediately love it. That’s what I had to imagine as I told Jack and Mabel’s story.

Do you live in a remote part of Alaska now and is it in any way similar to Jack and Mabel’s homestead?

Eowyn: Like a lot of Alaskans, we straddle two worlds. We live along the road system, so can drive easily to Anchorage and all its urban opportunities. We live near a small town, where we work, shop for groceries, go to the movies. But our home is in a relatively rural area, and we share some similarities with Jack and Mabel – we hunt moose, caribou and bear for meat, raise a vegetable garden and chickens, fill our freezer with salmon and heat our home with a wood-burning stove. There is an independent spirit here, and a lot of us strive for a certain amount of self-sufficiency.

Where do you write now?

Eowyn: Wherever I can find a quiet spot in my home. Right now I’m at a little sewing table in my bedroom where I can look out our back window toward Castle Mountain. Usually I am easily irritated and distracted by noises, like my daughters arguing or my husband talking on the telephone, so I’ll sometimes even put in earplugs. Then, once I’m particularly engaged with a project, I can write standing at our kitchen counter with the radio blaring, the phone ringing, and everyone talking at once and it doesn’t faze me.

Are you working on your second novel? Is it set in Alaska and can you give any hints as to what it is about?

Eowyn: Thank you for asking! I am working on another novel, although it is still early in the process. It will share some similarities with The Snow Child – set in historical Alaska with some mythological, magical elements. But I also want to continue to stretch my wings as a writer, to break some of those rules I learned, and try something new. I’m having a lot of fun.

Thank you so much to Eowyn for a fascinating and illuminating interview - and to Sam Eades at Headline for organising it. And for those of you about to read The Snow Child, trust me, you are in for a treat.

The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey (Headline Review, £7.99)

Louise Mensch steps down

The news that Conservative MP Louise Mensch is stepping down from her parliamentary seat will reignite the “can women have it all?” debate.

I’ve long thought that the answer is probably “no,” and I reckon that Mensch, the mother of three young children, has decided the same.

A hugely successful chick-lit author before winning the Corby and East Northamptonshire seat for the Tories in 2010, Mensch has had to juggle her family life, parliamentary work (including a prominent role on the Commons Culture Committee inquiry into phone hacking) and marriage to her second husband. He’s the New York-based manager of Metallica and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, so Mensch has spent much of her time jetting back and forth across the Atlantic to see him.

In her letter of resignation to PM David Cameron she wrote: “As you know, I have been struggling for some time to find the best outcome for my family life, and have decided, in order to keep us together, to move to New York. With the greatest regret, I am thus resigning as a Member of Parliament.

‘It is only through your personal intervention, delivered quietly and without fanfare, that I have been able to manage my duties for this long. Your allowing me to work in Corby and East Northamptonshire each Thursday and Friday has enabled me to do weekly surgeries while Parliament has been in session, and to visit many more people and places in our local area, whilst still spending time with my children. Unfortunately, it has not proved to be enough. I have been unable to make the balancing act work for our family.”

It sounds as though David Cameron did all he could to make Mensch’s juggling act possible, but most women don’t have such helpful bosses. And in the end, she found that even that wasn’t enough. She simply couldn’t have it all.

When I look around at my contemporaries the most successful women either don’t have children, have wall to wall childcare or stay at home partners.

As a lifelong feminist I hate saying this, but we still haven’t found the answer to how women can combine the best of both worlds. In lots of ways Mensch is lucky because she’s talented, feisty and has a successful second career. I’m sure that once she gets to New York she’ll write another cracking bestseller – and maybe even get snapped up by a US TV station. One thing’s for sure. We definitely haven’t heard the last of Louise Mensch.


PS. We arrived back from the sun-baked south of France (above) to encounter grey skies and torrential rain. How can this be August? 

