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You are here: Home / Archives for novel

Laurence Anholt, Novelist

March 29, 2015 By achuka Leave a Comment

Just stumbled on this piece, published in a free local magazine and copied onto Laurence Anholt’s website. It’s a short piece of autobiographyat the end of which Laurence celebrates having two full-length novels accepted by Penguin Random House, the first of which is due for publication in July 2016.

A few years ago I began to write two full length novels: ‘The Hypnotist’ and ‘Love Letters’. If picture books are hard, a novel is like building a house single-handed! But to my amazement, both books were accepted by the newly merged Penguin Random House. The Hypnotist is about prejudice and tolerance – In essence I have transposed Dickens’ Great Expectations to the Deep South of America in 1963. My protagonist is a young black orphan making his way against the background of Segregation and the dreaded Ku Klux Klan. The events are seen through the very strange eyes of an Irish hypnotist, Dr Jack Morrow who has started work at a new university. There’s a slice of history, a sprinkle of magic realism and a twist of humour. The Hypnotist will be published in January 2016.
 
My mother, Joan was a wise and wonderful woman who died too young. Joan was a teacher of English Literature, especially Hardy and Wordsworth and although she was a Christian, she was fascinated by Eastern philosophy. It must have influenced me because I became a member of the friendly Buddhist community in this area. If I had more pages I would gleefully expound on the benefits of mindfulness and meditation, but one central concept of Buddhism is that our thoughts become our reality – a person who thinks negative or prejudiced thoughts creates a dark claustrophobic world for themselves; conversely those who train themselves to be positive and open-hearted find the world opening around them. Life is challenging, but life is beautiful too. We are profoundly privileged to walk briefly on this extraordinary bluegreen planet, revolving slowly in space.

via Laurence Anholt's Life Story published in Marshwood Vale Magazine March 2015 « Anholts Anholts.

Filed Under: Blog, Books Tagged With: deal, forthcoming, novel

William Sutcliffe Novel Chosen As 2015 Young City Reads Title For Brighton Festival

January 31, 2015 By achuka Leave a Comment

circusofthieves

It was announced last week that Circus Of Thieves And The Raffle Of Doom [by William Sutcliffe] has been chosen for this year’s Young City Reads as part of Brighton Festival.

The idea is that one book by one author is chosen for children across the city to creatively engage with, at home and at school, and the project launches officially on March 5 (World Book Day) at Jubilee library.

…

Circus Of Thieves And The Raffle Of Doom is the first book that William has written for younger children (eight years and up), and the first of a series, the second of which is soon to be published.

The central character in the offbeat adventure is a girl called Hannah, whose life is dull until Armitage Shank’s Impossible Circus comes to town.

William has written five novels for adults, including the international bestseller Are You Experienced?, while his first novel for young adults, The Wall, published in 2013, was shortlisted for the Guardian Fiction Prize.

…

“I think the eight to 12 age group are the least well-served when it comes to finding something to read, and hopefully this will fill that gap.”

William began writing Circus of Thieves and the Raffle of Doom shortly after the birth of his third child, so didn’t have huge amounts of time to dedicate to it. The first draft was written without too much scrutiny, but then the re-write was more rigorous, he says.

“I have no idea where the story comes from, I think it had been knocking around for a while; sometimes you have an intangible sense of how you want the story to feel.

“The story and characters revealed themselves to me as I wrote.

William explains that he approaches writing projects differently depending on what they are. Because Circus Of Thieves And The Raffle Of Doom is a humorous children’s book he was able to take a more freeform approach, rather than outlining a structure and sticking to it strictly.

“I have spent most of my adult life writing, and in order to keep the process alive for yourself as a writer you can do different things,” says William.

“I do enjoy taking a different approach each time.”

The book is definitely on the border between the real and the surreal, and the characters are brought to life with illustrations by David Tazzyman.

William and David will be in Brighton for a special Young City Reads event on May 20.

