Rhoda Baxter's Blog, page 38

Inheritance Books: Chrissie Bradshaw

This week’s Inheritance Books come from romance author Chrissie Bradshaw. Hi Chrissie, welcome to Inheritance Books. Please take a seat. While I make the tea, why don’t you tell us a bit about yourself.

[image error]I live beside the Northumbrian coast with my family and love taking my Welsh terrier,Oscar, for a daily run along the seashore. My other feel good essentials are tea, chocolate and a good book. A career in education, as a teacher then as a literary consultant, has given me the chance to share...

Review: Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency on Netflix

Over the Christmas holidays I watched Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency on Netflix. It will come as no surprise to you that I loved the books. This is not so much an adaptation as an expansion of the Gently-verse. I LOVED it. I wrote a review for the fabulous Smart Bitches Trashy Books blog (whose comments section is the closest thing I’ve found to ‘my tribe’). You can read the review here:http://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/reviews/guest-squee-dirk-gentlys-holistic-detective-agency/

In...

Inheritance Books: Victoria Cornwall

After another long hiatus, I’ve taken the dust covers off the Inheritance Books sofa and dusted it down in order to welcome a new guest. (Okay, you got me, there weren’t any dust covers, but I did vacuum the sofa so it’s clean. I found 3.24 hidden down the back too!). Anyway, without further ado, please welcome my fellow Choc Lit novelist, Victoria Cornwall.

Hi Victoria, please make yourself at home. While I get the tea and gingerbread, why don’t you tell us a bit about yourself.

[image error]Thank you f...

Goodreads Book Review: The Santa Next Door by Stephanie Cage

The Santa Next Door by Stephanie Cage
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

In the run up to Christmas, I tend to read a lot of Christmas novellas. The Santa Next Door has been sitting on my TBR pile for a while and I finally got to it.

Sue is bringing up her daughter Trudi on her own. Bryn is the reclusive conductor who lives next door. A chance meeting with Sue and Trudi helps Bryn find the inspiration he’s been searching for to complete his latest composition.

All three main characters are well rounde...

Goodreads book review: The Fairy’s Tale by F. D.Lee

The Fairy’s Tale by F. D. Lee

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This partly a story about free will in an Orwellian state… and partly a story about stories.

Bea is a cabbage fairy who wants to be a fairy godmother. Fairies aren’t usually made godmothers… least of all cabbage fairies. In the meantime things are going wrong in the state – the mirrors are breaking and the human belief in Fae is fading.

This is a well thought out, well realised world. It’s also funny. Bea is a bit of a bumbling Everywoman...

Goodreads Book Review: The Boys of Christmas by Jane Lovering

The Boys of Christmas by Jane Lovering

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

What a wonderfully Christmassy tale! Mattie is running away from a nasty controlling relationship. Her aunt has left her a house, on the condition that she scatters her ashes (the aunt’s, I mean) over ‘the boys of Christmas’. Mattie and her best friend Toby end up in the spooky old house, in the middle of a snow storm, just before Christmas trying to figure out just who these ‘boys of Christmas’ are.

There’s snow, freezing archaeo...

After the draft -time to edit your book

Did you do NaNoWriMo? Did you hit your target? Brilliant! Well done.

I’ve never done NaNoWriMo. My kids are still small and disappearing into my room to write for hours on end seems a terribly indulgent thing to do right now. I take the slow and steady plod approach because it fits well with my life. Either way seems to work. The important thing is getting the writing done.

Anyway, the point is, you’ve written a whole novel. Take some time out to celebrate – not many people make it this far....

Pat’s Pantry – short novella set in Yorkshire

A little over a year ago, I wrote a long-ish short story for a competition. I didn’t win, but I ended up with a rather nice story that was too long to send out to magazines and too short to send to my publisher. At around the same time, I’d started wondering if I could try this self publishing lark. I’ve always wanted to be a traditionally published author, but… well, increasingly, you’ve got to do a lot of the book promotion yourself. It used to just be stuff like chatting to book bloggers (...

Drawing parallels between writing reports and writing fiction – and why characters are everything.

Last week, I was asked to give a talk to a group of counselling trainees at my local FE college about creative writing and academic writing. The contact came through my local writing group, The Beverley Chapter. I was suggested to the FE college because I once belonged to the world of academia and still do a lot of technical writing and, as you know, I write fiction.

Totally irrelevant picture of Stormtroopers carrying chocolate.

The brief I was given was fairly vague and I found myself stan...

It’s time for another colouring in advent calendar

A few years ago, I started drawing an advent calendar to colour in at work. I usually ask my favourite muse (who blogs over at The Inspiration Highway) for a theme. This year, it’s foxes. So here’s my foxy advent calendar to colour in. Have fun. Don’t forget to tweet me your colouring in pictures!

Download the PDF:2016-christmas-colouring-in

Filed under: random silliness Tagged: advent calendar, books, christmas, colouring in