Fiona Walker's Blog, page 5

Tweeds, Tails and Paperback Jacket.

 

In February, I blogged about the photo-shoot for the paperback jacket of The Country Set, which was enormous fun and heroically warm-hearted despite a very cooold day. Not that you’d know the Beast from the East was just over the horizon from the gorgeously classy and just slightly steamy finished cover, starring two ravishing real-life event riders, Claire Deuten and Spencer Sturmey, and darling Toots the spaniel who had just become a new mum.

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With all Toots’ puppies now rollicking around in their new homes, the sun finally blazing, the toenails painted and the grass growing, it really feels like summer’s on its way, doesn’t? I’m rooting for the renaissance of the big British romp across the worlds’ sunbeds, deckchairs and garden benches this year. Goodness knows we all need cheering up.

The Country Set will be coming out in paperback on 14th June. You can click on Toots below to pre-order.

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Wailing at the Mailing List

Abuse is a harsh word. It speaks of deliberate cruelty: child abuse, animal abuse, emotional abuse. Awful, unforgivable acts. If trust is abused, it’s very hard to earn it back.

I’ve been guilty of some rather disreputable behaviour in my life, from dropping the F-bomb at the Vine and Craven Pony Club Camp aged eight (in my defence, I had no idea what it meant) to tweeting aged forty-eight that I wish Shula from The Archers would spontaneously combust on Brian’s chemical waste dump. But being termed abusive this week came as a deep shock. I couldn’t be more contrite. In fact, I’d love to take the last few days back and do it all again differently, but it’s too late now and I’m no longer allowed to personally contact those involved to make amends.

I’m going to explain what happened both as a cautionary tale, and by way of an apology.

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I’d better start by pointing out that halfway through writing a novel is always a very dangerous time for me to attempt anything more technical on a computer than splitting an infinitive. Even my spellchecker blue screens me. With my head in an imaginary world, I’m incapable of navigating my way around Tesco.com, let alone GDPR, which I’d have probably suggested was a Warmblood studbook if you’d asked me a few weeks ago.

 

 

GDPR is, in fact, the shiny new data protection rules that come into force next month, and it’s important to get them right, especially if you’re a writer in sudden possession of a website subscription list containing several thousand precious names and email addresses. These addresses belong to lovely visitors to fionawalker.com like you, who once filled in a secure form like the one linked from this page to receive newsletters boasting sneak previews, exclusive offers and a tip-off when a new book is coming out. Until last week, the list was entirely managed by my previous publisher who ran my website for several years and looked after newsletters as part of their marketing wizardry. As someone who still sends hand-written notes whenever possible, I’ve always seen this newsletter list like a Christmas card one: a community of far-flung allies receiving a regular Round Robin.

When I redesigned fionawalker.com, I asked if the list could be transferred to me to carry on the newsletters. The contractual to-ing-and-froing that followed has amazed me; I’d understand it if I worked for Zuckerberg, but I hadn’t even got to the Mail Subscribers page in WordPress for Dummies. Of course, the law is there to protect all of us so I stuck with my quest in the belief that anybody who has taken the time to sign up to hear my news shouldn’t be abandoned. And loyal readers deserve all the love in the world.

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Many months of legalese later, the list was finally released last week, securely data transferred via all sorts of secure online geekery that severely tested both the rural broadband and my rural brain. Looking at all the names, I was as excited as I would be seeing Harry and Meghan’s guest list.

It came with the strict caveat that I must contact every name on it straight away to make sure subscribers want to stay opted in before the new data protection laws start in May. In a flap, I sped-read WordPress for Dummies. It’s a very long list of emails, and I’m right in the middle of writing a very long novel; my Tesco.com grocery success rate is at an all-time low. But I really, really didn’t want to get this wrong, especially as I’m notorious for accidentally pressing Reply All with a sarcastic aside intended for just one, or for sharing random photographs of the inside of my handbag with WhatsApp groups.

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I worked incredibly hard to meet all the data protection requirements. I set about mastering MailChimp, a mass email platform. I mugged up on GDPR compliance. I wrote and rewrote my first email to subscribers inviting them to stay opted in. I spent more hours on it than a key chapter in the book, and when I was satisfied that it was bright and cheery and self-effacingly eager to offer everyone the chance to unsubscribe at the touch of a button, I sent it off. You may well have received one (check your spam folder if not, because I think 99% of them landed there). I knew I’d lose a lot of people – it’s been over a year since the old website was regularly administered, and I had no way of finding out when the last newsletter was sent – but I was confident I’d still have a thousand or more by the end.

Within hours, the word ‘abuse’ appeared in the subject line of an email from MailChimp. My account had been restricted as a result of a ‘high abuse complaint rate’, they explained. I was mortified. Was I being accused of sending abusive emails? I’ve never in my life written a poison pen letter or left anything less than a four-star TripAdvisor or Amazon review. I checked the message I’d sent again in case I’d mistyped the ‘d’ as an ‘f’ in ’mild’ or missed the ‘o’ out of ‘countryside’, but I could see nothing. In a panic, I read all the MailChimp links explaining how this might have happened. Although less than 0.7% of the mail-out had been reported as unwanted, that is well above the industry standard, which was why I’d been immediately blacklisted. This, they said, is usually an issue with the list rather than the message. Every name on it would be automatically unsubscribed with immediate effect, although I could send one final pre-designed ‘sorry to see you go!’ message to all. Head hanging, this is what I did. Now the list is no more.

