Novelicious - The Female Fiction and Chick Lit Blog

Undiscovered Showcase #19 - The Nanny's Revenge by Nikki Goodman

The nineteenth entry of our Top 20 Undiscovered Shortlist is The Nanny's Revenge by Nikki Goodman.

We encourage comment and critique on each entry but any offensive remarks or spam will be removed.

Remember your favourite entry because you'll get the chance to vote after all twenty excerpts have been posted!

Over to Nikki Goodman...

THE NANNY'S REVENGE (BLURB)

Responsibility. Guilt. Rebound. Revenge. Love?

 Things have a habit of going wrong for Zoe Harper.

Things have a habit of getting ... complicated.

 

So when she returns to the UK after five long years away, she’s looking forward to a simple life, with some platinum plated rules to follow:-

 

Repair her relationship with her younger sister Melody, who she abandoned in order to follow the love of her life - who turned out to be the not so faithful type.  

Rule: Never put a man before your family.

Recover from the break-up of her engagement.

Rule: Never rely on a man to make you happy.

Rebuild her life; get a job, reunite with old friends, settle down.

Rule: Never forget that home is where you make it. 

But when Zoe lands at the airport, instead of the cosy catch up she’d imagined she finds Melody jobless, homeless, dumped and desperate at the hands of the Reilly brothers. 

Confronting the arrogant Matthew Reilly, and with his younger brother abroad, Zoe decides to get even with the famous but reclusive music producer... 

Go undercover as his live-in nanny.

Fake a relationship with him.

Sell a tawdry kiss and tell story to the Sunday papers with all the gory details in order to humiliate and humble him.

 

But can it really be that straight forward?

READ THE FIRST 3000 WORDS OF THE NANNY'S REVENGE OVER THE CUT

What An Agent Wants: Week 10 - What are your top 5 tips for getting an agent?

It's the final installment of What An Agent Wants!

We have asked our esteemed agent panel a question a week over the past ten weeks and published the answers right here on Novelicious. Finally, we ask the agents...

What are your top 5 tips for getting an agent?

 

Madeleine Milburn of the Madeleine Milburn Literary, TV & Film Agency

Look for an agent who represents similar books to the book you are writing. Write a very powerful covering letter that is interesting and un-putdown-able - let it reflect your writing style. Persevere. A lot of it is to do with timing as are most things in life.

 

 

 

 

Laura Longrigg of MBA Literary Agents

Perseverance/ belief in your work

Eradicate all mistakes grammatical and spelling in your manuscript/synopsis/letter

Send out to several at the same time

Research who you send to, and make sure you have an actual name as well as agency

Connections – mercilessly use that person you sat next to at dinner

 

 

Hannah Ferguson of The Marsh Agency

·         Write something amazing (obviously).

·         Be friendly – agents are just people after all!

·         Don’t wish for everything at once – be realistic and prepared to work hard on your craft before anything will come of it.

·     Be creative in your approach – be eye-catching and dynamic. New ideas are always noticed.

·         Be persistent but patient – the wait can sometimes be agonising, but it’s important to never give up if this is something you truly want to do.

 

 

Lisa Eveleigh of the Richford Becklow Literary Agency

Do follow the submission guidelines on an agency website to the letter

Don’t phone to pitch your book - ever

 If you are submitting to more than one agent at a time that’s fine, but please say so 

 Write the very best submission letter that you can,  then print it and read it again after a good night’s sleep to see if it can be improved

 Write the very best novel you can and then put it aside for a week – or even two - before reading it out loud to yourself – you will almost certainly hear any faults in your dialogue, and revise things,  and they will always be good changes 

 

Sarah Lutyens of Lutyens & Rubinstein Literary Agency

1. Write a really good book

2. Write a really good book

3. Write a really good book

4. Write a really good book

5. Write a really good book

 

 

Diane Banks of Diane Banks Associates 

 Follow each agency's submission guidelines to the letter.  If you slip up here, it's unlikely that your submission will be looked at.

