25 Saturday Apr 2020
Posted in News
Happy Book Birthday to me and Susan Pape.
It’s four years today since A Falling Friend, the first book in our #Friends trilogy, was published.
It’s been described as a 5* ‘rollicking good read’ and ‘chic lit with attitude.
Get your print or digital copy from Amazon.
01 Wednesday Jan 2020
Posted in Viewpoint
First, a confession: this list is a steal – an idea borrowed from my friends John Jackson and Paul Smith, who recently posted similar records of achievement on Facebook.
It seemed such a lovely thing to do – so here, in no particular order, are my top ten moments from 2010-2020:
Meeting my granddaughter Iris for the first time
Sorry, I lied: this is definitely number one on my list.
Iris has enriched my life in ways I could never imagine, and it’s been an unexpected delight to watch my eldest daughter, Megan, blossom as a mum.
Travelling Down Under to visit my youngest daughter, Annie, during her gap year-and-a-half in Australia
Next time, I’ll fly business class and stay for longer than four weeks, but in all other respects, it was a wonderful holiday – although saying goodbye to Annie at the end of the trip was heart-breaking. Continue reading
19 Tuesday Nov 2019
Posted in News
Birthdays are always great fun – and there’s no fun like a book birthday.
It’s publication day for our third novel A Forgiven Friend – the final instalment in our FRIENDS series.
It continues the story of best friends Teri Meyer and Lee Harper as they juggle work, life and love – usually with a glass of wine or a cup of weak Earl Grey tea to hand. Or ‘gnat’s piss’ as Teri usually describes it.
23 Friday Aug 2019
Posted in News
Thrilled to bits to be making two appearances at the 2019 Wakefield Literature Festival.
After a two year absence, the festival has been revived by Louis Kasatkin and will run from Monday, September 16 until Saturday, September 21.
Full programme details are below, but you can join me at 2-3.30pm on Wednesday, September 18 at a Writer’s Showcase panel at Mocha Moocha – a lovely cafe in the city centre – and again, with Susan Pape, at 2pm on Saturday, September 21, at a second Writer’s Showcase at Wakefield Library, (above) which is more-or-less across the road from Westgate railway station.
Hope you can join us.
Full programme details can be found here.
03 Saturday Aug 2019
Posted in News
Not quite how either of us remember it, but Susan and I – described in a recent article on The Daily Express website as Sue and Susan who write books – had a little chuckle at the account by TV reporter Roxanne Hughes of our debut on television quiz show Pointless.
She described our consternation when co-hosts Alexander Armstrong and Richard Osman announced the first round of the competition would be on chemical elements.
We seemed, she said, to be incredibly excited – which completely baffled both Armstrong and Osman. Continue reading
11 Monday Feb 2019
Posted in Reviews
What happens when you read a book that’s so good, you can’t find the words to adequately describe how much you enjoyed it?
You procrastinate – and six months down the line, you still haven’t posted a review.
Which is daft!
Because all I really need to say about Blackbird Road, the third novel in James L. Weaver’s Jake Caldwell series, is that it’s a cracking thriller with great characters.
And I LOVED it. Continue reading
14 Friday Dec 2018
Posted in Reviews
Do you believe in Christmas Miracles?
We’ve a delicious extract for you to read from Helen J Rolfe’s heart-warming festive romance, Christmas Miracles at the Little Log Cabin.
Here’s what the blurb has to say about the book:
Holly is looking for a change and even though not everyone agrees with her career choices, she’s determined there’s more to this life than the long hours she works as an editor in New York City.
What she doesn’t expect is to meet Mitch, a recluse who’s hiding more than she realises.
Mitch does all he can to avoid human contact, spending his days in the little log cabin out in the woods behind Inglenook Falls where he owns a Christmas tree farm, so when Holly falls into his life, he’s not sure how to react.
All he knows is that something needs to change if he ever wants to get his life back on track. Continue reading
11 Tuesday Dec 2018
Posted in Reviews
What happens when the good man you married isn’t all he seems to be?
In fact, he’s much, much worse than Katerina Rowe, a church deacon in the historic plague village of Eyam, could ever imagine.
And the tension is palpable as Kat slowly realises her life is built on a lie and Leon, the husband she adores, is a crook and a scoundrel.
But is he also a murderer?
Murder Undeniable is a promising start to a new crime fiction series from prolific Sheffield-based writer Anita Waller. Continue reading
10 Monday Dec 2018
Posted in Reviews
Everyone needs the right mix of Hope and Christmas Spirit and the mysterious Natalie Hope has both in abundance.
She’s a woman on a mission: every December she has just 24 days to make sure four unhappy people have a Christmas to remember.
This year she’s landed in the small town of Winstanton, twenty miles north of Glasgow, and, in next to no time, she’s working her magic: re-uniting families, bringing lovers together and generally stirring things up.
It’s all a bit clichéd but who cares? Continue reading
06 Thursday Dec 2018
Posted in Reviews
Hopefully CM Taylor won’t take this the wrong way, but I thought the author of Staying On must be a woman.
Partly, this was because the family-orientated thrust of the story seemed a feminine rather than a masculine theme and partly too, because in the opening pages, the authorial voice seemed to be female rather than male – don’t ask me to analyse why, that’s just the way I read it.
But the clincher was that the exploration of the inner lives of the main protagonists was…well, it’s what women writers do. Continue reading
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