 

 

Not long afterwards, I received a direct email from one previous subscriber, a regular reader of my books, saying that she had signed up for newsletters years ago but had never received a single one. Another subscriber emailed soon afterwards saying the same thing. Then a third, quite angry this time. It seemed readers who had subscribed in good faith expecting newsletters from me had heard nothing in years until I send this cheery, cocky request to stay subscribed. I’m still not sure how it qualifies as abuse – except of trust on more than one level – but I can absolutely understand why recipients might be pretty miffed and not want to hear from me again. It doesn’t matter that I first set eyes the list just a few days ago. This website has my name on it, and it is my responsibility to make sure that if something is offered, it’s followed through.

 

 

There’s a new link to a subscriber form on the sidebar below this blog, and anybody brave enough to fill it in will definitely receive newsletters from me. They will be written by me, sent by me and badly spell-checked by me. I will never disclose or sell your data to a third party, and every email I send will have an ‘unsubscribe’ link. There’ll only be two or three a year at most, and I’ll go quiet when I’m busy writing then get very excited when a new book comes out. According to MailChimp, now that I’ve been blackballed, I have to earn back my clean record, which means ‘re-establishing a good sending and engagement history’. I’m very grateful to all you who are willing to help me do this by subscribing, and I will do my damndest to make you feel just as loved as everyone on my Christmas card list. If you were on the old list and want to come back, I’ll welcome you with open arms (and I’m v grateful to those of you who already have). As for the one or two that reported me for abuse, I think it safe to assume that you were at the 1978 Vine and Craven Pony Club Camp.

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You can join my mailing list by clicking here or using the form linked below.

Royalty, Romance and a Little Stick of Blackpool Rock…

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If you live anywhere near Blackpool, love going to Blackpool or – like me – have amazingly never visited Blackpool and think it should be on your bucket (and spade and kiss-me-quick-hat) list, then please come along to join in the fun on Tues 15th May. The brilliant organisers of Wordpool Festival are throwing a glamorous G and Tea launch party from 6.30pm in the Stanley Park Cafe to celebrate the start of three days of author talks and events.

It’s Royal Wedding week so they’ll be dusting down the Daulton and hanging up the bunting, and we’re all invited to don formals and florals, and to toast romance. There’s a free cocktail and fashionably late tea for all, along with lashings of laughter and fun. Hosted by Hayley Kay of Radio Wave, I’ll be there along with the brilliant Carole Matthews, which means it can only be a riotous giggle.

Tickets are £12. Click the picture below to link to the website, or call 01253 478091

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Cover Story

This week, in a remote corner of Shakespeare Country, an intrepid team gathered to shoot the Compton series’ paperback jackets. The brief was straightforward: bottoms, horses, countryside, good spirits, laughter, dogs and more bottoms.

Hero of the hour was dashing photographer, Hugh Dickens, the most charming man you’ll see adjusting an aperture in a lifetime, and – despite being more accustomed to snapping polo ponies passing at speed in the glamorous surroundings of Cirencester Park – endlessly patient.

Art director Jessie Price, who had gamely forfeited the more usual London photography studio for arctic wind and mud, ensured everything was perfect to set the scene: good-looking people, check; horses, check; dogs, check; bright sunshine, check.

Impossibly gorgeous event riders Claire Deuten and Spencer Sturmey sauntered, canoodled, hacked, quaffed and gossiped like mad in the name of art. They were ably assisted by Claire’s superstar coloured stallion Tonto, rangy grey Captain and beautiful powerhouse Lottie. Keeping everybody under close watch was Toots the Sprocker, who combined starring on camera with trotting lovingly back and forth to feed her three-week-old litter in the house. It was a real family affair.

I can’t wait to reveal the finished result, which the brilliant Jessie is currently weaving magically into life as the paperback jacket for The Country Set, but for now here are a few edited highlights of the day:

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My New Year Blog On, January 2018

It’s snowdrop time again, which means family and friends won’t get much sense out of me until the bluebells are out. This is the time of year when I forsake everything tangible in favour of a fictional life; my plots are twisted all over the place as I talk to imaginary friends non-stop and pound out thousands of words a week. I’m at full flow, characters running in and out of my head, notes everywhere, the chaos that’s jumbling its way on to the screen making sense only to me.

‘First draft in three months’ time!’ I predict optimistically, crossing out more and more lines from my synopsis. Do we really need the village talent contest subplot? And just who am I supposed to pair the playboy farrier off with in the loved-up ending? I quickly lose grip on the daily routine, its dog-walk-school-run-supper-cooking rhythm fading beneath keyboard taps.

Writers are often portrayed as hell to live with, but in my case, it’s the not living with me that causes problems as I vanish into my plotting shed for long stretches at a time. I’m a demanding mother, hopeless delegator, pernickety perfectionist and I rarely ever sit down unless I’m writing. Family life doesn’t stop functioning when I’m gone, but there’s a definite shift. At first, it’s a gently debauched slide: oranges sit still in their mesh sacks in the fruit bowl, homework books aren’t signed, pot plants droop and towels live in damp colonies on the floor. By the time I deliver the first draft, we’ll be lucky if school sports bags contain more than one filthy sock and someone else’s polo shirt. By rewrites, nobody will have seen the pet hamster in weeks and the peace lily will have pegged it. By copy edit, the children will be feral.