Don't send a mass email to the info address of every agent in the Writers' & Artists' Yearbook, not even bothering to bcc.  We like to see that you've made some effort to approach our agency directly.

Present a compelling, concise, commercial pitch in your covering email or letter and please don't try to be funny.

Don't send LinkedIn invitations to our info / submissions addresses.  This is not a cunning way to get fast tracked.

Write a truly fantastic novel. At the end of the day, this is non-negotiable.

 

Sheila Crowley of Curtis Brown

Research well and approach agents who you believe will ‘get’ your work. Most agents have their details online and their areas of interest.

Make sure you have polished the story and edited it to a high standard. 

If you are a debut novelist you must be ambitious to get it right.  Some of the best writers in the world have early scripts hidden away in drawers as they knew they were not good enough.  In this competitive market we are trading in, one has to make the best go first time out.

You need to demonstrate that you are aware of the commercial world of publishing and make your approach connect with the Agent.

Concentrate on what makes you different and what will make your pitch stand out to the Agent and in turn the Publisher.

 

And there we have it!

Thank you so much to all the agents involved in What An Agent Wants!

We hope you guys have enjoyed reading this series and have found it helpful. Do let us know - the more feedback we get the better idea we have of what kind of features you'd like us to run on here.

·         Write something amazing (obviously).

·         Be friendly – agents are just people after all!

·         Don’t wish for everything at once – be realistic and prepared to work hard on your craft before anything will come of it.

·         Be creative in your approach – be eye-catching and dynamic. New ideas are always noticed.

·         Be persistent but patient – the wait can sometimes be agonising, but it’s important to never give up if this is something you truly want to do.

The Secret Dreamworld of an Aspiring Author by Anna Bell - I'm Writing A Novel in Ten Days!

No, I haven’t gone mad. I know that you’re not supposed to be able to write a novel in ten days, but I’ve got myself in a tricky predicament: I have to write a new novel, and I have to do it quickly. So I’ve got ten days off work, I’ve almost cleared my social schedule and that means there’s nothing to get in the way of me and my laptop.

 

I guess you’re probably wondering why an earth I need to write a novel so quickly. Well, I’m on the RNA New Writers' Scheme, and I have to submit my manuscript for critiquing by August. Which was fine when I had a manuscript to submit, only I recently decided that I didn’t want to submit that one and I’m going to put it on Amazon instead.

 

Which left me with a dilemma, did I resurrect an old half finished novel, dig out my very first manuscript, or write a new one? The easiest answer would have been to dust off my first manuscript and send that in. But what would be the benefit? My writing, in my opinion, has come on leaps and bounds since then, and to get it to that standard I’d probably need to do a whole new rewrite. The half finished novels were out of the question too - they are half finished for a very good reason!

Undiscovered Showcase #18 - Knockin' on Heaven's Door by Jill Steeples

The eighteeth entry of our Top 20 Undiscovered Shortlist is Knockin on Heaven's Door by Jill Steeples.

We encourage comment and critique on each entry but any offensive remarks or spam will be removed.

Remember your favourite entry because you'll get the chance to vote after all twenty excerpts have been posted!

Over to Jill Steeples...

KNOCKIN' ON HEAVEN'S DOOR (BLURB)

As a top notch PA, Alice Fletcher is used to dealing with problems, but on her way home from work one day she’s landed with a dilemma that tests her super organisational skills to the full.

A car has crashed off the road and a man emerges from the wreckage.  It’s only when Alice is driving him home that she realises the man is Jimmy Mack, the nation’s favourite TV presenter.  The second surprise of the day is that he’s dead.

Alice is the chosen one, the one to help Jimmy get to the other side.  The only trouble is she hasn’t the first idea of where to start in re-housing homeless ghosts.

But Jimmy isn’t the only man demanding Alice’s attention.  When her colleague Damon leaves work to set up his own business she has no excuses for turning down his frequent requests for a date.  But how can Alice’s relationship with Damon blossom with an uninvited house-guest on the scene, the ghost of Jimmy Mack?  And with Donna Diamond, the reality TV star, announcing she’s carrying Jimmy’s baby, Alice is the only one who can clear his name.

