Alex Beecroft's Blog, page 62

It is too hot

It is especially too hot to be cleaning the house, yet that is what I'm doing.  (Well, actually what I'm doing at the moment is having a tea break, but in general I'm cleaning.)

Have some gratuitous Bad Romance:

Click here to view the embedded video.

because I don't see why I should be the only one suffering with this as an earworm for the past three days.  Maybe I should adopt it as my theme tune

OMG Shoes! 18th Century shoes!

I have finally installed my buckles on my 18th Century shoes.  Or rather, I've finally chased my husband down long enough to get him to do it.  It's all but impossible to do yourself, since you need the shoes to be on your feet while you do it, to get the fit right.

Here is a picture of the buckle and the shoe:

You can't see very well, but the buckle has two sets of tines – the spiky ones underneath which you can see in this picture, and the long ones in the middle which are hard to see since t...

Guest blogger: Dawn Roberto of Love Romances Cafe

Confessions from a book addict

By Dawn Roberto

My name is Dawn and I am a book addict. *Smiles as people yell Hi Dawn*. Yes I know this is an on going problem but I can't help myself. Those wonderful stories full of adventures alpha males/females, romance, adventure *sighs gustily* this is what a good book means to me.  Something to take me away from real life and one I am proud to exclaim to all who know me.  There are many numbers of us book addicts, we form a club that we are so very proud t...

Lovely review of SitS from Three Dollar Bill Reviews

They say:

Money and class are important themes in the story. It's very British in that regard. The details of the setting, the dialogue, the general atmosphere, are all very British; but the tension between classes is what truly marks it out as a story about British people. Class differences put barriers between Alec and Darren, and though of course their love eventually breaks down these barriers, it's not easy and there's a feeling at the end that it's always going to be something...

Can anyone recommend

any really good books on plotting?  I'm thinking that it was time I was plotting another historical novel, so that I can finally send Running Press the option book that it calls for in my False Colors contract.  Not wanting to do anything the easy way, I made up the plot for False Colors by doing one of those "100 drabbles from random prompts" things, and it took me the better part of a year just to do the plot plan as a result.  This time I was hoping to do something a bit speedier!

TV meme:

...

Amazon Store?

I was putting a nifty little 'RSS feed' compass icon in my website sidebar today when I noticed that my Amazon Store icon only took me to a page that said "Server Not Found."  At first I thought that there was probably just some broken code on my website, but when I went to Out in Print's blog to find their Amazon Store, I discovered that theirs' wasn't there any more either.  Has Amazon stopped doing this for ages, and I've only just noticed?  Or is it working for everyone else and my site i...

All downhill from here

Phew!  I have turned the corner and passed the middle of Under the Hill.  At 77,555 words I am now officially into the second half of this 150,000 word whopper.  It's slightly frustrating because 77K is long enough for a book on its own, and I've still got half to go, but on the other hand, the hump is over and it's downhill for Under the Hill from now on.

I'm not even thinking about how much editing this thing is going to need!  (A clue – it's lots and lots.  But I'll think about that after t...

Dear Author reviews "Shining in the Sun"

and says:

Much of what I enjoyed about Shining in the Sun is the balance between issues of sexual and personal identity and strong genre storytelling conventions. While I had a number of issues with the book, I was engaged enough to want to dig through my digital TBR pile for False Colors before another review book claims my time.

(Read the whole review here)

It's a very interesting review, I thought, because I think it's true that I was playing with a lot of Romance tropes while writing it –...

In which my booksigning dreams are crushed.

Ah well, I thought it was too easy.  I've just had a reply from Waterstones' event organizer, who I emailed in an attempt to arrange a book signing.  She says "Unfortunately this is not something that would for us here in Piccadilly" and encourages me to try my local branch.  However, given that my local branch doesn't even have the book on its database at all, let alone have it in the shop, I feel it's much less likely that my local branch would be interested.

I will try the local branch...

False Colors = "a very good naval fiction novel"

Says this review from Astrodene's Historical Naval Fiction website:

False Colors was a pleasant surprise. I expected the M/M Romance aspect to dominate but it did not. The naval story was well researched and the ship handling, action, and crew interactions were woven into a very believable naval narrative. It is primarily a love story but it is also a very good naval fiction novel.

This makes me squee, because I badly wanted it to be both a good romance and a good AoS novel.  I don't see...