How self published author Nick Spalding became an Amazon bestseller

“Kindles and eBooks are changing the landscape of publishing. You can reach an audience and create a buzz online. I think publishers are still important in terms of editing, marketing and getting into bookshops, but self publishing can be another route to that.”

Those were the astute words of crime writer Stephanie Merritt (aka SJ Parris, author of detective novels like Heresy and Prophecy) at a recent Red magazine event on how to write a crime novel.

And she’s clearly right. Her views are borne out by the news from Amazon.co.uk this week that a self published novel by UK author Nick Spalding has become one of its ten bestselling items over the last three months.

Southampton-based Spalding has published a string of “comedies with adult humour” through Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). So far he’s sold 245,000 copies of his books and earned up to 70 per cent in royalties from his sales.

Spalding’s Love… From Both Sides is currently riding high in the top 25 Kindle bestsellers list while two of his other books, Love… And Sleepless Nights and Life… With No Breaks, are in the top 100.

As Spalding says: “KDP is a fantastic opportunity for writers to get their work into the hands of the people that actually count – the readers. It's never been easier to publish an ebook thanks to Amazon's progressive and forward thinking attitude. They've given many more writers a voice - writers who would otherwise have remained silent. I can't thank them enough for providing me with the means to become as popular as I am.”

Not surprisingly, Gordon Willoughby, director of Kindle EU, is delighted.

“Nick Spalding joins international bestsellers such as EL James and Suzanne Collins in our top ten bestsellers of the last quarter at Amazon.co.uk,” he says. “That’s a fantastic achievement for a KDP author. KDP enables independent authors to compete on a level playing field with the giants of the literary world and we’re excited to see it succeeding for both readers and authors.”

Nick Spalding follows in the footsteps of Kerry Wilkinson, a debut novelist from Lancashire who was the number one selling author in Amazon.co.uk’s Kindle store during the last quarter of 2011. Wilkinson didn't have an agent or publicist - just the determination to write the very best book he could. And it worked a treat.

Friday book review - Tuesday's Gone by Nicci French

My son gazed out of the car window and sighed. “If it doesn’t stop raining soon I’m going to leave Oxford and go and live somewhere hot,” he said.

I could understand his frustration. He’s just taken up road biking with a vengeance and five miles out of Oxford, lashed by wind and rain, his bike had suffered a flat tyre. He didn‘t have a puncture kit or bike pump so he did the next best thing and rang and asked me to collect him. No problem, except it was rush hour and by the time I got there he was dejected and completely drenched.

With rain forecast for the next few days (probably the next few months) I reckon there’s only one thing for it. Don’t emigrate, just batten down the hatches and get reading. As the rain pelted down, I curled up on my sofa and whizzed through Nicci French’s new novel in one go.

I’ve blogged about my admiration for Nicci French before. Nicci French is actually two writers - Suffolk-based husband and wife Nicci Gerrard and Sean French, who turn out cracking psychological thrillers. They have now launched a new eight-book crime series featuring a psychotherapist called Frieda Klein and I’m completely hooked.

The second in the series, Tuesday’s Gone, is out next week, and it’s even better than the first, Blue Monday. I’m very squeamish and the opening scene, where a social worker discovers a rotting, naked corpse in a delapidated Deptford flat, stopped me in my tracks. But I was so desperate to discover who he was and why on earth the confused woman living there kept trying to serve him afternoon tea that even if I’d wanted to, I simply couldn’t stop reading.

The copper leading the police investigation, DCI Karlsson (no one ever uses his first name), calls in Frieda Klein to help him get to the bottom of it all. And the deeper Frieda digs, the murkier the story gets.

Frieda is an intriguing character, with a complicated family history, an on-off lover and a fondness for walking the streets of London in the dead of night.

But after reading Tuesday's Gone I feel I’m getting to know her better. And with a plot that kept me on the edge of my seat and the promise of six more to come, all I can say is “ roll on book three…”

Tuesday's Gone by Nicci French (Michael Joseph, £12.99)

Friday book review - Black Heart Blue by Louisa Reid

From the first haunting line – “They tried to make me go to my sister’s funeral today” – to the shocking denouement, Black Heart Blue is one of those books that you simply have to keep reading.