With Alice spending so much time with Jimmy, her relationship with Damon flounders.  But where does her heart really belong?  In this world with Damon or on the other side with Jimmy?

READ THE FIRST 3000 WORDS OF KNOCKIN' ON HEAVEN'S DOOR OVER THE CUT

Novel News - The Runaway Princess by Hester Browne

Hester Browne books are such a treat to read. We've just seen the synopsis for the new one The Runaway Princess (due out in October) and it sounds so charming and escapist. What do you think of the blurb? Have you read Hester's Books before?

 

The Runaway Princess

As a high-rise gardener in London, Amy Wilde can make roses and salad leaves spring out of nowhere. But it’s love that blossoms when the normally withdrawn Londoner meets Leo at one of the parties thrown by her socialite friend. Tall, blond, and startlingly handsome, Leo is incredibly easygoing, as if he’s been brought up to make small talk with complete strangers. In fact, he was—and after a delightfully romantic date, he admits that his real name is Leopold—Prince Leopold III of Nirona, a wealthy European principality. After the two become engaged, a scandal makes Leo the heir to his nation’s throne and his mood abruptly changes. As the extravagant wedding plans consume the little country, Amy feels increasingly apprehensive and unsure of whether she’s the girl Leo thinks she is—especially with a scandal brewing within her own family. But can she run from her true love—and the glitter of royalty—and return to life as a commoner?

More about THE RUNAWAY PRINCESS

Miranda Dickinson Is Looking For A Choir!

Are you in a choir?

Sunday Times Bestselling author Miranda Dickinson is searching for a choir!

The ChoirStars competition is open now and is giving one choir the chance to perform at the London Launch of Miranda's next book, "When I Fall In Love" in November.

To enter, email your video links to mirandawurdy@gmail.com (to arrive no later than FRIDAY 30TH JUNE 2012) ready for a showcase in July!

Good luck!

For full information, check out Miranda's blog here.

Bookish Etsy Pick - 'I Like Big Books and I Cannot Lie' Canvas Bag

It made me laugh. And it's only £11.79. From ExLibrisJournals on Etsy

Hazel Osmond's Top Tips for Writers

• Put your bottom on the seat and write

• Be true to your characters – don’t make them do something completely bizarre just because it rounds the story off nicely

• Don’t wimp out of writing tricky scenes for fear they might upset

• Leave enough room for the reader’s imagination

• Count your blessings – it’s a fabby job and you get to sit down

Hazel Osmond's novel is called Who's Afraid of Mr Wolfe and it was shortlisted in the Romantic Comedy category at the recent Romantic Novelists' Association Awards.

Undiscovered Showcase #17 - A Friend Like You by Jennifer McDermott

The seventeenth entry of our Top 20 Undiscovered Shortlist is A Friend Like You by Jennifer McDermott.

We encourage comment and critique on each entry but any offensive remarks or spam will be removed.

Remember your favourite entry because you'll get the chance to vote after all twenty excerpts have been posted!

Over to Jennifer McDermott...

A FRIEND LIKE YOU (BLURB)

Issy and Hannah meet on their first day at university. Far away from home and trepidatious about the adventure ahead, they stick close together, not least because it quickly transpires that Hannah is an excellent cook and Issy hates not knowing where the next meal is coming from.

Through boys and booze, lectures, essays and rodents, they form a firm friendship that will affect who they are for the rest of their lives. Even after university, when their paths diverge, they remain each other’s emergency call; the person you know will be able to make anything better, even at 3am when the world is bleak and blurry.

So why is Issy sneaking in to hide at the back of her best friend’s wedding, rather than playing the major role they’d always envisaged on each other’s days? How did it get to the point where she wasn’t even invited to witness the happiest day of her best friend’s life?

