Here's a novella to warm you this Christmas. It has boy meets girl, family secrets, snow and a lion! What's not to love? #excerpt @henrigyland @rararesources #giveaway #romance #suspense #circus

A Lion Is Not Just For Christmas

by

Henriette Gyland

Is there life after the circus has left town?

Circus performer Justine Belmont works with big cats, but when the circus is disbanded and the old lion is sold to a private menagerie at a stately home in Norfolk, she is asked to spend a few weeks settling him into his new environment. When she arrives at the estate, however, she receives a mixed welcome.

The groundsman Tom Yates resents her presence as he doesn’t feel he needs her help with the lion. He revises his opinion when he sees the bond between her and the big cat, and she and Tom grow closer, although Justine remains torn about her feelings for him. The lady of the house, Priscilla - who is married to the reclusive owner, Lord Brooks’s, grandson - is not so easily convinced. She perceives Justine as a threat for the male attention and her plans for the manor. And her two young daughters are a little too curious about the lion for their own good.

When unsettling events occur, Justine begins to wonder if there is more to Priscilla’s animosity than meets the eye. Can Justine keep herself and everyone else safe until it’s time for her to leave again and start a new life elsewhere?

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Excerpt

A Lion Is Not Just For Christmas

Justine and Rexus have been at the stately home for a few days now when she catches the baronet’s two granddaughters teasing the lion in his cage.

The next morning was slightly hazy, and the air had the kind of dampness to it that seemed to seep into a person’s bones. Nevertheless the weather had never stopped Justine from doing what she needed to do, and she went to collect the bucket of meat for Rexus, which she’d left to defrost overnight in one of the old garages which was being used as the café’s food storage.

A frustrated roar greeted her when she was halfway across the lawn. The youngest of Henry’s two daughters, the one named Cordelia, had climbed through the spectator barrier and was teasing Rexus by running a stick along the fencing creating a deafening clatter while the other girl looked on.

Justine dropped the bucket of meat and in a few strides she reached the enclosure and snatched the stick out of the girl’s hand, then bundled her back onto the other side of the barrier.

‘What do you think you’re doing?’ she shouted. ‘This is a lion!’

‘I just wanted to play with him.’ Cordelia’s lip wobbled at Justine’s harsh words.

‘You have no right to talk to my sister in that way,’ said the older girl Portia, her pert little nose in the air. ‘You’re nothing but the hired help.’

‘The hired help, huh? If it comes to teaching two rude children a well-deserved lesson, I can certainly help with that!’

‘You can’t teach us anything. We go to a private school. I bet you can’t even read or write.’ Portia’s nose stuck further in the air so the girl was in danger of toppling backwards. Her cut-glass accent, so like her mother’s, grated on Justine’s ears.

This was too absurd, and Justine laughed. ‘Is that so? Well, I’d wager I know a thing or two they don’t teach you at your fine school.’

‘Done.’ Portia’s haughty expression was replaced by a cheeky grin, and she stuck out her hand. ‘A fiver, and we shake on it.’

‘I can do better than that.’ Justine spat in the palm of her hand and presented it to Portia. The girl hesitated for a moment, then she did the same, and they shook hands.

‘But I still think I might be cleverer than you,’ she said.

‘Oh, I don’t doubt it.’ Justine’s tone was dry. ‘I only went to school during the winter when the circus season ended.’

‘Only in the winter?’ Cordelia cut in. ‘That’s so unfair!’

‘Guess I was lucky. Now, about Rexus, you can’t play with lions, not the way you play with a cat.’ 

~ ~ ~

Henriette Gyland grew up in Northern Denmark but moved to England after she graduated from the University of Copenhagen. She wrote her first book when she was ten, a tale of two orphan sisters running away to Egypt, fortunately to be adopted by a perfect family they meet on the Orient Express.

Between that first literary exploit and now, she has worked in the Danish civil service, for a travel agent, a consultancy company, in banking, hospital administration, and for a county court before setting herself up as a freelance translator and linguist. Henriette recently began to pursue her writing in earnest winning the New Talent Award in 2011 from the Festival of Romance and a Commended from the Yeovil Literary Prize.

Henriette lives in London.

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Giveaway – Win a sterling silver Thomas Sabo Snowflake Charm (UK Only)

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Advice for writers: How to fill that blank page! Sally Jenkins offers excellent advice! @rararesources @sallyjenkinsuk #psychological #thrillers #writingtip #writerslife #mustread #fiction

                                         

Conquer Writer’s Angst 

by

Sally Jenkins

     

Being a writer is a scary business. It starts with a blank page and the fear of failing to fill it. It finishes with publication or submission for critique and the accompanying terror that readers will hate what we have written. 