I tore through Louisa Reid’s debut novel in one sitting, horrified by the cruelty that twin sisters Hephzibah and Rebecca are forced to endure at the hands of their parents, and moved by their brave attempts to find freedom.

Black Heart Blue is billed as a young adult (YA) novel but I reckon teenagers and adults alike will be gripped by the story. Reid, an English teacher at a girls’ school in Cambridge, wrote it in five months and has produced an absorbing, pacy tale about horrific family secrets and what really goes on behind closed doors.

Hephzi and Rebecca are 16 when the novel begins. After a lifetime of being educated at home and not allowed to mix with other children, they’ve persuaded their father, an outwardly respectable vicar, to let them go to sixth-form college.  But while Hephzi is beautiful, daring and determined to lead a normal life with her friends, Rebecca, who’s been disfigured since birth, is very much in her shadow. Until, that is, Rebecca loses her twin in terrible circumstances and starts fighting back.   

The novel shifts back and forth in time as the two girls take it in turns to tell their stories, buttit’s so skilfully done that the narrative never loses its way. This gritty, dark tale isn’t for the faint-hearted but it’s astonishingly, breathtakingly good.

Black Heart Blue by Louisa Reid (Penguin, £6.99)

Fifty Shades trilogy sells more than a million on Kindle in the UK

My first romantic novella, Olympic Flames, has just been published as an ebook and like every writer I know, I check every other hour to see how many copies it has sold.

But my jaw dropped this morning when a press release from Amazon dropped into my in-box. EL James, the London-based mother-of-two who created the hit Fifty Shades trilogy, has just become the first author to sell more than one million books at the Amazon.co.uk Kindle store.

Gulp. The trilogy only came out in March and the first of the three, Fifty Shades of Grey, is now the best-selling Kindle book of all time on Amazon.co.uk. The movie rights have been sold and the Kindle edition is outselling the print book at a rate of more than two to one (call me a cynic but it could be because when you’re sitting on a jam-packed train into work, your fellow passengers can’t spot you’re reading a steamy bestseller on a Kindle).

“EL James’s books have become the fastest-selling and the best-selling series ever on Kindle,” says Gordon Willoughby, director of EU Kindle. “That’s an exceptional achievement for a debut novelist and we’re excited to see her pass the one million sales milestone.”

In gloomy times, when the publishing business is tougher than ever, EL James’s story is certainly an inspiring one. For debut novelists and old-timers alike…

Interview with Jane Lovering - author of Please Don't Stop the Music

Jane Lovering is a literary tour de force. A mother of five, she works as a science technician at a north Yorkshire secondary school and has written a string of romantic comedies. Oh, and if that wasn’t enough, she recently scooped the Romantic Novel of the Year award for Please Don’t Stop the Music, her first novel to be published in the UK. It’s been shortlisted for the Melissa Nathan Award for Comedy Romance too, which will be announced on June 12. Jane’s been writing for 25 years and her next novel, Vampire State of Mind, is out in August, so I jumped at the chance to ask about her work.

You've said it took 25 years to get published. Can you talk about the road to publication?

Jane: I wrote rather sporadically in the early years, convinced my genius would somehow be recognised. When this failed to happen, I worked my way up to entering competitions and had a few successes. I wrote several truly awful novels, the details of which I have removed from my memory and submitted these to publishers, with predictable results. Eventually, however, I decided to sign up for a creative writing degree, where I was introduced to the Romantic Novelists’ Association, which I joined on the New Writers’ Scheme.

How did you come up with the idea for Please Don’t Stop the Music?

