Today I'm delighted to welcome back my dear friend and fellow-author Jennifer C Wilson, to celebrate the first birthday of her amazing debut novel Kindred Spirits: Tower of London. I had the great pleasure of working with Jen as editor of this amazing story (not that it needed very much editing!) - and I can honestly say that anyone who has not read this book has missed a rare treat. You will have the opportunity to remedy this omission later, but for now, over to you, Jen!
Hi
Sue, and thanks for inviting me onto your blog today. It’s crazy to think that
this time last year, I was getting things ready for the online launch of
Kindred Spirits: Tower of London, as well as looking forward to celebrating
with a couple of drinks later that evening.
So,
it’s happy first birthday to Kindred Spirits! There may be fizz. Actually, I’ve
got the day off – there will be fizz, and a much-deserved lunch out in town.
Given
that it started life as a fourteen-line poem, and an appalling one at that,
it’s definitely a milestone worth noting. The idea that Richard III and Anne
Boleyn might have got along really stuck with me, despite the ‘wonderful’
lines:
“Richard and Anne, aligned in their
fate,
destroyed by Tudors, Henrys seven and eight.”
Truly
awful, and never even entered into the competition it was written for, but when
NaNoWriMo came around, it was just the spark I needed. These last eighteen
months has been full of anniversaries thanks to that one little spark. A year
since I sent my synopsis and three chapters off to Crooked Cat Publishing. A
year since they asked for the full novel (and a frantic read-through to check
for massive errors which somehow crept through the edits!). Then the magical
one – a year since it was accepted for publication. I don’t think I’ve ever
been so excited – I remember reading the email again and again, in case there
was some hidden double-negative I was missing…
Then
came the learning curve. Being my debut novel, I had no clue about how anything
worked, so there were the comments from my editor and from the publisher
(thanks Sue and Steph!), and researching images for Crooked Cat to use for the
front cover (which I can praise to the hilt, given that my only input after said
viewing of images was to remove the ‘:’ from the title). Which leads us back to
that launch party. I must have looked so anti-social, sitting playing on my
phone whilst my parents took me to lunch, but happily, they understood, and the
competitions, ‘food’ and ‘drink’ I put on seemed to go down well enough.
The
evening was perfect too – being so close to Halloween, the bar area I’d
reserved was covered in fake cobwebs and ghostly hangings. I may have pinched a
spider-ring as a memento (and subsequently had to put it in a bag labelled
‘spider ring’, so that I don’t find it an accidentally scream blue murder!).
It
was a great day, and a feeling I could definitely get used to, so to celebrate
Kindred Spirits’ first birthday, the e-book is currently reduced to just 99
p/c, until Halloween – it is a ghost story, after all!
I
hope you enjoy it!
Kindred
Spirits: Tower of London
A
King, three Queens, a handful of nobles and a host of former courtiers…
In the Tower of London, the dead outnumber the living, with the likes of Tudor Queens Anne Boleyn and Katherine Howard rubbing shoulders with one man who has made his way back from his place of death at Bosworth Field to discover the truth about the disappearance of his famous nephews.
Amidst the chaos of daily life, with political and personal tensions running high, Richard III takes control, as each ghostly resident looks for their own peace in the former palace – where privacy was always a limited luxury.
With so many characters haunting the Tower of London, will they all find the calm they crave?
About Jennifer
Jennifer
is a marine biologist by training, who developed an equal passion for history
whilst stalking Mary, Queen of Scots of childhood holidays (she has since moved
on to Richard III). She completed her BSc and MSc at the University of Hull,
and since graduating has worked as a marine environmental consultant.
Enrolling on an adult education workshop on her return to the north-east reignited Jennifer’s pastime of creative writing, and she has been filling notebooks ever since. In 2014, Jennifer won the Story Tyne short story competition, and also continues to work on developing her poetic voice, reading at a number of events, and with several pieces available online. Her debut novel Kindred Spirits: Tower of London was published by Crooked Cat Publishing in October 2015.
Twitter:
https://twitter.com/inkjunkie1984
Kindred
Spirits: Tower of London, Amazon link: http://authl.it/B016TRKU2A
Great book. Love historical fiction.
ReplyDeleteYou make so many great points here that I read your article a couple of times. Your views are in accordance with my own for the most part. This is great content for your readers. Toronto Party Bus Rentals
ReplyDelete