This book is the second in my Comptons series, following straight on from The Country Set. After years starting each new novel by drawing a map, it’s heaven having a ready-made fictional village to revisit, better still to be reunited with so many familiar characters whose worlds I can occupy vicariously. Here’s where I admit that like many writers, I’m a great believer in self-fulfilling prophecies, and more than once over the years my life has spookily come to imitate my art after a book is published (although not yet by owning a Badminton winner or eloping in a hot air balloon, sigh). In the Country Set, I introduced Petra the naughty historical novelist, also a busy mum and confirmed shed worker, yet one capable of arranging oranges in a fruit bowl as artistically as Gaugin in between bodice-ripping chapters. Despite her complicated fantasy life, riotous children and rebellious horse, she writes a novel in three months flat. I’m hopeful this will work like a spell on my own working life. If it does, I’m giving her an unexpected film deal and a holiday in the Bahamas in the third book.

In other news, the export edition of The Country Set is now out, a gorgeously big, glossy paperback available to readers in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and beyond, as well as departure-side at British airports. Here it is:

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The UK paperback of The Country Set, meanwhile, is published in June, its cover a closely guarded – and rather exciting – secret. Watch this space for a sneak peak in coming weeks.

I’ve also been asked a few times about the audio edition, and the good news is it’s imminent. It’s just taking the narrator rather a long time to read all 800 pages of it aloud, I’m told…

Finally, before I whisk off to give Petra dewier skin and an overriding desire to own a four-star event horse, I’d like to wish a very happy 2018 to all the fionawalker.com website visitors who read this. I hope you come back again soon (and if you want the heads up next time I blog on, just press the ‘follow ‘ button).

A Cotswold jaunt to ignite the festive mood…

Next Weds 8th November, I’ll be joining the Borzoi Book Shop team on their stand at the Daylesford Cotswold Christmas fair, so please do come along if you can.

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It’s a gorgeous event – three days of full-on gift shopping with a positive panoply of fine crafts, food, furnishings, accessories, toys and jewellery on sale – and, of course, sumptuous books to give to loved ones, or enjoy yourself, at least one of which is helpfully set in the Cotswolds with a big, bouncy, bauble-decked Christmas ending.

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Tickets to the event all raise money for WellChild. As well as hundreds of stalls, there are workshops and demos, tasting sessions, and there might even be a few famous local faces milling about…

 

For lots more information about the event, and about Daylesford and WellChild, visit the website: https://cotswoldfair.com/

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Bigging up books

It’s my tradition when a new Fiona Walker hardback launches to share the love. This year, that means Big Love.

We all know that chocolate biscuits, confectionary and bottled drinks are getting smaller as shrinkflation keeps on thinning down the goodies, and novels are no exception. The all-absorbing, family-sized read is an increasingly rare luxury, and one with gorgeous maps on its end pages, a cast list, a silky sewn-in bookmark and pages as soft as damask is heaven. Indeed, a fully-loaded posh hardback is so plumptious you could almost sleep in it.

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Like rare draught horses, Land Rovers, vinyl LPs and long Sunday lie-ins, big hardback novels sometimes struggle to fit into a modern world. And yet they offer so much joyful escapism, weeks of pleasure and a lifetime of lessons.

Like how to be a be a hero (preferably in breeches)…

…for which you need a lot of sex appeal (and, ideally, a horse)…

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If you have a superstar horse, even better…

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…and a party trick will raise spirits every time:

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A little nostalgia works wonders:

Remember, a big, escapist read can cheer up even the most broken-hearted of women:

And if you read The Country Set and like it, do please tell your friends and family; word of mouth is the most honest and lovely review:

But be careful, because once you start reading, you may find it hard to put down, no matter what you’re doing.

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Thank you to everyone who buys my big hardback. Sleep well.

A video to introduce The Country Set

I’ve made a short vlog which, like doctors Who, Foster and Caligari, I can only watch from behind a sofa cushion. If you’re brave enough to sit through it, you’ll note there are a few key differences – an absence of qualified medics for one – but I nevertheless like to think of Max the Shetland and myself as time-travelling avengers. We’re reclaiming the right to the romp, that wonderfully British fictional world in which characters get horny on damson gin and flirt in welly socks:

Tomorrow is the official hardback launch of The Country Set, a day known in the book trade as Super Thursday because more hardbacks come out than at any other time of year, a stampede of colourfully jacketed tortoises, all aiming for bestseller stardom by Christmas. While I don’t anticipate renewing that giddy climb just yet – it’s only in my daydreams that I gallop past every book with Girl, Train, Next Door and Highway Code in the title, get interviewed by Melvyn and am hailed as the new Barbara Pym – I’m gearing up for an excitable jaunt around social media in the coming days.

So if you enjoy bite-sized musings and digital schmoozing, please look out for updates on this blog and on media feeds. Max will be making more appearances, has demanded his own dressing room, and already has an impressive portfolio of Outtakes. Should you think all this self-promotion is a lot of puff, however, then I totally understand if you quickly scroll on, but do give the book a go. It’s pure autumnal escapism, and don’t we all need some of that?

The fionawalker.com makeover.

To celebrate next month’s publication of The Country Set, I’m launching the revamped fionawalker.com: a Google-friendly goody-bag of book jackets and character sketches, latest news, vintage blogs, book blurbs and insider information – all wrapped up in more homespun, organic, Farrow and Ball yumminess than a Cotswold farm shop. Welcome! And let me introduce my latest book…

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The Country Set, published on 5th October, is the first novel in the Comptons series, a big-cast rural romp guaranteed to take you on a muddy-faced gallop through country life.

