Hi I'm Rosemarie and I like to write. I write short stories and longer fiction, poetry and occasionally articles. I'm working on quite a few things at the minute and wouldn't mind one day actually getting published in print.
Just got back, I had to walk off some of my giddiness. I had a wonderful time. I spoke to a few people, authors mostly, plus Anne Cater the fabulous blog tour organiser and Karen Sullivan, publisher. I bought 6 books, some from authors I’ve read before, like Matt Wesolowski and Antti Tuomainen, and some by authors I haven’t read but I liked the bits they read out, like Will Carver and Kjell Ola Dahl. I also got the Vanda Symon book I was missing, Ringmaster.
And it was 3 for 2 so I had a bit of a spree and supported a small independent bookshop, The Bookcase in Lowdham, Nottinghamshire. Indie publisher, indie bookshop, supported by a local library. It’s wonderful.
I really enjoyed meeting Johanna Gustawsson. I have all three of her books but I only brought Blood Song as it was the first one of hers that I read and I didn’t want to overwhelm her. We had a chat about realistic autistic representation.
I am slowly calming down, the walk through night time Southwell and then writing this has helped, but I’m still all bubbling with happiness. Going to journal for a bit to ground me again. I need to get some sleep tonight.
It was probably a mistake getting a room at a pub. I can hear conversations down in the bar.
When investigator Sergiu Manta is handed the investigation into a series of bizarre murders, he can’t sure what he’s getting involved in as he has to work with regular detective Marius Stanescu, who has his own suspicions about the biker he has been told to work with, and wants to get to the truth. The twists and turns of their investigation takes them from the city of Bucharest to the mountains of rural Romania, and back.
Corylus Book is a new venture aiming to publish fiction translated into English. The people behind the company have very different backgrounds, but what brings us together is a deep appreciation of crime fiction and a strong interest in books from countries that so have been under-represented in English.
It took a while before it turned out that everyone’s thoughts had been on similar lines – that we wanted to take a chance on presenting some of the great European crime fiction that wouldn’t normally make its way into English. With a mixture of language, translation and other skills between the four of us, it seemed the logical next step to take.
The first Corylus books are a pair of Romanian crime novellas, Living Candles by Teodora Matei and Zodiac by Anamaria Ionescu.
There’s more to come in 2020 – starting with Romanian novelist’s Bogdan Teodorescu’s Sword, a powerful political thriller that has already been a bestseller in Romania and in its French translation. Sword will be available in May and will be followed later in the year by the first of two books by Icelandic crime writer Sólveig Pálsdóttir. The Fox will be available in the second half of this year, followed by Shackles in 2021.
And there’s more to come, with a novel by Bogdan Hrib set partly in Romania and partly in the north-east of England, a second novel from Teodora Matei, and we’re talking to more exciting writers from across Europe about what we can do together…
Hispania, 704 AD. When young Pelayo, the rebellious illegitimate son of the Duke of Asturias, is tasked with hunting down a party of Saracens raiders, he seizes on the chance to escape the city and the scandals that have swirled around him for years. As he follows the trail of devastation left by the raiders, he learns that Valentina, the headstrong daughter of his father’s closest ally and his hated half-brother’s betrothed has been taken captive.
As Pelayo leads his cohort toward the eastern coast, the sudden death of the king in Toledo unravels old alliances and sparks a fierce competition for the throne. As the kingdom descends into civil war, the ambitious Saracen governor, Musa Ibn Nosseyr, sees the Iberian nation’s troubles as the perfect opportunity to expand the reach of the caliphate into the underbelly of Europe.
Based on historical figures and events, The Saracen Storm is the sweeping saga of one of Spain’s best-loved heroes and the role he played during the nation’s darkest period: the Moorish invasion of its lands in 711 AD.
Jose Nunez resides in Montreal, Canada, with his wife and two daughters. After running a small, software development company for a few years, he turned his hand to freelance writing. A chance sighting of a bronze statue of an ancient warrior called Pelayo in the town of Cangas de Onis, Spain, gave rise to his first novel, The Saracen Storm.
Growing up Mormon during America’s early-1980s satanic panic, Bigelow escapes the religion’s bland conformity by playing Dungeons & Dragons. After graduating from high school in 1984, he dives into sex, drugs, and the counterculture via Salt Lake City’s punk and new-wave scenes, as echoed from London, New York, and especially Los Angeles.
As Bigelow explores the underground, he rejects myths of supernatural good vs. evil, living instead by the D&D concept of chaotic neutrality. During LSD trips, however, he starts sensing an unseen dimension. Then Stephen King’s post-apocalyptic novel The Stand gets him reconsidering good vs. evil. After an alarming otherworldly attack, can Bigelow find spiritual protection in Mormonism’s processed, regimented, corporate culture?
BLURB Welcome to the world of the forensic psychologist, where the people you meet are wildly unpredictable and often frightening.
The job: to delve into the psyche of convicted men and women to try to understand what lies behind their often brutal actions.
Follow in the footsteps of Kerry Daynes, one of the most sought-after forensic psychologists in the business and consultant on major police investigations.
