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 ...