Mslexia Woman’s Novel Competition 2013.
A great competition open to unpublished woman writers.
Mslexia Women’s Novel Competition
The closing date is 23 September 2013 and the entry fee is £25.
The competition is open to unpublished women novelists writing in any genre for adults including literary fiction, women’s fiction, young adult fiction, science fiction, fantasy, chick-lit, crime fiction, thriller, romance and historical fiction, (no nonfiction or fiction for under 13s.)
To constitute a novel, your book must total at least 50,000 words. To enter the competition, send up to 5,000 words – which must be the first 5,000 words of the novel.
The First Prize is £5,000
by 
A Notebook for writing inspiration.
Anyone who knows me will tell you that I have an obsession with stationery particularly notebooks. I have many dotted around at home (most with scribbles occupying a couple of pages and then the rest is blank – a sure way to know that I had moved on to another notebook I simply couldn’t be without.)
A writer can’t ever have enough notebooks right?
This one I like. It’s from Blottshop.com and it’s £4.00. I love inspirational quotes and this one will come in handy if I were trying to write my novel in it. Blott have some stores in the UK too. I walked into the one at Meadowhall and had to eventually drag myself out of there forty minutes later. It’s amazing!
by Bridget Jones – Book 3.
Exciting news for all the fans of Bridget Jones (including me.) Publisher Jonathan Cape has announced it is publishing the third Bridet Jones book. It’s expected to be published in Autumn 2013.
Helen Fielding (Photo by Alisa Connan)
The first two Bridget Jones novels were huge international bestsellers, published in forty countries and selling over 15 million copies worldwide.
Dan Franklin, Publisher of Jonathan Cape, said: ‘Great comic writers are as rare as hen’s teeth. Helen is one of a very select band who have created a character, Bridget, of whom the very thought makes you smile. Like millions of others I can’t wait to see what’s happened to her.’
Helen Fielding said: ‘I’m thrilled to be published by Jonathan Cape but want to register my huge appreciation of Bridget’s original publisher, Picador, and the success they made of the two early Bridget Jones novels. The new novel is set in present-day London, with an entirely new scenario for Bridget. If people laugh as much reading it as I am while writing it then we’ll all be very happy.’
Bridget Jones’s Diary started life as a weekly column in the Independent in 1995 and charted the life of a thirty-something singleton in London in the 1990s. The column was subsequently adapted into a novel and published in 1997, becoming a huge international bestseller. As was its sequel, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, published in 1999. The novels were adapted for the big screen in 2001 and 2004, starring Renée Zellweger, Hugh Grant and Colin Firth.
Can you wait? I can’t……
by Pauline Barclay talks about Famous Five Plus.
Novel Kicks would like to welcome back Pauline Barclay to our blog….
Laura, thank you for having me here on your fantastic web site and thanks to your hospitality, I’m not a stranger here having appeared twice before. Though this time, as much as I would love to talk about my books and of course my new book due out at the end of this year, I will save all of that for another time if you’ll have me back.
Today, I’d like to tell you about Famous Five Plus which is an Indie Author Group. As an Indie author I know how hard it is to get your name out there to the widest audience. And of course whilst you are marketing yourself, you are not writing. Added to trying to balance writing and marketing you can often feel isolated having no one to talk to, to bounce ideas off or to share any success that might come your way. Writing is for many a solitary occupation and being an Indie author you can often feel even more isolated, but by sharing thoughts and ideas can make you feel less on your own. These are just some of the reasons I decided to set up Famous Five Plus to bring like mind people together who could share their experiences and support each other. So on 31st October 2011, I launched Famous Five Plus. To get the group off the ground I invited five authors I had become friendly with to join me. Since then many authors have asked to join the group.
Famous Five Plus is about working together as a group and supporting each other. Everyday I update the FFP web site with a new post, an extract from a member’s book, highlight an author, highlight one of the member’s trailers and more. All members are asked to promote these changes through social media: Twitter, Facebook or their own Blog / web sites. What is wonderful is that during the month everyone is promoted and everyone gets involved.
by Gillian Bagwell: Jane Lane and the Royal Miracle.
The defeat of Charles II by Cromwell’s forces at the Battle of Worcester on September 3, 1651 set off one of the most astonishing episodes in British history—Charles’s desperate six-week odyssey to reach safety in
Portrait of Lady Jane which is hung at Mosely Old Hall.
France. It came to be known as the Royal Miracle because he narrowly eluded discovery and capture so many times.
One of the players in the astonishing tale was Jane Lane, an ordinary Staffordshire girl who risked her life to help the 21-year-old king escape. She had a pass allowing her and a manservant to travel the hundred miles to visit a friend near Bristol—a major port where the king might board a ship.
In a story that sounds like something out of fiction, Charles disguised himself as Jane’s servant, and she rode pillion (sitting side-saddle behind him while he rode astride) along roads traveled by cavalry patrols searching for him, through villages where the proclamation describing him and offering a reward for his capture was posted, and among hundreds of people who, if they had recognized him, had every reason to turn him in and none—but loyalty to the outlawed monarchy—to help him.
It was an improbable scheme. Charles was six feet two inches tall and very dark complexioned, not at all common looking for an Englishman of that time. But time after time he rode right under the noses of Roundhead soldiers without being recognized.
If he had been caught, he would certainly have been executed, and it is an open question whether the monarchy would have been restored as it eventually was after the death of Oliver Cromwell. What Jane did took great bravery, and she risked not only her life but the lives and lands of her family, as the fugitive king had been proclaimed a traitor, and anyone who helped him would be executed for treason. Continue reading
by Book Club