Kerry’s job has taken her to the cells of maximum-security prisons, police interview rooms, the wards of secure hospitals and the witness box of the court room.
Her work has helped solve a cold case, convict the guilty and prevent a vicious attack.
Spending every moment of your life staring into the darker side of life comes with a price. Kerry’s frank memoir gives an unforgettable insight into the personal and professional dangers in store for a female psychologist working with some of the most disturbing men and women.
THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY meets 1984. In the near-future, all decision-making is automated, until one man makes a brazen choice of his own, with global consequences.
Welcome to QualityLand, the best country on Earth. Here, a universal ranking system determines the social advantages and career opportunities of every member of society. An automated matchmaking service knows the best partners for everyone and helps with the break up when your ideal match (frequently) changes. And the foolproof algorithms of the biggest, most successful company in the world, TheShop, know what you want before you do and conveniently deliver to your doorstep before you even order it.
In QualityCity, Peter Jobless is a machine scrapper who can’t quite bring himself to destroy the imperfect machines sent his way, and has become the unwitting leader of a band of robotic misfits hidden in his home and workplace. One day, Peter receives a product from TheShop he absolutely, positively knows he does not want, and which he decides, at great personal cost, to return. The only problem: doing so means proving the perfect algorithm of TheShop wrong, calling into question the very foundations of QualityLand itself.
Hardcover, 352 pages
Published January 7th 2020 by Grand Central Publishing (first published September 22nd 2017)
ISBN:1538732963 (ISBN13: 9781538732960)
My Review
I recieved a copy of this novel from Orion in return for an honest review.
In a world where everything is controlled by algorithms, and a few massive corporations control everything and know everything about you, Peter Jobless is a Level 9 Useless who runs his grandad’s second hand shop. Except repairing anything is illegal and he just has a building full of damaged goods. He keeps getting sent pink dolphin dildoes and doesn’t want them. When a beautiful stranger hi-jacks his car his solution presents itself. Helped by Kiki, the beautiful stranger, and a collection of slightly faulty AI controlled devices including a drone afraid of heights, a sexdroid that can’t get it up and a battle robot that can’t follow orders, he seeks justice. Meanwhile, there’s an election campaign taking place, between a rabidly right-wing ideologue and an android with progressive ideas. Eventually Peter and the new president meet, with explosive results.
I really rather enjoyed this book. It was funny, insightful and the characters were sympathetic, even the despicable ones. The author tackles questions of AI development, consumer and business ethics, nationalism and how we make the world a fairer place with humour and no preaching. It does really seem that logical explanations can’t beat emotions in politics, but John of Us tries.
New biography explores the secret love life of celebrated author John Wyndham
Hidden Wyndham: Life, Love, Letters includes previously unpublished love letters from The Day of the Triffids author
The first biography of the life of science fiction author John Wyndham is now available. It includes the first publication of a collection of love letters to his long-term partner and later wife, Grace Wilson.
Hidden Wyndham: Life, Love, Letters, by Dr Amy Binns, author and senior lecturer in journalism at the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan), explores Wyndham’s wealthy but traumatic childhood. This was transformed by a spell at the first mixed-sex public school Bedales from 1915 to 1918, the source of the strange but fervent feminism of Consider Her Ways and Trouble with Lichen.
The biography covers his formative years as a pulp fiction writer, his experiences as a censor during the Blitz and his part in the Normandy landings. He described his struggles with his conscience in a moving series of letters to Grace, the teacher with whom he had a 36 year love affair.
After the war, he transformed the searing experiences of wartime London, France and Germany into a series of bestselling novels: The Day of the Triffids, The Chrysalids, The Midwich Cuckoos and The Kraken Wakes. But he remained intensely private, shunning fame and finally retiring to live anonymously with Grace in the countryside he loved.
Hidden Wyndham is distributed by Gardners Books and is now available on the Waterstones and Amazon websites, in Kindle and in paperback edition.
From the moment she met him, Ella Peterson had questions. As always, though, she’s too shy to ask.
Older and sexy as hell, mysterious Adam Brook soon sweeps sheltered Ella off her feet; but is he as perfect as he appears to be, or is there more to him than he’s telling her?
Ella’s world has already turned upside down after moving from England to rural Kansas. She and her sisters were hoping for a more secure future, but instead find that life can be tough when jobs are scarce and the stakes often higher than anticipated.
When events spiral out of Ella’s control, she learns the person she needs to rely on most is herself and her instincts on who to trust in the future.
It’s just that her instincts are screaming at her to trust Adam; it’s what he tells her that makes that a problem.
Julia is an avid reader of all things romance, and she has read hundreds of books across a variety of sub-genres and began writing her own novels in 2018. Four books are currently in various stages of editing and completion, the first of which is finished and will be on sale in spring 2020.
Julia has always been passionate about languages and fiction and has a degree in Languages And Trade and an A-Level in English Literature. When Julia is not writing or editing her own novels, she usually has her nose in books by other authors and is otherwise kept busy caring for her family, going to the gym and carrying out her day job. Julia lives on the South Coast of England with her two children, husband and cats.
Everything Is Better With Dragons 