William now lives in Edinburgh, with his wife, novelist Maggie O’Farrell, and their three children aged 10, 5 and 2.

via Author's new children's book to be read across the county (From The Argus).

Filed Under: Blog, Books Tagged With: Brighton Festival, comedy, fiction, humour, novel

Self-published author now out in Penguin – Nick Higham, Meet The Author

May 2, 2014 By achuka Leave a Comment

Video interview – Mick Higham, Meet The Author BBC News

When Tina Seskis book, One Step Too Far, was rejected by the publishing world four years ago she decided to take matters into her own hands.

The author decided to publish the novel herself as an e-book and also asked a high street newsagent to stock it.

In turn the novel’s success got publishers interested, as Seskis tells the BBC’s Nick Higham.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-27243702

Filed Under: Blog, Books Tagged With: bidding war, debut, novel, self-published, self-publishing

The Guardian first book award is announced this evening…

November 28, 2013 By achuka Leave a Comment

The Guardian first book award is announced this evening.

The shortlist

  • We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo (Chatto & Windus)
  • Sex and the Citadel by Shereen El Feki (Chatto & Windus)
  • Burial Rites by Hannah Kent (Picador)
  • Kiss Me First by Lottie Moggach (Picador)
  • The Spinning Heart by Donal Ryan (Doubleday)

One of the judges, Lynda Mountford, ruminates

About halfway through our deliberations it emerged that one of the most important criteria for judging this year’s Man Booker prize had been how far the novels on its shortlist offered up new insights on re-reading. I determined to use this as one of my own criteria, since it seemed to me that it could apply equally to fiction, non-fiction and poetry. On reflection, however, it does have some drawbacks. In particular it can prejudice the chances of “genre” fiction. One of the novels on the longlist, Gill Hornby’s The Hive, was a rather frothy mixture of romantic comedy, satire and farce. It was an enjoyable one-off read, but I would never want to read it again. So is there, perhaps, a difference between a good book and a good read? And is being a good read a sufficient qualification for winning a literary prize?

via Judging the Guardian first book award and seeking an objective verdict | Books | theguardian.com.

Filed Under: Blog, Books Tagged With: awards, debut, fiction, Guardian, non-fiction, novel, poetry, prizes

Wondrous Reads: EXCLUSIVE: Cover Reveal – Trouble by Non Pratt + US/UK Comparison!

September 28, 2013 By achuka Leave a Comment

Well, Non Pratt, commissioning editor of Catnip Books kept very quiet about her forthcoming novel from Walker when we met earlier this week.

Here Wondrous Reads does a cover-reveal on her blog, showing both the US and the UK cover designs.

And she quotes the synopsis:

When fifteen-year-old Hannah Sheppard discovers she’s pregnant, her life begins to crumble, and the people she thought she could rely on leave her floundering. She finds an unlikely friend in new boy Aaron Tyler, who up until now has avoided getting too close to anyone in case they discover the reason he left his previous school. An intense friendship develops between Hannah and Aaron – but will they ever trust the other enough to reveal the secrets they’re both so desperate to keep hidden?

US cover

UK cover

http://www.wondrousreads.com/2013/09/exclusive-cover-reveal-trouble-by-non.html

Filed Under: Blog, Books Tagged With: cover, debut, Non Pratt, novel, pregnancy, teen, Walker, YA

The Sony Young Movellist of the Year Award Winner

July 17, 2013 By achuka Leave a Comment

The winners of the Sony Young Movellist of the Year Awards have been announced at the Kings Place Gallery in London.

Rebecca Davies reports:

A ‘movellist’ in case you were wondering, is a member of the online writing community Movellas.com, which allows young authors to share their work with other readers and writers their age. The Movella awards are open to writers aged between 13 and 19 years and the entrants had the auspicious honour of being judged by none other than new children’s laureate Malorie Blackman (who sadly couldn’t make the awards ceremony because she was ill and reportedly feared the Daily Mail headline: ‘Children’s Laureate is sick on young award winner’s shoes’).  The prize, besides a pretty glass trophy, is a publishing contract from Random House Children’s Publishers – the Holy Grail for many authors whatever their age.

