Novel Kicks Fiction Friday: Everything Comes With A Price
Fiction Friday is our weekly writing prompt.
The aim is to write for a minimum of five minutes and then keep going for as long as you can. Once you’ve finished, don’t edit, just post in the comments box below.
Today’s prompt is about getting what you want but at what cost?
You wake up to find that you are the smartest person in the world. The knowledge you now have will allow you to get everything that you want. Fame, money, power. However, nothing is free. When someone gets luck, someone isn’t so lucky. Write from both perspectives with the two characters meeting up at the end.
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Novel Kicks Writing Room: Photo Inspiration
Images can conjure up a lot of inspiration.
Google all of the following words – forest, desert, highlands and ocean.
Pick one of the images that appears; the one that stands out the most. Write a story around it. What has it inspired? What has it made you think about?
Don’t edit, just imagine yourself within the picture.
Feel free to put two of the images together if you like.
by Cover Reveal: The Best Boomerville Hotel by Caroline James
I am very excited to be a part of today’s cover reveal for The Best Boomerville Hotel which is the latest novel from Caroline James.
Let the shenanigans begin at the Boomerville hotel …
Jo Docherty and Hattie Contaldo have a vision – a holiday retreat in the heart of the Lake District exclusively for guests of ‘a certain age’ wishing to stimulate both mind and body with new creative experiences.
One hotel refurbishment later and the Best Boomerville Hotel is open for business!
Perhaps not surprisingly Boomerville attracts more than it’s fair share of eccentric clientele: there’s fun loving Sir Henry Mulberry and his brother Hugo; Lucinda Brown, an impoverished artist with more ego than talent; Andy Mack, a charming Porsche-driving James Bond lookalike, as well as Kate Simmons, a woman who made her fortune from an internet dating agency but still hasn’t found ‘the One’ herself.
With such an array of colourful individuals there’s bound to be laughs aplenty, but could there be tears and heartbreak too and will the residents get more than they bargained for at Boomerville?
OK, drum roll…..
by Book Review: Recluse Millionaire, Reluctant Bride by Sun Chara
HarperImpulse, 2017
Welcome to Sun Chara and the blog tour for her latest novel, Recluse Millionaire, Reluctant Bride which was released by Harper Impulse on 8th December 2017.
Stan Rogers, recluse millionaire, must negotiate a risky deal with Stella Ryan, the exotic beauty from his past, to gain custody of his son. But how can he close the deal with her, the one and only woman who flips his switches and pegs him as the enemy?
Martial artist Stella knows she should steer clear of Stan, the man who had shattered her heart and could still destroy her. Four years have passed since their hostile business deal, and now, the American financier is proposing holy matrimony…but she’s the reluctant bride wondering, what’s he up to?
Stella has no time for love. The love of her life is her business. When Stella is stopped by two men, put in the back of a van and taken to an unknown location she doesn’t know what to think. What she doesn’t expect is to be in the home of the man who financed her dream four years before. She quickly begins to question what is going on and why she’s there.
I didn’t completely know what to expect when I picked up this book to read and I wasn’t sure whether it would be my kind of book. Truth is, I couldn’t put this book down. For me, it is about how first impressions about someone aren’t always correct.
Stella is a strong fabulous female character. Sure, she is a workaholic and doesn’t really have time for a family which made me feel sad. She has her weaknesses (for Stan in particular,) but she’s a really likeable character.
The plot is paced well. The tone and setting at the beginning certainly drew me in. I wasn’t sure where the story was going to go and this made it exciting.
by NK Chats To: Charles Harris
I’d like to welcome Charles Harris to the blog today. Hello Charles. Thank you so much for joining me today. Your first fiction novel is called The Breaking of Liam Glass. Tell me a bit about it and what inspired the idea?
Hi Laura, thank you for having me.
The Breaking of Liam Glass is a crime-satire – not so much a Whodunnit as a What-They-Did-After-It! It follows the twenty-four hours after a teenage footballer, Liam Glass, is stabbed and in hospital in a coma, and the piranhas – the journalists, politicians and police – who all want to use him to build their careers.
The idea came from both seeing the rise in knife crime in our cities that seems unstoppable and also looking at the way newspapers play such a crucial part in our lives, and yet are almost unaccountable. Even the good ones. And to some extent they all can be good at times. It’s easy nowadays to attack the tabloids, but they have mounted important campaigns in the past and it would be a poorer world without them.
In Liam Glass, the central character, Jason Crowthorne, is a young wannabe journalistic piranha who first discovers Liam Glass’ case and realizes this could be his ticket to tabloid heaven. Yet at the same time he is honestly shocked at seeing kids being stabbed and wants to do something that will stop it.
As the story develops, Jason is torn between his better instincts and promoting his own career. In the process, he gets sucked into a dark yet comic spiral of lies and deceit, each step trying to escape the consequences of the one before. And soon discovers that there are bigger and nastier piranhas than him in the sea.
What do you think makes a good main character? Which elements are most important?
There’s no formula – I wish there were, it would make my life a lot easier. It’s like finding a partner – you can specify all the traits you want on Tinder but ultimately it comes down to a certain magic: you just want to spend more time with this person.
Some characters in the novel just arrived, fully formed, and were a joy to write: a nice but dim gym instructor; a local politician who is desperate to get re-elected but has no idea of her own; a put-upon detective constable who makes a single bad mistake and is urgently looking for someone to pin it on.
Whereas Jason hid himself from me and had to be slowly teased out.
Having said that, there are some rough guidelines – you want characters who are full of energy and contradictions, facing big dilemmas yet capable of taking action.
Jason finally revealed himself to be a great person to spend time with, which is a good thing as I lived with him for many years.
His heart is in the right place and yet he keeps doing the wrong things. You fear for him and yet in some ways you long for his comeuppance. In all, he turned out to be a wonderful comic hero to write.
What is your writing process like? Are you much of a planner? Edit as you go?
In theory, I try to plan, but not too much, and then not edit until I have a full draft. But each book tells you what it needs. It’s like sailing single-handed across the Atlantic – you start off with the best of intentions and by the end you’re clinging onto a spar, soaked to the skin and searching the horizon for dry land.
Are you working on anything at the moment that you can tell us about?
I’ve just sent my editor a zillionth draft of a more serious psychological crime story.
Which three books could you not live without and why?
More like three hundred, but currently my top three would be Scoop, Catch 22 and Bonfire of the Vanities.
• Scoop for Evelyn Waugh’s brilliant depiction of the values and contradictions of the newspaper business;
• Catch 22 because every line that Joseph Heller writes both makes you laugh and pins some human hypocrisy like a butterfly on a pin;
• and Bonfire for Tom Wolfe’s ageless and constantly funny depiction of the hubris that led to the social and economic car crash we’re living through today.
by Book Club
