Happy New Year

I have about sixteen books on my Kindle. There, I've said it. I have sixteen books and yet I have only read two all the way through. One I've given up for a while because it was a long long saga. One I'm reading and another one is lined up for afterwards. The others? Well, they're samples I'll probably get to at some point and eventually buy the whole book. My need to confess to this? Well it is because I can now see why sales of my e-books are slow, and yet sampling is steadily growing day by day. I'm guessing that the (now over a thousand) people who have downloaded Mrs Osbourne Regrets, Winner Takes it All and Maudie, have (hopefully) liked what they read and have thought they'd like to read more of my books, and so have downloaded samples of the others. But, these same people are probably like me and have other books lined up on their Kindle, Kobo, Nook whatever, to read and so mine have to wait patiently in a queue.

So I've stopped sulking and have decided just to get on with the business of writing. I have a lot to do, and that's when I'm happiest, when I have one novel cooking and several others in various states of completion. I'm currently writing my next book, which will be out in the autumn. Without giving too much of the plot away, it's set in the fifties, about a young woman who uses a family secret to make a better future for herself; and for the first time ever in one of my books there is also a murder mystery thrown in. I'd like to think of it as Downton Abbey meets Miss Marple but with a bit of added grit.

Writing Paradise Lost taught me a lot about myself. What prompted me to start it was that I bought an album called 'Comedy' by the old Liverpudlian band, Black, primarily for the track 'You're A Big Girl Now'. But there was also this other wonderful track called 'Paradise Lost' and I thought, for some reason 'Paradise Lost' was an Evelyn Waugh style novel about aristocrats and the death of the British Class system. But I wiki'ed it and discovered it's an old poem by Milton about man's descent into hell (or something like that), so I thought, okay, I'll write the novel I thought it was. So I wrote thirty pages, in the first person, about this girl who comes home from Girton College in 1951 to her old family home and these terrible things happen at her family home blah blah. I got the most terrible writer's block, which in turn made me depressed and I realised I was writing out of my comfort zone. I'm not good writing in the first person, and I also realised that girl wasn't the sort of person I can write as. I wasn't interested in her story, so I wasn't sure if anyone else would be. So I threw it all away and re-started the story. The new one is far more me, with secrets, class struggles, revenge etc etc.

Added to this, I'm getting books two and three of The Line of Passion ready for publication. 'Kate' the next book will be out Monday 30th January in e-book form.

Finally, there comes my 'magnum opus'- Never Forget. There is a special reason why this is being released on Tuesday 10th April, as it the 100th anniversary of a very special – and tragic event, which the book is based around. On April 4th I will be doing an interview with author Kelly Moran on her blog and giving the very first copy of Never Forget away. I am genuinely excited about this book because I know it's probably the best thing I've ever written. More about it soon....

So, for now, I'll say adios, and get on with my many tasks. Remember, Maudie - book one in The Line of Passion trilogy is free on Smashwords.

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/115175

Take care

Karen