This is a story of female friendship. About a relationship you always assume is immune from the breaks and fractures other partnerships suffer. About the utter desolation, grief and rage when you realise that your best friend, one of the most important people you’ve ever met, no longer even numbers you among her casual acquaintances.

READ THE FIRST 3000 WORDS OF A FRIEND LIKE YOU OVER THE CUT

Review - The Village Vet by Cathy Woodman

Reviewed by Debs Carr

When animal welfare officer and part-time fire-fighter Jack Miller storms into Tessa Wilde’s wedding and announces that her fiancé, Nathan isn’t quite what he seems, he triggers off the concerns that Tessa has been working hard to ignore. When Nathan still can’t say those three little words, Tessa decides that marrying him would be a dreadful mistake.

She moves back in with her family while Nathan goes on their honeymoon and as she tallies up the mountain of debts Nathan has amassed in her name, she has find a way to cope with the loss of her house, her car and the future she’d imagined with him.Tessa finds that trying to recover from her heartache while living with her sociable parents is a little too much to bear. Her aunt Fifi runs an animal sanctuary and wanting to help her niece and make the most of Tessa’s veterinary nursing abilities, she offers her a home, albeit an unfinished one and an unpaid job setting up and running the sanctuary. Unfortunately for Tessa this also means that she’ll have to spend time with Jack, but she’s determined to keep him at arms length and never forgive him for ruining her big day. At least, that’s her intention, but as Jack helps her rescue frightened and damaged animals, Tessa can’t help being affected by his compassionate nature and determination to do the right thing.

Undiscovered Showcase #16 - Many Mansions by Laurel Remington

The sixteenth entry of our Top 20 Undiscovered Shortlist is Many Mansions by Laurel Remington.

We encourage comment and critique on each entry but any offensive remarks or spam will be removed.

Remember your favourite entry because you'll get the chance to vote after all twenty excerpts have been posted!

Over to Laurel Remington...

MANY MANSIONS (BLURB)

The profession that everyone loves to hate...

Elsie Wood never imagined that she’d end up back in Somerset living with her parents and looking for work. But when she splits with her fiancé and leaves her job as a literature professor, Elsie finds that in her own life, happy endings are hard to come by.

She takes the first job she can find: as a part time estate agent. At first, she struggles to fit in to the cutthroat office environment. But one phone call changes everything. She gets the instruction to sell Rosemont Hall, a crumbling Georgian mansion that’s riddled with woodworm and dry rot – and secrets. Elsie is fascinated by the house and its colourful past. From a portrait of a mysterious woman on the stairs to a lost painting and a sinister housekeeper, Elsie feels like she’s stepped into the pages of a novel.

Elsie’s big chance to get to the top of the sales chart soon becomes a fight to save Rosemont Hall from developers – without her boss finding out! And when the disturbingly attractive American heir arrives to push the sale forward, Elsie has a true battle on her hands – one that puts not only her new career, but also her heart, on the line.

READ THE FIRST 3000 WORDS OF MANY MANSIONS OVER THE CUT

 

Novelicious Chats to...Wendy Wallace

Interviewed by Cesca Martin

What was your inspiration for this book set in a private asylum in the nineteenth century?

I heard about the photographs of asylum patients made in the 1850s by Dr Hugh Diamond, and sought them out. I was very moved by the pictures of women patients, who at the time were thought to look ‘mad’ but who to me looked ordinary. Some appeared depressed, or dishevelled – but in that situation who wouldn’t be?

I began thinking about what it would be like to be photographed and then to have that picture used by other people to diagnose your mental state.

I found the idea really chilling. A photograph can make people look very different to how you might see them in life, as we all know. And although we might sometimes try to ‘read’ faces and expressions, we don’t necessarily get it right.

At the same time, I’d realized through my research that some of the doctors working in this way were the progressives of their day, trying hard to find better ways of working with people with mental illness – and inspired by the new medium of photography.

Who is your favourite character in the book and why?  