Chatting to a few of the 10 shortlisted writers before the ceremony was a fairly jaw-dropping experience. Many of them have been writing for as long as they can remember and some have eight full novels under their belts before they’ve even left their teens. Competition, then, was pretty stiff.

In the end, the overall award went to 19-year-old Helen Hiorns from Coventry, whose novel The Name on Your Wrist was e-published by Random House on the same day as the ceremony. Malorie Blackman praised the novel for its rebellious central character and because she ‘couldn’t predict the ending’. While Natalie Doherty of Random House said: ‘This entry instantly stood out for us, for the quality of the writing, the feisty and complicated but extremely likeable main character, and the fact that it gripped us right from the first paragraph.’

The winner herself was endearingly modest about her achievement, saying that winning the award had surpassed her previous plans for the summer, which had mainly involved finding her name on a Coca-Cola bottle and eating a hamburger in Hamburg – a feat she failed to realise due to being called back to England for the awards ceremony.

Kyra Schlachter and Emma Yeo were announced as runners up, for their novels My Corrupted Lungs and Girl With a Thousand Faces respectively. I asked Emma, who is 17 now and has been writing since the age of 12, what piece of advice she would like to share with other young novelists. Her encouraging answer: ‘Keep writing and you will get better! I look at stuff I wrote years ago and I just want to rip it up and burn it. But you just have to keep going!’

Despite the astonishing amount of talent on show, one thing was notable by its absence among the candidates: the presence of any boys. This could be explained at least in part because the sorts of novels that inspired this year’s shortlisters – which ranged from Jane Eyre to Twilight – on the whole tended to be more typically girl-friendly stories.

via Children’s Book Blog: The Sony Young Movellist of the Year Award | Rebecca Davies | Independent Arts Blogs.

Filed Under: Blog, Books Tagged With: awards, debut, Movellist, novel, prizes

Black Wings [ACHUKAbooks] Today FREE – Tomorrow Full Price!

July 7, 2013 By achuka Leave a Comment

Today FREE – tomorrow Full Price

As a fifteen year old, Sophie Masson once wrote a short story called ‘Les Chouans’, which was her first attempt at trying to get to grips with the savagery, fear, courage and mystery of that time of Revolution, and the riven loyalties and terrible choices made by people on both sides of the civil war. Much later, she wrote an article, ‘Remembering the Vendée’, which has had many readers, but it wasn’t until many years later again that she first conceived the project of writing a novel about the tumultuous early years of the Revolution and the wars it unleashed.
Framed by a prologue and epilogue set decades later, the main body of the novel is narrated by a young man facing execution in 1794, who tells his story and that of his friends, all from very different backgrounds. Masson succeeds movingly in giving the reader a feel for the way in which these things were experienced, not as great events, but as part of people’s lives, affecting them in myriad ways, both great and small. She evokes a portrait of a whole community, and of a country, caught in the grip of massive change, of rebellion and counter-rebellion and the havoc of war, whose echoes remain in the Vendée and in France to this day.

 

“Masson writes like a native of the time Black Wings is set; when her characters speak, we hear the authentic voice of the 18th Century. Detailed, erudite and elegant, its characters lovingly drawn, this absorbing and deeply felt novel brings home to us the curse of living through interesting times. It will not let us forgive the French Revolution for The Terror so easily.”
Cassandra Golds, author of Clair-de-Lune, The Museum of Mary Child and The Three Loves of Persimmon.

 

“Masson’s tale about the limits of friendship, set against the backdrop of those best and worst of times, captures perfectly the contradictions of revolution – the appeal of the brave new world, the ruthless destruction of old ways, the romance along with the tumult and the terror. Her tale of ordinary folk helplessly caught up in the maelstrom of history, made extraordinary by chance and circumstance, offers a vision of a past that isn’t dusty, archaic and over, but vivid, engaging, alive.”
Wendy James, author of the award-winning Out of the Silence, The Steele Diaries and The Mistake.