 

[image error]Full-sized, bouncy and moreish, it’s a box set of a book, jam-packed with episodes. Old friendships and new flirtations abound, along with secrets and rivalries, plus horses, dogs, parties, lots fast riding and fully-loaded guns…

This autumn’s gorgeous hardback – which comes complete with map and family trees – is the ‘directors cut’; subsequent editions will be a few scenes lighter to fit in beach bags. So if you want the luxuriously unabridged story, order it now – I hope you’ll agree it’s perfect for curling up with in front of the fire as the nights draw in.

Meanwhile, please do explore the all-new website. You can read more about the Comptons where the new series is set, look at the village map, and find out about some of the families who live there. There’s information about all my seventeen previous books from French Relations to The Weekends of You and Me, along with excerpts and an insider author view of each one.

If you’d like to see anything else on these pages, ask anything about my books and writing, or just say hello, don’t hesitate to use the contact page or the social media links. There’s nothing that cheers a writer more than getting a message. And I really hope you visit again soon.

To pre-order The Country Set in hardback from Amazon, please click below:

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Archive Blogs Jan 2015 – March 2017

It’s been a curious affair keeping my blog updated regularly through the past couple of years because the Bat-codes that were needed to open up the old website for maintenance were mislaid long ago, so I could only get in through the ‘front door’ as my first web designer called the blog dashboard, which feels like standing on one’s front step welcoming guests to a dinner party knowing that the house is locked. I can post more often now I’ve moved here, and for this most recent of the three batches of old posts I’m publishing, I’ve even found some of the original links and pics. Het me. I’ll be mastering HTML before you know it. Whatever that is.

January 2015

Posted on 08/01/2015

Great excitement here. My latest novel, The Woman Who Falls in Love for a Week, has been soft launched today, a term which makes me imagine it floating gently towards readers on a lilo or hiding amongst the furls of a duck-down duvet, although it’s mostly winging its way through cyberspace, because it’s now available as an e-book as well as in hardback for anybody who wants to dive in without delay. The fabulous new cover which will star on the front of the paperback is still under wraps for now, so it’s currently dressed in its Antipodean dust jacket, which is a fitting touch given that there’s an Australian twist to the plot. The book nevertheless has a quintessentially English setting, a heavenly old rectory that my heroine Jenny is looking after while the owners are away on holiday. Action takes place during a heat-wave, and as I hug the dogs for warmth whilst typing this, I can think of nothing I’d rather escape to than a scorching summer day. I hope The Woman Who Falls in Love for a Week whizzes your way on its virtual lilo if you feel the same. Dive in!

 

January 2015 (2)

Posted on 28/01/2015

I’ve retreated to the old milking parlour at the Smallest Farmhouse in Warwickshire in order to write without interruption. I know this sounds rather romantic – and there’s a certain Hardyesque appeal to throwing on a big scarf and chasing my muse across a windswept farmyard – but it’s not without its drawbacks, namely:

Cold: It’s sub-zero in here; my current displacement activities include watching my own breath condense, counting my goose bumps and timing how long it takes for my knuckles to turn blue. A small oil-filled heater nicknamed Wall-E is now my constant companion, and I tug him lovingly around my writing lair. He’s fast becoming a rival in my affection for my writers’ sidekick and beloved old dog, Pudding, who has sensibly deemed it too cold to stay out here with me after dark. If Wall-E were to wag his flex and rest his chin on my knee, he’d top of my Bonio list. Not that biscuits, canine or human, can be brought in here for fear of attracting even more…

Mice (okay rats): They’re discreet, but they’re here. They mostly party on down when I’ve cleared off, and as I write later into each night, I keep imagining them hanging about outside, glancing at their watches and grumbling like a pensioners’ supper club who find the WI talk has overrun at the village hall. Sam has laid all sorts of dastardly poison and traps and thinned the Glastonbury main stage crowd down to a small side-stage gathering, but those remaining are a hardened bunch that won’t give up. We’ve ignoring one another for now.

Unreliable electrics (possibly as a result of above): If I crank Wall-E up too high, the trip switch flips. I now keep a torch beside me at all times and save and back-up my work with OCD repetition. In its post-milking life, the parlour was converted into offices for a hot air ballooning company, and there are an amazing array of dusty switchboards on the wall labelled ’24 hour Weather’ and ‘SOA Flight Info Line’, along with row upon row of plug points, most of which sport ominous red tape marked ‘Do NOT use’. I do not use them. Wall-E, the PC and I glow gently in one corner listening out for crackling wires and ratty scratching, which isn’t easy because of the…

Noisy cattle: These aren’t actually here in the milking parlour with me – the farmer only raises beef cattle these days – but half a dozen chunky Charolais crosses are being fattened in byres just a thin brick wall away, and they crash about companionably night and day, scratching on everything in sight and mooing at one another (I think ‘lowing’ is the technical term, but from my close quarters, it’s definitely more of a ‘moo’). Having experimented with music to drown out the sound, I’ve discovered Tom McRae has a wonderfully soothing effect on them. Handily enough, he has the same effect on me, and the words are flowing…

I’m therefore delighted to report that despite its eccentricities, the milking parlour in the SFW is at maximum productivity while Tom McRae shuffles, cattle are lulled, rats lie low, electrics hold up and this author has a novel bursting to get out through her fingertips. Pudding and Wall-E are even starting to bond thanks to a dog bed pressed to his sturdy, warm side.