Jane: I was at an RNA convention, listening to a publisher talk about requirements for heroes in the line of books she published. She was talking about heroes being allowed, these days, to have a “darker" side, not having to be picture-perfect. I had a blinding flash of light (although that could have been the excessive alcohol consumption the night before) and thought “I know who he is.  I know what he’s been through.” My own financial situation was (and continues to be) somewhat precarious, so the impecunious existence of my heroine was a natural thing to write about.  I always hated reading about Mr Perfect falling in love with Miss Perfect and living happily ever after – so I decided to redress the balance in favour of the rest of the human race.

The novel is a captivating mix of comedy and quite a dark storyline. How do you weave these two elements together?

Jane: I think comedy is a natural counterpoint to darkness. The comedy makes the darkness somehow easier to relate to. It is only by laughing at truly terrible situations that humans can survive them, after all. The humour in the novel is mainly conversational, witty come-backs - all those comments that you wish you’d made at the time (the ones you only come up with in the middle of the night), and observational.  I think I might be a frustrated stand-up comedian.

You work as a school science technician. How do you combine your job and family life with writing novels?

Jane: Firstly, I trained my children to believe that dust is a natural substance, that clothes are meant to be wrinkly, cooked food is black and tastes of charcoal and if you can see the carpet under the dog hair you are doing something wrong.  This helps greatly. I work from 8.30 until 12.30 at school. This is a “proper job,” which gives me something respectable to say when people ask what I do for a living. Being a writer isn’t what I do, it’s what I am.  It does mean getting up early to make sure the dogs are walked, chickens are fed and let out and everybody is up, dressed and pointing in the right direction by 8am, though.  When I get in from work I walk the dogs again, rummage feebly in the freezer for something suitable to burn for dinner, perform such tasks as prevent the environmental health office descending, and then sit at my laptop from 1.30 until called upon to fetch, carry or ferry children.  If I am deep in editing or first-draft territory I will write again once everyone is fed, until bedtime – with a break to walk the dogs again, because they are demanding little so-and-sos, feed the cats, and lock the chickens away.

Are you a very disciplined writer? How and where do you write?

Jane: For one so lackadaisical about housework, I am quite disciplined in my writing. I work in my bedroom (where there are no distractions in the form of Jeremy Kyle and cake) on my laptop.  Usually sitting in bed, because the heating in this house is a bit hit and miss, and for nine months of the year I am FREEZING, so I have the duvet up to my chin and the mouse under the covers with me. Sometimes I pile a cat or two on as well, but they often try to sit on the laptop and have to be ejected. I don’t believe in setting myself targets. I am easily enough discouraged as it is, and if I missed my target I should be convinced that it was hardly worth getting on with the project at all, and spend the next six months on the sofa with a pile of walnut whips and Good Housekeeping. 

Do you have any tips for writers working on their debut novels right now?

Jane: Write it. Finish it. Then put it in a cupboard, and get on with the next one. Eventually, round about the six-month mark, curiosity will get the better of you and you will pull that first novel out of storage and re-read it. If, after those six months, you still think it’s a good story, make the changes you will certainly find necessary, put it away for another month, then re-read. Repeat as necessary until you cannot find anything more to change, or you are making changes for the sake of it, then send it out. Then forget it. Write another one. If, as often happens, after those six months you feel you have written the biggest pile of poo ever to fall upon the planet, put it away again. The next one will be better. And the next.

What is your own favourite novel? And are there any particular novelists who have inspired you?

Jane: I have too many favourites.  There is no one ultimate novel, although, if cast away on a desert island, I should probably ask for The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy to come with me.  Zaphod Beeblebrox is my all time hero, beta male, largely insane and completely amoral, my kinda guy. So I’d have to say that Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett have been huge influences on me, although in the romantic comedy field it’s been mostly Jenny Colgan and Marian Keyes. In the interests of full disclosure, I also love Justina Robson’s Quantum Gravity series, Jasper Fforde and Diana Wynne-Jones.

Please Don’t Stop the Music by Jane Lovering (Choc Lit, £7.99)

Download Olympic Flames for free!

