If I was breathless last Monday, announcing Week 1 of the Sugar and Snails blog tour, I must be on the verge of a swoon this week as I begin another round of visits. The first week has gone brilliantly (you can catch up with those first five posts via the links on my blog tour page), so how could I not be excited about the second? I start today under Julie Stock’s Author Spotlight, with a piece about setting part of my novel in Cairo. As a writer of contemporary romance from around the world, Julie has a particular interest in the challenges of setting fiction in real places, the subject of her own post on Susanna Bavin’s blog this week. Tomorrow, Helena Fairfax is interviewing me about where my own life is set, among other things. Helen lives in an interesting place herself, the UNESCO World Heritage Site and former mill town, Saltaire, which you can discover more about in her fascinating post. Then I’m off to chat with my namesake, Shaz Goodwin on Jera’s Jamboree. With her day job as a school Inclusion Lead, I was interested in her interest in novels that tackle a social barrier, as Sugar and Snails most definitely does. On Thursday, I’m on Our Book Reviews discussing the various transformations of my novel from its initial inception as a story of masculinity across three generations. This post arose out of a Twitter conversation after Mary, one half of Our Book Reviews, read and reviewed an advance copy. Obviously, I was delighted to be invited back. Finally, Friday sees me in Australia, quite fittingly discussing the theme of friendship in the novel and in its realisation (extending the theme of my previous post on gratitude) with one of my dearest blogging friends, Norah Colvin. As Norah has already hosted me once before, I know the tour bus will be safe to leave there over the weekend until I get behind the wheel again on Monday.
I’m generally not in favour of “update” posts, but I can’t ignore the perspective shift since I posted five days ago. As of last Thursday, I’m a published novelist, and enjoying it immensely. With each review (six to my knowledge so far), with each supportive tweet at #SugarandSnails, I’m claiming more of my authorial authority. I’m even infiltrating the more traditional media, with a feature on Sugar and Snails in the Lincolnshire Echo and a nerve-wracking but not too dreadful outing on BBC Radio Nottingham (my bit is at about 2.15 p.m. and the link expires in about three weeks). The highlight of the last few days was, of course, my Nottingham launch party, which I’ll be sharing more about in due course. But in the meantime, there’s this lovely and unexpected post on the event from The Mole, the other half of Our Book Reviews.
Sugar and Snails is itself about shifting perspectives. My main character reinvented herself at age fifteen while, in the course of the novel, the reader’s perception of her makes a radical shift. Her childhood friend becomes her enemy; her best friend as an adult comes to see her in a different light. On a smaller scale, her student is studying optical illusions and it’s this that I’m using as my starting point for this week’s 99-word flash with a shift in perspective:
Friends warned me against dating a younger woman, but Julie was thirty, hardly a kid. I thought we’d gelled, but that card she sent afterwards was cruel. Fine if she didn’t fancy me; no need to tell me I’m a hag.
I let her call go to voicemail, yet I couldn’t stop the flutter in my chest when I heard her speak. “Can I see you tonight?”
Narrowing my eyes, I stared at the card anew. The nose became a chin, the narrow lips a necklace, the rheumy eye a shell-like ear. I pressed the green phone-icon. “You bet!”
Do let me know what you think.
Friends warned me against dating a younger woman, but Julie was thirty, hardly a kid. I thought we’d gelled, but that card she sent afterwards was cruel. Fine if she didn’t fancy me; no need to tell me I’m a hag.
I let her call go to voicemail, yet I couldn’t stop the flutter in my chest when I heard her speak. “Can I see you tonight?”
Narrowing my eyes, I stared at the card anew. The nose became a chin, the narrow lips a necklace, the rheumy eye a shell-like ear. I pressed the green phone-icon. “You bet!”
Do let me know what you think.
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