Apart from popping pills and downing alcohol, how can we get control of this constant literary angst? 

Tips for Blank Page Trauma 

·       Write quickly. Pretend every month is November and NaNoWriMo.

·       Write the scene that’s buzzing in your head. Scenes don’t have to be written in the order they appear in the book.

·       Don’t read any of it back until you’ve reached the end of the story.

·       Banish that self-confidence seeping gremlin who whispers in your ear about how rubbish the writing is. The gremlin knows nothing!

·       Have an external deadline to aim for. Competitions are good for this – you don’t want to miss the closing date and the potential for prize money!

·       Accept that it’s OK to hate your first draft. It’s easier to improve a bad first draft than write perfect prose from the start.

·       Write because you love that afterglow feeling of ‘having written’. It’s the same high as ‘having exercised’. 

Tips for Accepting Criticism 

·       Understand that the adverse comments apply to one particular manuscript or book only. They are not personal or necessarily applicable to all your work.

·       You are always in control. Analyse the criticism and then decide whether or not to act on it. 

·       Taking criticism on board and giving it serious consideration shows maturity as a writer.

·       The only way to avoid criticism completely is to never show anyone your work. If you do that, what was the point in writing it? 

The Case Study 

My second psychological thriller, The Promise, was published on 28th January 2018. I banished the blank page blues by aiming to finish the novel by the closing date of a competition with a prize of publication and £1000. I kept myself buoyant mentally by imagining how I would feel when the novel was published and the prize money mine.  

I entered but didn’t win the competition. However I did now have the complete manuscript of a novel – a prize in itself! 

The next step was obtaining feedback on the novel. I sent The Promise for a critique. Two big ‘failures’ in the novel were highlighted: 

·       A romantic subplot didn’t work because there was no chemistry between the two characters supposed to be in love. The reader said, “You are much better at conjuring up a scene of horror. The psychological thriller is your genre.”

·       The structure could be improved. An inciting moment in the novel takes place thirty years ago in prison. I’d written the novel chronologically from this moment. The reader suggested the novel would be better starting in the present day with flashbacks to the past.

·       This criticism hurt and taking it on board would mean a major rewrite. But if I didn’t take action the money spent on the critique and all the time spent writing the novel would be wasted.  

I rewrote the novel. Then I used a beta reader. She came back to me with some minor changes, for example, too many names beginning with the same letter. In her summing up she described The Promise as ‘a fast- paced psychological thriller with stark, dark elements at play. The characters struggle with the central dilemma.’ 

Armed with confidence from my beta reader’s comments, I directly approached The Book Guild, the publisher involved in the competition that I hadn’t won. After a wait of several weeks they offered me a publishing deal.  

I did a happy dance and some alcohol was downed (!) but this time in literary celebration rather than to fight fear. Someday soon I hope to raise a glass to you, your writing success and banishment of writer’s angst!       

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Introducing...

The Promise

A man has been stabbed. A woman is bloodstained. The nightmares from her teenage years have begun again for Olivia Field – just as she is preparing to marry.

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Ex-convict, Tina is terminally ill. Before she dies, the care of her younger, psychologically unwell brother, Wayne must be ensured. So Tina calls in a promise made to her thirty years ago in a prison cell. A promise that was written down and placed with crucial evidence illustrating a miscarriage of justice in a murder case.

Tina believes Olivia is perfectly placed to provide the care Wayne needs, but to do so, Olivia must be forced to cancel her own wedding and wreck the lives of those close to her. Tina’s terrible blackmail demands put Olivia’s entire future and, ultimately, her freedom under threat.

The Promise is a fast-paced psychological thriller told from several third person viewpoints. The novel explores the lengths to which people are prepared go in order to protect those they love and the impossibility of ever fully escaping our past actions.

~

Sally Jenkins lives in the West Midlands. She is a member of a Speakers’ Club, a volunteer library reading group coordinator and a church bell ringer.

Sally's first psychological thriller, Bedsit Three won the Ian Govan Award.

How to Get Ideas for Books

by

Lisa Binion

Before I began to write, the complex plots in the books I read would amaze me.  I just could not figure out how the authors of these books came up with such fantastic ideas.  Since beginning to write, I have discovered ways to come up with some terrific ideas.

VBT

Take a look at your own life.  Life has a tendency to throw you into all kinds of situations, and each situation can be made into a story.  Softly and Tenderly came from the death of my mother when I was nine-years-old.  It was a traumatic time of life for me, and it took me a very long time to recover from her death.  I could have turned it into a mystery or a story that made people cry.  I could have written events just as they happened, but I really would not have been satisfied doing that.  I chose to make it creepy.