The crowd roared with delight as the chestnut stallion soared gracefully through the air. The fence was more than one and a half metres high, but the rider and horse made the jump look effortless. When the duo touched the ground on the other side, there was a swell of applause from the spectators packed into the stand. The rider, resplendent in a navy blue show jacket and skin-tight white breeches, ignored it all, set on taking the next thirteen jumps with similar ease.

Jack Stone’s jaw tensed as he watched. Stylish, brave and fast - this was a competitor he was going to have to go hell for leather to beat.

Up until now, he’d reckoned he stood a good chance of a gold medal. After all, the American showjumping team had won the last two Olympic titles. Not only that, they had left nothing to chance in their preparations for London 2012. They had been training in the US for months on end, and had only flown into London a week ago. But watching riders of this quality made him uneasy. Only for a second, though – Jack wasn’t the type to be racked by self-doubt. But even so, he felt a flicker of irritation that when it came to technique and speed, the European teams so often had the edge.

These are the opening paragraphs of my new ebook, Olympic Flames. If you’d like to read more you can download the novella for free on Amazon on May 23 and 24. I’d love to know what you think!

The UK's favourite books - but are they yours?

I nearly fell off my chair when I read this morning’s report in Stylist magazine about the UK’s favourite books. My friend Constance clearly did too. “If The Da Vinci Code is really one of the UK’s best-loved books then I’m emigrating,” she tweeted. Her reaction reminded me of Salman Rushdie, who in 2005 described it as "a novel so bad that it gives bad novels a bad name."

But sure enough, Dan Brown’s cryptic thriller was top of the list, followed by The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe by CS Lewis, 1984 by George Orwell, Great Expectations by Charles Dickens and then JRR Tolkein’s The Fellowship of the Ring.

Following hot on their heels came another classic from Tolkein, The Hobbit, then The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, Charotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and in tenth place, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.

Well, I don’t know about anyone else, but apart from Jane Eyre, none of the others would make my top ten. Off the top of my head, I started compiling my favourite books. Let me know your most-loved novels, but here's my current list:

1. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

2. North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell

3. Germinal by Emile Zola

4. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

5. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

6. A Kind of Loving by Stan Barstow

7. How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff

8. I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith

9. Burnt Shadows by Kamila Shamsie

10. Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín

PS. The survey, carried out by eye health supplement company ICaps, polled more than 1,000 adults across the UK.

Olympic Flames - a novel about show jumping, London 2012 and old flames

My first novel took nine months to write and another year to publish. How times have changed. I’ve just written my first ebook and a week after the publishers gave it the thumbs-up it was available for download on Amazon, iTunes and more.

I loved every minute of writing Olympic Flames. A novella, it’s set in the world of showjumping (or jumping, as it’s called at the Olympics) and is the story of Mimi Carter, the youngest member of the British jumping team for London 2012. Mimi is a brilliant rider who’s had to claw her way to the top. She’s desperate to win an Olympic gold medal in front of her home crowd, but when an enigmatic old flame arrives back on the scene, can she put her feelings to one side and realise her dream?

That’s the essence of the story so I hope readers enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. 

I had a few childhood riding lessons when my family lived in Epsom (just down the road from the Derby racecourse in fact) and I was completely useless. But in the past couple of months I’ve become gripped by the equestrian world.  Did you know, for instance, that the three equestrian disciplines - jumping, dressage and eventing - are the only Olympic sports where men and women compete against each other on equal terms? That the Olympic equestrian events will take place in Greenwich Park, right next to the elegant stone façade of the National Maritime Museum? And that the temporary stables will be home to 200 horses for the duration of the Olympics?  

I never thought I’d say this but I’ve become so engrossed that I can’t wait to see the Olympic equestrian events on TV. At this rate I’m going to end up booking my first riding lesson in years…

Olympic Flames by Emma Lee-Potter (Endeavour Press, £1.99)