The book I’m working on now follows a couple through the first ten years of their relationship, and continues in the same writing direction as The Woman Who Fell in Love for a Week, which digs deeper emotionally than my previous books, but still has a furnace of warmth and humour at its heart. The Woman Who Falls in Love for a Week will be published in paperback in the UK and Ireland in early summer, but for anyone who would like to read it now then it’s already falling as softly as snow into laps and e-readers, and you can follow this link to find it. If you also find time to review it online, I’d be enormously grateful because it can make such a difference for other readers (and for one anxious writer in a chilly milking parlour in Warwickshire who will dance around her heater with glee if you enjoy it and are kind enough to pass the word on).

 

March 2015

Posted on 09/03/2015

A blog about swimming pools, and why writing can feel like diving in at the deep end…

When my first book was published, I posed in Crouch End Lido for the Sunday Times Magazine. I had a lot of chutzpah and a waist in those days. Being a complete newcomer to the perfectionist whims of professional photographers, it amazed me how many hours it took. I was in the water so long that my skin went as wrinkly as a Shar Pei and my contact lenses felt fused to my eyeballs, but the excitement of having my own stylist on hand with waterproof mascara was thrilling, along with the rallying cries of my fellow swimmers who floated in and out of shot while we all broiled in refracted July sunshine. It was all a far cry from conjuring up metaphors at the dead of night.

Nowadays, in my less glamorous working motherhood era, any time spent in a swimming pool inevitably involves rescuing my Little Duckling Level 2 smalls who have bobbed off towards the deep end in inflatable rings with dragon heads, or swimming blind as I’m dive-bombed by the older ones, and then – very briefly, if I get a moment – doing a vigorous breast-stroke for a few lengths, chin high as a ship’s head (although if anyone gets a camera out, I sink below the surface faster than James Bond spotting a Russian periscope).

Yet I still plunge straight into the water with the same enthusiasm as I always have. I’ve never been a cautious swimmer. If I have to suffer the indignant sting of a belly flop, so be it. Being lifted up by that big blue expanse of deliciously cool water is far too tempting to resist. And now my family shares pool-time with me, I alternately dolphin my way alongside them and power off into a brief harbour of undisturbed water to float on my back and find peace.

I’ve always written in much the same way as I swim. I dive straight in and move as fast as I can until I adjust to the water temperature, then use that wonderful buoyancy in a more graceful way than I can ever hope to on dry land. Writing needs the weightlessness of total submersion. Having my children in the pool is a great privilege; I make no secret of the fact I write for them and for their future, but if I’m totally honest, I write best when I’ve struck out alone into quiet water for a while.

It’s perhaps no coincidence that my latest novel is a beautiful, shimmering blue rectangle of a book; I can’t wait to reveal its 2015 summer cover (with the next blog, I hope). While writing it last year, I was so totally immersed that I barely surfaced, my feet never touching the bottom.  It tells the story of Jenny, who has a week away from her day to day family life and the wreck of her marriage, and steps into somebody else’s world instead, looking after their home while they’re away on holiday.  She sets out to be the perfect custodian, but everything about the house she’s sitting, from its beautiful book-lined rooms and joyful family portrait to its luscious walled garden and turquoise pool, is not as first appears. The Woman Who Fell in Love for a Week is a novel which finds the funny side in losing one’s inhibitions, and I hope it has great heart without taking itself too seriously. Admittedly it made me well up with hopeless regularity whilst writing it – as well as giggle in solitary, high-five delight in the early hours – but if I wrote a book that didn’t make me cry, laugh, whoop and stay up all night writing addictively, I’d never believe in it enough to let anyone else read it. The Woman Who Fell in Love for a Week is one that I really believe in. I do hope you dive in and settle in a quiet spot for as long as it takes to fall in love. I’d suggest you set aside a week….

It’s out in paperback this coming summer, but if you want to read it right now, it’s available in both e-book and hardback.

 

New book jacket!

Posted on 26/03/2015

I’m bouncing up and down on my diving board with excitement to be able to share the new cover for The Woman Who Fell in Love for a Week; I think it’s stunning and I hope you agree. Hannah, the clever designer at Sphere, has worked her magic to create something that reflects the book perfectly – it’s bright, warm and sexy, beckoning readers to dive straight in.

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I’m an absolute pain for a designer to work with because I have a rudimentary but dangerous understanding of Photoshop, a passion for amateur art (I’m addicted to The Big Painting Challenge right now) and I’m a terrible book jacket snob. When a new cover is sent through by Sphere with a proud ‘tra-la’ after many hours of in-house think-tanking, image research and hard work, I inevitably reach for my mouse with indecent haste to rearrange it, whirling the selection brush, eyedropper and rectangular marquees like a tabloid picture editor adding thigh gaps to fashion spreads. I can never stop myself doing this although I’ve long since realised that it’s just a part of the psychological process of letting go. It’s hard for published authors to accept that we’re only responsible for what is on the inside of books, not the outside, especially when market forces mean not all book covers can be beautiful, unique works of art, but must by necessity fall into derivative trends. Having seen so many wonderful female writers’ books drown in a sea of cartoon pink when Chick Lit was at its height, I’ve also developed an illogical twitch about covers that look alike, but right now I keep standing back from this one in awe. I truly love it. Looking at it feels like high summer has arrived early.

