Lillian Francis's Blog, page 123

Cover Reveal

I'm pleased to announce that Waiting for a Spark will soon be re-released with a brand new cover, a 99p price point, and hopefully a more enticing blurb.
For now let's see that new cover...

Hope you like it. I made it myself. *preens*

What Makes a Christmas Release?

Come this time of year you can’t move at virtual booksellers for titles that reference snow, bells, or wishes and covers that feature well wrapped up couples, sleighs, and Christmas trees. This fact is especially true in the romance genre.

Christmas stories. It’s a strange concept, at least from an author’s point of view. Why spend time writing and editing a story that will only really sell for a couple of months a year. More often than not, you’ll find authors getting ‘joyful’ over their fest...

Bones - series review

Another series all finished unless Kim Fielding decides to add another book.

Yes, I'm talking about the Bones series.

I read the first book in this series, Good Bones, three years ago, and then despite buying both sequels I left them languishing in my TBR pile. (Things get lost in there so easily!)

A werewolf story that isn't all 'mine', mates, and insta-love, is always going to endear me to a book in this sub-genre. Chris, the human half of the couple, is an adorable redneck, with more brains t...

Rainbow awards

The Rainbow Awards have recently been announced.

I'm overjoyed to discover that:

     Resistance garnered an Honourable Mention 

and 

New Lease of Life was a finalist in the contemporary category.   


Even better news was that the awards raised over $14000 for various LGBT charities this year,

Sod the charity adverts, send a dead bird

Another of those Victorian Christmas Cards.

And a tale from my past.

I went to primary school with a girl named Claire, she was born in London but her mum and dad were Welsh, born and bred. I would go around her house on a regular basis (it was the first place I was introduced to the joys of Dr Pepper). Come Christmastime her home, same as ours, would be awash with cards, hung from swags of wool. Except every other card would have a hole in it. Some big, some small. These holes had originally b...

Are you out of your mind?

This is a two pronged title. I'm going to attempt to post every day again as I did last year. Not so in depth this year though and not always Christmas related.

First up and possibly a reoccuring theme, those wacky Victorians and their 'interesting' Christmas cards.

Image from ttglibrary 
For those of you unsure...

From the font of all knowledge "Wikipedia": "In Austro-Bavarian Alpine folklore, Krampus is a horned, anthropomorphic figure described as "half-goat, half-demon",[1] who, during t...

What's In a Name?

To which I am referring to the title of a book. Although, the same could apply to character names, but that is a post for another day. And this book in particular: When Love Flue In.
I have a love hate relationship with titles, and I think most authors would agree. Some come to you as an extension of the story, while others need to be dragged kicking and screaming into the world. Once in a while a manuscript remains obstinately nameless right up until the moment of submission. One of my beta r...

Series Review - Dead Man by Lou Harper

In the last few months I have devoured Lou Harper's various paranormal series.
Dead Man, Sanguine, and LA Paranormal.

All three series are very similar in style. The books are made up of short stories, where the main thread that seems to hold the stories together is the development of the relationship, but somehow the stories intertwine and vague hanging threads and unanswered questions are eventually addressed in a later story, or even book.

Today I'm focusing on the Dead Man series.

Dead Man an...

Fiction Friday - on a Tuesday

It's been a month since I did a round up of my reading.This has been favourite author reading month.I started off with the L.A. Paranormal series by Lou Harper. I'd not read any of these stories before despite having had the first book on my Kindle for ages. I plan to do a separate series review post but needless to say it's well worth picking up this series.In my last post I talked about how much I loved All in With the Duke by Ava March. I followed up by reading the next two books in the se...

Rainbow Snippet - 29/30th Oct

Rainbow Snippets is a Facebook Group that invites authors to post 6 sentences of their work each weekend. It can be from anything you like, your current WIP, a recent release, the golden oldie that even you had forgotten you had written, or just a scrap of an idea (as long as it has 6 coherent sentences). Nothing of your own work worth mentioning? How about a 6 sentence review of your favourite LGBTQ+ story.


Another snippet from Village Love #2. For anyone that loved Resistance, this is Smudge...