By the end, I felt great affection for all the characters, even the appalling Vincent who if you didn’t have the misfortune to be married to him is an almost comical character.

Anna Palmer is the heroine of the novel, and she is the one who goes through the greatest emotional journey. I feel a lot for Anna. But I also have big soft spots for Martha Lovely’s down-to-earth kindness, Talitha Batt’s wisdom and forbearance, and Emmeline Abse’s small struggles to emerge from her childbearing years as a woman with at least some measure of autonomy. I really feel for Lizzie Button too, torn from her children. You see, I like them so much I have to mention half of them by name. 

What is your writing day like?

I worked hard on The Painted Bridge, full time, for two years. I don’t have a cast iron routine. I like to just get up and start writing, in my dressing gown, with a cup of tea. I feel clearest in my mind, in the mornings before I’ve started dealing with anything else. I tend to carry on till mid-afternoon, then do some other things and probably return to it in the evening. In the early stages of The Painted Bridge, I carried around a print out of the manuscript, needing to have it near me.

Ideas come when you’re washing up or queuing in the supermarket, too.

People say you must be self-disciplined to write but I don’t see myself as that – although I do see myself as motivated. It isn’t exactly that I enjoy writing, more that I have a compulsion to try and figure out the story and characters, make the prose work as well as I can.

Winners - Copies of The Painted Bridge by Wendy Wallace

The ten lucky winners who will each receive a copy of The Painted Bridge by Wendy Wallace are...

Zoe

Josephine M

Sue Berwick

Mary

Annabelle H

Lindsay

Cyndee Thomas

Sharon Laverty

Erla Diedericks

&

McKenzie

Congratulations to all the winners and thank you to everyone who entered and to Simon & Schuster for providing this generous prize. Please can the winners email their addresses to me at debsnovelicious@gmail.com. 

MORE ABOUT THE PAINTED BRIDGE

Review - Welcome to Rosie Hopkins' Sweetshop of Dreams by Jenny Colgan

This book was buried in my TBR pile until last weekend when I was full of a cold and couldn't think of anything I'd rather do than snuggle up in bed with some Buttercup Syrup and a bit of Jenny Colgan.

What a brilliant, brilliant read this was. Truly. I think a lot of Jenny's earlier books are kind of 'Bam! Funny stuff! Bam, Bam! Someone trips over!' (which I love and will always love) but this was so much more considered and poignant. The writing was confident and sparkly and I felt instantly like this book was going to take good care of me. As a reviewer it becomes quite natural to read with a critical eye, always conscious of what you're going to put in your review, looking out for plot holes and wishy washy characters... This book would not let me do that; I couldn't help but relax into it and enjoy it in the same way I enjoyed books as a child - greedily and with utter joy.

It's been a while since I rooted for a character the way I rooted for Rosie Hopkins. She's a bit of an under-achiever, has an overgrown child for a boyfriend and is unsure of where she's headed but, in spite of that, she's positive and funny and scrappy.

While there was plenty of romance (lovely, brooding Stephen, dashing Moray and hot farm boy Jake were a pleasure to read) in the traditional sense, the main love story of this novel was between Rosie and her Great Aunt Lily. In many of my favourite romantic comedies, the two main characters are clearly made for each other but have to overcome internal and external conflicts to end up together. Jenny did this really well in Welcome to Rosie Hopkins' Sweetshop of Dreams; I can't imagine anyone but plucky Rosie attempting to restore Lily back to health, and Lily was exactly what Rosie needed at that unsure point in her life. Some of the scenes between these two made me cry and plenty of them made me laugh. What a perfect pair they were!

I think there are plenty of other things about this book that I could point out in order to get across to you how marvellous it was (the 1940s story thread, Eddison and his mum, the sweet recipes to name a few), but you ought to find out for yourself. I feel like I can wholeheartedly recommend this to you regardless of what sub-genres or other authors of women's fiction you might be into. I simply cannot imagine anyone not loving this one to pieces.

10/10

(If you don't believe me check out the Amazon reviews!)