Step Into The Story

First of all a big THANK YOU to everyone who dropped by the Romance Bandits Blog yesterday and made it such a great party! I had the best time! Now I am off on my travels to Scotland again and I'm very excited! We will be staying in Elderslie, the birthplace of Sir William Wallace , and I'll be making my pilgrimage to the Wallace Monument. I'll also be visiting Johnstone Castle where Chopin stayed in the 1840s. These days the ruin is in the middle of a housing estate which makes for a rather surreal experience! Further afield we'll be going to the fascinating " Electric Brae " and Culzean Castle . All the photos and tales of the trip when I get back! Have a good week, everyone!

Here I am blogging on this blog about what I have written on my other blog, which strikes me as somewhat surreal! However it did occur to me that there might be readers here who are interested in the life of a servant in Victorian times, so if that appeals to you drop by the Ashdown House Blog where there are also plenty of other interesting historical snippets!

The last couple of weeks have been a blitz of preparation for the launch of my new Brides of Fortune series so I thought I would stop, draw breath, and post all the exciting developments here! So first to reviews and a really, really lovely surprise! There was a wonderful review of Unmasked on The Good, The Bad and The Unread which made my day! Those of you who have read my books before will know that Unmasked is a prequel to the Brides of Fortune series and features some of the same characters. Sandy at TGTBTU said: "Nicola Cornick is a new author for me. And after this book, I'm going to definitely be reading more of her books. I thoroughly enjoyed this one. Loved the characters, the story, the emotion, everything about it." You can't get a review nicer than that! Meanwhile, The Confessions of a Duchess has been garnering some very nice reviews of its own which are on my website . Chris at RomanceJunkies said: "Nicola Cornick gives stellar pen with the first i

Uh oh, the sad puppy is out again! For those who have not encountered the sad puppy on my blog before, this is the sign that something is wrong. Last time it was BBC Radio 4 trashing the historical romance genre. This time it's something more personal. You don’t often find writers expressing their views publicly about the reviews they receive. Jilly Cooper was once brave enough to admit that poor reviews upset her and knocked her confidence but in the main we don’t make a bid for the sympathy vote. It’s generally accepted that if you put yourself and your writing out there, sometimes you’ll get good reviews, sometimes bad, but you have to be tough enough to take it. A cup of tea and a chocolate éclair (or a box of them) usually gets me through the worst of it. After all, if I use good reviews to promote my work I can hardly be hypocritical enough to criticise the poor ones. I know that my writing will never be to everyone’s taste. I'd even go so far as to admit that some of my

Literary Festivals are marvellous things. They are full of thought-provoking talks on topics that can give you endless story ideas, you can meet famous authors who make you feel great because it turns out they experience exactly the same writing process that you do, and you can give your credit card a really good work out. Over the past 10 days I’ve been attending various events at the Swindon Literature Festival. Now in its 16th year the festival is beautifully run by Matt Holland and always provides a fascinating programme with a great mix of writers, thinkers, philosophers and storytellers. Last week I heard the ever-entertaining Julian Clary talk about his latest novel, I went to a talk by Professor Kathleen Burk about the historical and current relationship between Britain and America and I went to a Philosophy Society discussion on the nature of friendship. And today I sallied forth to hear Claire Harman talking about her book Jane’s Fame, an exploration of how Jane Austen conque

I am beyond excited that the video trailers for my new series are now ready and are up on my MySpace page at http://www.myspace.com/nicolacornick If you go to the My Videos section at the top and click on the individual trailers you can see them in sequence, giving a taster for each book in the Fortune's Folly trilogy. There's also a trailer setting the scene. I hope that these will whet your appetite for the trilogy! I think that Book Candy Studios have done a fabulous job and I particularly applaud their choice of actors in the roles of the hero and heroine of each book. Dexter and Nat are totally gorgeous and when I saw the girl playing Lizzie Scarlet she was exactly as I had envisioned my character! In other news, I am making a return visit today to the Word Wenches blog in my first interview about the Brides of Fortune trilogy. We're talking about the appeal of series and linked characters, and there is a copy of The Secrets of a Courtesan PLUS a copy of The Confess

Some of you may already know that every year author Brenda Novak holds a special auction to raise money to find a cure for diabetes. Diabetes mellitus is a condition where the amount of glucose in the blood is too high because the body cannot use it properly. Many of us know friends and family who suffer from this illness and know that it requires special care. Brenda’s auctions raise thousands of dollars towards the research into diabetes. For that reason alone I feel it is worth supporting them. But they also feature absolutely wonderful items to bid on! If you have an eBay habit (as I do!) you can exercise it in a different context and treat yourself to something in the knowledge that the profits will go straight to charity! If you go to the auction site and you will see what I mean. The donations are designed specifically to tempt authors and readers! You can bid on all sorts of things, from signed copies of books to a critique of a manuscript by a published author or an evaluatio

Are you technically challenged? Before I explain what happened yesterday I have to confess that I’m not a natural either behind or in front of the camera. (You can see that from the picture of me with my editor Kim Young at the top of this blog. I'm the one gurning.) Much as I would love to present historical programmes on the TV, I suspect that Bethany Hughes and Dr David Starkey don’t need to worry about their jobs. I’ve only recorded one webcast video before and that was for the Meet The Author site. (No I'm not putting in a link. The site is wonderful - my video was awful). The chap doing the recording was absolutely charming and did his best to put me at ease but my choice of a red jumper to match my red face was not an inspired one. I’d never noticed before how many times I blink – well, you don’t do you, unless you spend a lot of time staring into a mirror. But it was slightly disconcerting to see all my mannerisms (let’s not call them tics). Anyway, I had agreed to rec