 

“With skilful attention to detail, author Sophie Masson weaves a compelling tale of a nation caught up in a madness fuelled by a reckless and unrealistic idealism, and the four friends who, wittingly or not, were its victims. Set against this chilling account of the collective madness that led to the murderous rampages and bloodthirsty executions of the French Revolution is the story of Jacques’ love for Flora – a love that will test everything he believes and holds dear. A great read for lovers of historical fiction with a dash of romance.”
Felicity Pulman, author of A Ring Through Time.

via Black Wings [ACHUKAbooks] eBook: Sophie Masson: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store.

Filed Under: Blog, Books Tagged With: ACHUKAbooks, eBook, historical, Kindle, novel, Rench Revolution, romance, romantic, Sophie Masson

Book doctor: Are childrens books darker than they used to be? | Childrens books | guardian.co.uk

June 24, 2013 By achuka Leave a Comment

Have children’s book stopped being entertaining adventures and become more about issues than they used to be? Julia Eccleshare responds.
The quote is only a snippet – read the full reply by following the link.

Currently, imaginary dystopias are replacing familiar fictional backgrounds of historical upheaval such as the French Revolution or the second world war as places where children are forced into managing their own lives. These are not darker places than their historical precursors and, like them, they provide a space where children, especially todays much-watched children, can tackle demons, take risks and grow up.

via Book doctor: Are childrens books darker than they used to be? | Childrens books | guardian.co.uk.

Filed Under: Blog, Books Tagged With: children, dystopia, dystopian, issues, novel, themes

Black Wings by Sophie Masson

June 20, 2013 By achuka Leave a Comment

Black Wings by Sophie Masson

Black Wings by Sophie Masson

Very excited to be publishing Sophie Masson’s novel of the French Revolution, BLACK WINGS, available now on the Kindle store.

Get your copy during the first week of publication and pay less than a US dollar or UK pound for a read that will stir you to the core.

“Masson writes like a native of the time Black Wings is set; when her characters speak, we hear the authentic voice of the 18th Century. Detailed, erudite and elegant, its characters lovingly drawn, this absorbing and deeply felt novel brings home to us the curse of living through interesting times. It will not let us forgive the French Revolution for The Terror so easily.”
Cassandra Golds, author of Clair-de-Lune, The Museum of Mary Child and The Three Loves of Persimmon.

“Masson’s tale about the limits of friendship, set against the backdrop of those best and worst of times, captures perfectly the contradictions of revolution – the appeal of the brave new world, the ruthless destruction of old ways, the romance along with the tumult and the terror. Her tale of ordinary folk helplessly caught up in the maelstrom of history, made extraordinary by chance and circumstance, offers a vision of a past that isn’t dusty, archaic and over, but vivid, engaging, alive.”
Wendy James, author of the award-winning Out of the Silence, The Steele Diaries and The Mistake.

“With skilful attention to detail, author Sophie Masson weaves a compelling tale of a nation caught up in a madness fuelled by a reckless and unrealistic idealism, and the four friends who, wittingly or not, were its victims. Set against this chilling account of the collective madness that led to the murderous rampages and bloodthirsty executions of the French Revolution is the story of Jacques’ love for Flora – a love that will test everything he believes and holds dear. A great read for lovers of historical fiction with a dash of romance.”
Felicity Pulman, author of A Ring Through Time.

Filed Under: Blog, Books Tagged With: France, French Revolution, historical, Nantes, novel, romantic

Cover to Cover: How are book jackets designed?

May 15, 2013 By achuka Leave a Comment

3 minute video about the way in which HarperCollins goes about generating book jacket designs…

BBC News visited HarperCollins publishers in London to find out how the book cover for Nathan Filer’s debut novel was created.

via BBC News – Cover to Cover: How are book jackets designed?.

Filed Under: Blog, Books Tagged With: cover, design, HarperCollins, illustration, jacket, marketing, novel

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