Flaming Nora: First bookshop and criminal tendencies

Friday, May 14, 2021

First bookshop and criminal tendencies - my writing week

The big news this week was the launch in ebook, hardback and audiobook of my 1919 saga The Miner's Lass.

Quite an exciting week as for the first time in months, I visited an actual bookshop. What a treat! It was Waterstones in Sunderland, where I'd gone in to sign copies of my new book out in hardback, The Miner's Lass.

I also signed stock of my other books while I was there. I love, love, love the fact I have my own table in the shop where they'd even put a sign up calling me "Sunderland's best-selling local author". They are wonderfully supportive and I can't thank them enough.

If you'd like to win a copy of The Miner's Lass along with a box of chocs and free bookmarks, I'm running a competition on my Facebook page right now. Enter here.

And as it was such a special week, another issue of my monthly newsletter went out to readers and fans. You can view it online here.

And if you'd like to sign up to receive my monthly newsletter with competitions and all kinds of news about my books, you can sign up here.

The brilliant Trip Fiction website are offering a competition to win one of three copies of my novel The Paper Mill Girl. Enter here.

This week I was given a wonderful mention in Northern Insight magazine about my novel The Paper Mill Girl breaking into the top 50 national bestsellers list.

My debut cosy crime, Murder at the Seaview Hotel, was given a preview in the Shots crime and thriller ezine blog. What a great surprise!

You can read about it here, it's under the releases for August.

Speaking of my cosy crime Murder at the Seaview Hotel I'm over the moon to see it previewed on publisher Headline's page of upcoming crime novels too! It's listed here under the "COMING SOON" tab.

And keeping on the crime theme, this week I joined a crime writing masterclass from author Jacob Ross. The session was organised by New Writing North, who do wonderful things, find out more at their website.

It was only after I booked myself onto this session that I realised I've met Jacob Ross before. He presented me with my prize at a writing event in Nottingham a couple of years. It was organised by Writing East Midlands and I'd won second prize in their esteemed Aurora Writing Prize. You can read all about the event here.

My winning story was a dark tale of murder. Perhaps I'd always had it in me to turn my hand to crime?

I crafted another episode of my weekly soap opera Riverside for The People's Friend magazine. I've been writing Riverside weekly since 2016 and you can find out all about it here.