Not that I’d wish spring away, this magical, bud-bursting turnaround when we start accelerating towards longer days, painted toenails and balmy evenings. Last weekend my arms were finally liberated from long sleeves in the sunlit garden of the future forever home where we’re battling brash, woodworm, damp and an ever-dwindling renovation budget. On reflection, wrestling brambles in a polo shirt was probably a mistake given this season’s first freckles are now cross-hatched with red scars from wrist to elbow, but they’re happy reminders of the life waiting outside while I work in the dairy of the Smallest Farmhouse in Warwickshire on creative night shifts. My writing base at the forever home will be a small room behind the garage, and I wistfully stand in the spot where it will be every time I visit, much to the consternation of Ted the resident guinea fowl whose exotic bird brain can’t fathom why the woman who should be feeding him keeps roosting amid piles of hard-core and rubble close to the septic tank. It’s where my imagination will take off, I tell him. And in years to come, after many months of sitting in that spot day and night, alternating between despair and delight as a book takes shape, I hope the end result gets to wear a jacket as lovely as the one I’m revealing today.

I must quickly add a footnote about the quote from Jojo Moyes, who’s been so generous in her praise for The Woman Who Fell in Love for a Week, which is a huge compliment. Her book blog recommending it amongst other fabulous reads is here . I’ve adored Jojo’s writing since I stayed up all night over a decade ago to finish a proof copy of Sheltering Rain (which later became the inspiration behind A Horse for Emma, an addictive read that every character in Tongue in Cheek drops in the bath and feels is their own private discovery).  To be bigged up by such a terrific writer is one of those ‘whoop’ moments that no guinea fowl will ever understand, but I know lots of readers – and authors – will appreciate is very special indeed.

 

June 2015

Posted on 04/06/2015

The Woman Who Fell in Love for a Week has shrugged off her hardback dust-jacket and is beach ready – now out in gorgeous, holiday-friendly paperback, hooray! Along with the percussion of flip flops, the scent of suntan cream and the shimmer of a heat haze over a Saturday getaway traffic jam, the lure of the holiday read burning a hole in one’s bag is a heavenly sign of summer. And this one is bursting at the suitcase seams with love and laughter.

Whatever your plans this summer, I really hope you enjoy escaping with Jenny Rees in her sun-scorched week of high jinx, finding love the second time around. You can read an extract here – and the Amazon click is here. Or, if you’re anything like me, you’ll trolley distractedly past it in the supermarket, reverse thinking ‘that looks good for the holiday’, throw it in, and then find yourself reading it addictively whilst unpacking your shopping an hour later, then in bed, then during your lunch-break, then in the car waiting for school pick up, then in the bath. I’m crossing my own bath-wrinkled fingers that The Woman Who Falls in Love for a Week joins you on the beach, by the pool, on the train or in the garden. Wherever you find her, I hope Jenny becomes a friend and ally, and that her story moves you and makes you laugh.

Lots more news from me soon. For now, may the sun shine, the days be long and happy and the books you read take you to the best places imaginable. I hope The Woman Who Fell in Love for a Week is amongst them.

October 2015

Posted on 16/10/2015

A year ago, I excitedly blogged from the Smallest Farmhouse in Warwickshire to say that I was starting work on a new novel. At the same time, work began on renovating our Forever Home, a lovely but dilapidated cottage tucked high in the hills of what was once the Forest of Arden. I made a bet that I’d deliver my book by the time it was ready to move into in April. The race was on…

The Weekends of You and Me tells the story of Jo and Harry, who escape to a remote holiday hideaway, Morrow Cottage every year for a ‘just the two of us’ break from parenthood, work and family crises. It follows their weekends together through a decade that takes them from passionate fling in 2006 to make or break weekend in 2015. It was a technically difficult and rewardingly emotional book to write; Jo and Harry became my allies, and the intensity of having just two characters on the page for so much of the story meant I grew to care about them more than almost any couple I’ve written since Tash and Hugo (who some readers will know I’d bring back in every book if I could!). I also loved creating Morrow Cottage, the remote Shropshire bolthole that waits for them year after year, and in which they leave the outside world behind.

It’s probably no coincidence that Morrow Cottage has a roaring wood-burning stove which must be lit as soon as Jo and Harry arrive, because the old dairy in which I write at the SFW gets very cold indeed in winter. Despite a brace of electric heaters at my sides, I spent more than one late night through the early months of this year with my breath clouding in front of a monitor as I typed after hours. The imaginary Morrow wood burner kept me warm, along with the thought of having somewhere toasty to write at the Forever Home that I don’t share with quite so many spiders, or any rats, and that doesn’t have Hereford bullocks kicking the other side of the wall all night like neighbours demanding I turn the music down. The ‘Mummy shed’ – part of a new timber-framed garage – will be heated courtesy of the cottage’s eco-friendly new bio-mass boiler.

I delivered The Weekends of You and Me in May, but I still won my bet. At that point, the Forever Home had no kitchen, no working loo and a lunar landscape of dust and debris in every room – and my cosy writing space was nothing more than a sketch on a piece of paper. We hastily revised our moving date to the summer holidays.

Modernising a lopsided, half-timbered cottage that’s as damp as a riverbank and sits skewwhiff on its sixteenth century oak sole place is a mammoth undertaking, and none of us had appreciated the horrors hiding beneath the historic layers of paint and paper that covered every wall (and in some cases were the only things holding them up). It doesn’t stop us loving the place – it is so filled with character and kindness – but it meant our shoestring budget has had to stretch to lace up more and more holes, and our dreams of moving there before the roses blossomed around the door were always under threat. Getting in before the flower-heads turned into hips became our priority, and I clung onto my dreams of autumn plotting and proof-reading in a snug study.

