Carys Bray's Blog, page 3

Richard and Judy Summer Book Club

I've been in London again, this week. I went to Heathrow airport where I signed somewhere in the region of 300 copies of A Song for Issy Bradley, which has been selected for the Richard and Judy Summer Book Club.                                                                                                                                                                               The book

London and Lumb Bank

I've been looking forward to this week for ages. On Tuesday I went to London and met my editors, my new publicist and my agent. I went to the British Museum, alone (which meant moaning children weren't trailing after me) - hooray!







And I ate an ice cream that was almost as long as my forearm.




In the evening I went to the Desmond Elliott longlist party. The Desmond Elliott Prize is,

Easter Holiday

Having completed my PhD revisions, I decided that the Easter holiday should be spent pulling my socks up and getting on with the first draft of novel 2. I set myself a goal of 700 words per day, which doesn't sound like much, but is actually quite a lot for me because I tend to edit as I go. I considered banning myself from editing, but I couldn't cope with that and decided I was allowed to do

The Desmond Elliott Longlist

Some lovely news today - A Song for Issy Bradley has been longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize.




I've read several of the books on the longlist and am in extremely good company (Elizabeth is Missing and Chop Chop were on the Costa shortlist, too - I highly recommend both!).

The judges said this about A Song for Issy Bradley: "Wit flashes in a score of brilliant one-liners, points up the

Audiobooks

I received eight copies of the American edition of the A Song for Issy Bradley audiobook at the weekend. I'll be giving most of them away. If you'd like to win a copy, keep an eye on Twitter and/or Facebook in the coming weeks.

Association for Mormon Letters

A Song for Issy Bradley has been shortlisted in the novel category of the Association for Mormon Letters Awards. The AML Awards are for books, stories, films and screenplays by, for, or about Mormons.






Back to writing...

Waverton Good Read Award

A Song for Issy Bradley has been shortlisted for the Waverton Good Read Award. It's a really interesting prize - you can read more about it here - and I'm really thrilled to be one of the shortlisted writers. 

Now back to writing...

Gone Writing

Interview with Susmita Bhattacharya

To celebrate International Women's Day I interviewed debut novelist Susmita Bhattacharya whose book The Normal State of Mind is published this month. The Normal State of Mind has been described as a 'beautiful, evocative book' and 'a new taste of India from a promising new novelist'.   



Can
you tell me a little bit about your writing journey?


I remember always writing
something, even as a

Costa Awards Ceremony

Last night I went to the Costa Book Awards ceremony at Quaglino's. I'm so glad I went, I had such a lovely time. Congratulations to Helen Macdonald who won Costa Book of the Year for H is for Hawk and to Zoe Gilbert for winning the Costa short story prize.





Here are my Best Bits (subtitled: How not to be Cool at an Award Ceremony).

When I arrived at Quaglino's they had pictures of all the