I’m thrilled to announce that I’m now supporting Scottish author and my friend, Chris Longmuir, on http://loveahappyending.com/
Chris’s first crime novel, Dead Wood, won the prestigious Dundee Book Prize in 2009. Her second, Night Watcher, was self-published on Amazon and Smashwords earlier this year.
Since then, her saga A Salt Splashed Cradle has also been self-published. Both of these books flirted in the top 100 best sellers on Amazon and hopefully, with the support and buzz created through this exciting project, they’ll both be back there and higher than ever before!
Today, Stephen Penner, one of the loveahappyending.com featured authors, put an excellent post on his blog about happy endings and the wonderful interactive website http://loveahappyending.com/
They might not always be “happily ever after” but even the premise of a couple beginning their life together can be a happy ending.
What of the ending of a crime novel? The criminal is caught, the police have done their job. Not a happy ending in the strictest sense but a good resolution. And if you love reading crime fiction then that could be considered YOUR happy ending.
And the most unsuspecting place I think you can find a happy ending is in the horror genre. Good triumphs over evil… how much happier can you get than that?
Okay, I confess, I have some strange ideas when it comes to places to find happy endings.
And as long as you feel good, satisfied at the outcome, and put a book away and not feel cheated… doesn’t that make a happy ending?
So before I alienate my romance writer friends and readers, I still love to pick up a good romance novel. And more importantly, I write in that genre – although I still remain pre-published, I remain hopeful that one day I’ll be a featured on an interactive website as fantastic as http://loveahappyending.com/
After making the Father’s Day rounds – cemetery to leave flowers for my Dad, out to the house to deliver my step-Dad’s gift (which ended up being left between the doors because he wasn’t home), my husband and I walked from our house to the supermarket at the far end of the high street. After getting home from the writing workshop last night and catching up on other things, I hadn’t taken any meat out of the freezer for supper, and if we wanted to eat tonight, we had to go to the store. It was a gorgeous, sunny day and almost brutally hot if you weren’t in the shade.
Unfortunately, I didn’t take the time to put a sensible pair of walking shoes on before we left. On our way back, when we got to our street, I slipped off my sandals and walked the rest of the way in my bare feet… except when I had to cross one street. The sun-kissed concrete sidewalk was hot enough on the bottoms of my wee tootsies.
Brian’s How to Write a Bestseller workshop was fantastic! Like all his workshops I’ve attended, it was intense but presented in such a way that I wasn’t overloaded with information. I learned lots of tricks and tidbits that I can’t wait to try in my own writing.
After the lunch break, Kelley Armstrong gave an interesting presentation from an author’s perspective and experiences. Again lots of good stuff, I can’t wait to try.
Here’s the scoop on the workshop I’m attending on Saturday in Mississauga. I’ve attended a number of Brian’s workshops in the past and have thoroughly enjoyed them and come home from them energized, inspired and ready to write.
With book editor Brian Henry & New York Times bestselling author Kelley Armstrong
Saturday, June 18
10 a.m. – 4 p.m.
Chartwell Baptist Church
1880 Lakeshore Road West, Mississauga (Map here.)
This workshop will give you the inside scoop on what gives a novel best-selling potential. You’ll learn how to get readers emotionally involved in your story, how to raise tension, control your pacing and keep your readers turning the pages. But you won’t just hear about some of the best secrets of the trade; you’ll learn how to apply them to give your own writing a sharp new edge.
Workshop leader Brian Henry has been a book editor and creative writing teacher for more than 25 years. He has helped many of his students get published, including guest speaker Kelley Armstrong…
Expected Cover for Counterfeit Magic
Kelley Armstrong lives in Aylmer, south of London, Ontario, with her husband and three children. She used to program computers and attend Brian Henry workshops. Now she writes international bestsellers. Kelley has hit the New York Time’s bestseller list with both her supernatural thrillers for adults and her urban fantasy for teens.
Kelley’s principal publishers are Random House Canada, Bantam U.S., and Warner in Britain. To date, she’s published two dozen books, most recently Tales of the Otherworld (all proceeds for which go to Literacy Canada) and Waking the Witch. By June, she’ll have two more out: Counterfeit Magic and The Gathering.
Fee: $38.94 + 13% hst = $44 paid in advance
or $42.48 + 13% hst = $48 if you wait to pay at the door
To reserve a spot now, email brianhenry@sympatico.ca
For information about all of Brian Henry’s writing workshops and creative writing courses, see here.
Chris is being featured on this month’s Book of the Month in Alex Sinclair’s blog, Sinclair Books. Alex features one of the books each day and her slot is on the 15th.
In addition to being featured tomorrow on the blog, you can vote for her book to be the “book of the month”. To vote you need to click on the book title Night Watcher, which is about the middle of the list of books that go down the right hand side, then click on vote button at the bottom. Here is the link that will take you there. http://sinclairbooks.blogspot.com/?zx=405fec9b25c68a1d
Although Chris’s book is featured tomorrow, you can vote at any time during the month. At last update she had 15 votes and is trying to get that increased as there are other book on his site with lots more.
Come on folks, lets make Night Watcher Alex Sinclair’s book of the month for June 2011.
I finished reading this earlier today. I first saw this title on the Festival of Romance Online. The cover immediately drew me in. Dark, gloomy sky and English manor house. The fact that it was set in Norfolk was an added bonus for me having travelled through there in 2005.
Interesting read. Plenty of plot twists kept me wondering exactly what currently was happening behind the closed doors of Creake Hall and what had happened there in the past.
I’ve added photos to my Seven Things: Work, Writing & Research post. I knew I had the older ones here at the house somewhere – it was just a matter of tracking them down. Well, this morning I succeeded and found some other, shall we say “blasts from the past”, some of which might find their way into posts here… or not.
My Scottish roots and writing by Melanie Robertson-King