A few years ago, something happened to me that I’ll never forget.  It is something that I don’t want to live through again.  While I was out jogging, a spider must have fallen on my shoulder or in my hair.  That’s bad enough in itself, but when I discovered this spider on me, it was in my ear.  I didn’t realize at the time it was a spider.  All I felt were its legs as it crawled deep inside my ear.  Many excruciating hours later, I finally managed to coax it out by about drowning it with hydrogen peroxide.  It was one clean spider when it hit the floor.  I couldn’t let that horrifying event be for nothing.  I’m writing a book, Whisper, very lightly based on what happened.  Again, it will be a tale of horror.

If you can’t decide on an event in your life to write about, take a look at things that have happened in the lives of people you know.  Read newspapers and magazines to see what interesting things have happened in the lives of people you don’t know.  Check out current events and what is happening in the world today.

When you go shopping or go to town to pay bills, notice what is going on around you and listen in on other people’s conversations.  Just try not to be too obvious about what you are doing.  Is there someone you see doing something unusual?  Maybe someone is dressed in an unusual way.  Did you see someone walk away from their cart only to have someone else come along and pick up an item out of their cart?  Was that arranged beforehand?  Maybe it was a trade of some kind.

Perhaps your neighbor has a strange habit.  Does she walk outside every morning at exactly the same time and look down the road?  Is she watching for someone?  Why?  And who is she watching for?  I’m sure you can come up with all kinds of interesting scenarios to explain that.

Listen to your muse.  Pick up a sheet of paper and write down a word that interests you, a word that has a lot of meaning for you.  Now start jotting down other words that your main word brings to mind.  Before long, a story should start to form in your mind.  Keep at it long enough, and you should have enough to start writing.

One other way you can come up with ideas is to look at story prompts.  There are hundreds of these floating around on the Internet.  A lot articles on my BellaOnline Fiction Writing site have story prompts included in them.

Story prompts happen all around us each and every day.  All you have to do is notice them and build a story around them.

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What does "show don't tell" mean?

SHOW don't TELL

by

Ednah Walters

The first time a critique partner scrawled these words on page after page of my chapter, I went, uh? I was clueless as to what she was referring to. As a self-taught writer, I knew that descriptive pros drew a reader in, but the journey from telling readers what’s happening to showing them has been bumpy but satisfying. Telling is unimaginative and boring. Showing engages the senses, makes readers visualize a scene and allow them to draw their own conclusion. 

So how can you tell when you’re telling instead of showing? Lets start with a simple sentence. 

My husband flirted with the waitress. 

This sentence gets straight to the point and tells you what is going on. It is bland. It doesn’t engage the imagination or evoke any emotion. In fact, the writer leaves everything to the reader. Instead of wanting to read more, a reader is left wondering what the husband did for the narrator to draw this conclusion, how the waitress reacted and how the narrator felt. 

The waitress flung her blonde hair and sashayed toward my husband. She leaned forward to pick up the empty plates, deliberately thrusting her chest too close to his face. He read the writing on the tight T-shirt barely covering her large breasts then said something. The woman’s high-pitched giggle filled the room. As she walked past him to serve the next table, my husband turned to watch her with a grin. 

Now this version is a bit more descriptive you must admit. A reader can visualize the scene and become engaged…maybe. Yes, there’s a bit of showing, description of the waitress, a bit on the flirting, but the passage is so impersonal. Something is missing. Why should you as a reader care about what the waitress is doing when the narrator doesn’t seem to? 

Her black, ruffled skirt short and indecent, red top snug, the woman flung her platinum blonde stresses as she glided toward my husband’s table. She fluttered her fake lashes as she talk, her hand lingering on his arm after she served him. I clenched and unclenched my fist when he leaned forward and pretended to read the writing on her T-shirt then whispered something in her ear. He was checking out her enviable double-Ds, the letch. I crossed my arms over my less noteworthy chest and cringed when she giggled, the high-pitched sound grating on my already frayed nerves. He turned and ogled her as she walked to the next table with an exaggerated sway of her generous hips. 

Okay, this passage may be wordy, but you see what I’m getting at. It shows emotions. It is descriptive. It shows the use of senses. We now know more about the waitress, what she wore, how she looked and the exchange between her and the narrator’s husband. But above all, we know about the narrator’s take on the scene. There’s pain as she watches the waitress and her husband, and glimpses of her insecurities about her breast size. The entire passage is personal and raw with emotions. A reader is left with questions and the need to learn more. What is the narrator going to do after this scene? What is going to happen to her marriage? 

So there’s my take on showing versus telling. Stimulate the readers with descriptions and throw in a dose of emotions, and viola!