The old dairy at the SFW was far from cold when I edited The Weekends of You and Me through June and July, and the pungent scent of cattle byre that floated through the windows provided authentic rural inspiration as I gratefully reshaped Jo and Harry’s decade of love and drama in the Shropshire Hills, happy to be lost in their world.

By the time I delivered it back to my publisher and the girls broke up from school for summer, the Forever House had gained one working loo and a succession of skips overflowing with builders’ teabags and fly-tipped white goods. Not one room in the cottage was habitable. My writing shed remained a distant dream, along with the garage that would house the eco-boiler. We pushed the move-in date back to September. I no longer felt quite so jubilant about winning my bet.

We all mucked in through the holidays, beadily observed by resident guinea fowl Ted and his hareem of lady pheasant friends. While Sam trundled around them in a mini digger moving mountains of soil, I designed a budget kitchen which almost fits, as long as we breathe in when we walk past the fridge and don’t mind loading the dishwasher with the door at a forty-five degree angle. The girls and I then painted every wall in sight – and a lot of ourselves – in chalky emulsion, only to find the plaster all had to be cut back when big patches of damp showed through. Outside, a large concrete slab was finally laid where the garage, boiler room and Mummy’s Shed were going to be erected. We all jumped for joy on it until we discovered that it had been set out to the wrong dimensions and the timber-framers would now have to completely redesign it to fit there. We nudged our moving in date back to October.

As soon as the girls went back to school, I worked through the second edit of The Weekends of You and Me and found Jo and Harry’s story waiting to be shared, full of life and love and reasons to be cheerful. For readers who have been kind enough to spur me on by sending emails asking me to hurry up and write the next one, I promise there’s not long to wait now.  It’s currently with the proof reader – the final stage before typesetting – and it comes out early next year.

This is my last blog from the Smallest Farmhouse in Warwickshire, where the apples have dropped for the second time since we started living here, and the windows are once again steaming up. We move out in just over a fortnight. I can’t wait to get started on the first of many novels I plan to write in the Forever Home, although I think I’ll be working at the kitchen table for the time being…as long as nobody wants to open the dishwasher. The old cottage is far from ready, but it does now boast two working loos and there’s a shiny eco-boiler under a tarpaulin in the timber-framed outbuilding. Let’s gloss over the fact that building hasn’t yet got a roof, internal walls or power and the Mummy Shed still lacks finishing touches like doors and windows. They’re all on the Moving House To Do list, along with ‘Write Your Blog’ which I can now tick off.  I apologise that I do this so sporadically, but I hope today’s update makes up a little for its randomness. I’m incredibly grateful to everyone who visits my website, and I really hope The Weekends of You and Me brings lots of pleasure to readers when it’s published in 2016. It can be pre-ordered it in hardback here and ebook  here.

I wish you all a wonderful autumn!

February 2016

Posted on 16/02/2016

A blog about weekends away, lucky omens and pastures new:

I’ve just swept three months’ worth of old receipts, pen lids, rosettes and dog treats off the dresser so that I can share a snapshot of the advance copy of The Weekends of You and Me which arrived this week. Isn’t the jacket lovely? It’s published in hardback and e-book in the UK on the 10th March.

When I was writing The Weekends of You and Me, my computer’s wallpaper was a photograph of a track leading up through rolling fields to woodland. Hidden out of sight on the hilltop amid the sweet chestnuts and Scots pine, I imagined an old stone cottage. It’s here Harry and Jo first get together for a wild weekend of second-chance love and make a vow to come back the following year. The novel picks up their story each year for a decade as they escape to the cottage for a few days, determined to put the outside world on hold and recapture the spark, no matter how complicated family life gets.

I really hope you come to love Jo and Harry as much as I do, especially those of you only too familiar with that life stage in which children, careers, ageing parents and cheek-by-jowl domesticity makes it all too easy to forget the heart-lift of loving someone for who they are.

By coincidence, the hardback was waiting here when we returned from a weekend away, and the girls are hugely excited by the illustration because we’ve been staying in a little stone drover’s cottage up a track by a brow of woodland: ‘That’s our half term cottage! You wrote a book about it!’ It was actually a last-minute booking somewhere we’ve never been before, but the fact it so closely resembled my fictional romantic bolt-hole –  it even snowed on Valentine’s Day just as it does in the book – did make it feel like a bit of much-needed kismet might just be at play, and it doesn’t stop there. I have to admit here that I’m so superstitious when a new novel is about to come out that I look out for lucky omens everywhere. When Well Groomed was published, I counted horseboxes like magpies on every trip; with The Summer Wedding, I spotted bridal cars and hot air balloons with similar zeal. This time, it’s starlings – you have to read the book to understand why – and I’ve been enormously cheered to find a small gang of them staging a regular and noisy fly-by over our garden. But that was nothing to the moment we drove to the Welsh Marches last Friday and Sam almost left the road, pointing to the horizon where starlings were swirling in their thousands like smoke. When you read The Weekends of You and Me, which I truly hope you will, you’ll appreciate why I still have a bruise from pinching myself. (In case you’re worried that it’s a Hitchcockian feather-fest or a steamy tale of amorous  twitchers in hides casting binoculars aside, I should point out that neither Jo or Harry are bird fanciers and starlings have a purely walk on/fly in part.)

When I last wrote this blog, we were about to move from the Smallest Farmhouse in Warwickshire to our forever home, a lovely if chaotic ongoing project which still has a resident builder, a skip outside and a half finished writing room full of timber. What I didn’t know then, as I packed fifteen different Fiona Walker novels in multiple formats and languages into cardboard boxes, was that I’d soon be moving publishing house too. The Weekends of You and Me marks the end of my tenure with Little, Brown. The team that has published Kiss and Tell, The Love Letter, The Summer Wedding, The Country Escape and The Woman Who Fell in Love for a Week is a family that I will miss enormously, and I leave them with a love story that I hope is my best yet. You can buy The Weekends of You and Me here.

I can’t wait to share news about my brilliant new publisher and our future plans, which I promise I’ll do on here soon; all of you who so generously bear with my blog silences to check back regularly (thank you!) won’t have so long to wait this time. For now, I can joyfully share the fact that my foot is firmly in the stirrup on a creative venture that takes me galloping to the best home turf – to rolling acres, village scandal, horses, dogs and country life in all its lusty, divot-flinging glory. I’m already so busy writing, I must apologise as always for my somewhat anti-social media. When lost to a new book, I fall off the twitter perch and don’t show my Facebook in public much, but I promise that I do reply to anybody kind enough to send a message, tweet or email and I am always tremendously grateful when my books get a mention. My greatest passion in life is to tell good stories. I do hope the starlings are right about this one.

 

March 2016

Posted on 10/03/2016

A blog in which pictures tell a thousand words.

It’s publication day, which means I did a lot of anxious fretting this morning about what I should say on social media to share the news without coming across as too much of a bare-faced self-promoter. I love scrolling through timelines, but I don’t do it often – certainly not when I’m flat out writing as I am now – which means it’s always very obvious when I’ve been asked by my publisher to plug a book using my ‘social feeds’ (a term that always makes me think of trays of canapés). I usually sidle onto Twitter and Facebook a few days before the novel comes out to see how the land lies, favourite lots of things (that’s the easy part – I end up scrolling around for hours wondering why I don’t do this more often), make a few excited comments about neglected friends’ posts and then maybe post a photo of the dog to make up for the brazen launch day ‘tra-la!’ that’s coming. If you are a Fiona Walker friend or follower and you see a photograph of an elderly Weimaraner on my timeline, you’ll know that publication day is nigh. Here’s this year’s (eagle eyed blog readers will spot that I’ve added a cat for variety):

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The thing that hampers my social media skills even more than my self-effacing Britishness is our terminally slow rural broadband speed. The only streaming that goes on around here involves the girls pulling on wellies to splash in the brook at the end of the garden. I used to love the idea of posting a regular vblog to share writing tips and news, but I was put off when my first video took about three days to upload onto YouTube and crashed every time the neighbour tried to watch Netflix – and that was when we lived in Worcestershire, with four times the speed we have here at the Forever House.

And yet social media is ever-more about being visual and writers are increasingly told: ‘Don’t tell people what the book is about – show them!’ The written word is now squeezed down to a strap-line beneath a constant feed of images, far too many of them taken in mirrors whilst standing in the bathroom in pants. I’m always fascinated by the loos in the background; the Margot Ledbetter in me wants to tweet back asking them to close the lid and fold a point on the end of the loo roll next time. But there’s no getting away from the modern maxim that a picture not only tells a thousand words, it’s quicker to share. Unless, of course, you live six miles from the nearest telephone exchange.

This may take me a while, but in the spirit of publication day ‘tra-la!’ing, I’ve got a few pics to share with you which I hope help to illustrate what The Weekends of You and Me is all about. It would actually take a hundred and twenty images to sum up the story on the thousand-word-to-a-jpeg ratio, but I have to leave something in the pot for the return of the pet photo countdown in August when the paperback comes out.

The Weekends of You and Me is an unashamed love story:

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I hope it’s a classic one.

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For women of all ages.

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Who like a good laugh.

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And who like a sexy hero…

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…a really sexy hero…

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…that loves dogs.

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You can buy The Weekends of You and Me now by following this link to ebook and this one to hardback. Please, if you feel able to,  review it, share it, retweet it and post about it. I’d love my words to have a chance amid so many pictures. Those of you who are brilliant at such things have my eternal gratitude. But I hope it’s not too old-fashioned to wish more than anything that this big love story is simply read and enjoyed.

May 2017

Posted on 15/05/2017

Please forgive my long absence; I’ve been writing fiction at such a fast and furious pace all year that I’m amazed my fingers aren’t an inch shorter. I’ll wave them in the air between typing this now to excitedly announce that my latest book, The Country Set, is finally done if not yet quite dusted. It’s currently away being polished by my clever editorial team and will be published by Head of Zeus in hardback and ebook later this year. The novel is the first in a new series revolving around the residents of the Compton villages, the best kept secret idyll north of Oxford. I can’t wait to share an early glimpse of its characters and setting on here in coming weeks when I also look forward to revealing a new-look website to coincide with the series. The redesign will mark the return of a regular blog about my writing life, as well as lots of information about all eighteen of my books from French Relations to The Country Set. If there’s anything you’d like to see featured, or if you just want to say hello, I’d be delighted to hear from you. You can find me on Twitter @fionawalkeruk and Facebook, or simplest of all send me a message via the contact form here.